Comments

Buri,

I love the "smiling and frowning" …… as long as the down-bow doesn't "smile" so big it collides onto the lower string and the up-bow "frowns" so sadly it ends up down in the doldrums on the lower string:-))) I know… you meant the plane path.

The "Crescent Bow" certainly does make the sound smile and when reversed the sound truly cries ill.

Cheers,
Drew

Love it - well put.

But I don't know what you're talking about regarding the Declaration of Independence. Here's what my version says:

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to digest the foods which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the consumption of prunes requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

It's funny, I looked up that Oistrakh video before reading the rest of your blog, Buri, and my first thought was, "What would Simon Fischer think of that sound point?" It certainly works for Oistrakh, and for me the listener, whatever he is doing!

I've always been rather envious of my Suzuki counterparts who manage to produce an amazingly straight bow in even a three-year-old. That early muscle training just MUST be a great thing. And yet I'm always wanting to engage everything: the mind, the imagination. I can't bear down on a student if I feel it's squashing something. I guess I would say that the rote muscle training is good in moderation, and that if moderation isn't enough, then something mental like "smiles" or "crescents" or "trace the edge of a plate" is better than permanently affixing a bow brace to the fiddle.

I've been teaching a very smart 5 year old girl and I realized recently that her mother got the impression that the goal is to make the bow go straight all the time no matter what the student is thinking. My goal, however, is to engage the student's mind in learning to control the bow. I use Galamian's concept of "in" and "out" motions in the upper half and Mimi Zwieg's (from Paul Rolland?) idea of the train and the caboose for the lower half. I do think in most cases it is helpful to have a way to explain the basic motions of the bow arm and then later introduce the freedom of following the sounding point. I do think the idea of the smile is a wonderful image and I will try it with some students. I would want to be careful, however, that they wouldn't be too literal about it, because I've seen students overdo that motion. "Man who eat many prunes get good run for money". We have good people on this site who sell strings, make and sell violins
and make DVD lessons available. Me,
after all the talk of prunes I'm going to sell toilet paper at a discount here,clean up and make a fortune.