spiccato is the precursor to sautille

March 20, 2012 at 4:15 AM

I've been trying to teach one of my students sautille, but I forgot that the first stroke to teach should be the spiccato. To play spiccato, you don't necessarily have to move your wrist very much (or sautille for that matter) but I prefer to use my wrist for both. Otherwise, you can start by moving your bow on long, slow strokes mid-bow with a flat wrist and steady arm movements, keeping the elbow reasonably elevated, and work your speed up until the bow lightly bounces. Don't flop or over-relax your hand. Keep it steady and each bounced note should sound exactly the same.

I found this video online posted by violinist and educator Todd Ehle. I prefer to loosen (lift may be too strong a word) the lst and 3rd fingers rather than the 3rd and 4th, but this is a lot more descriptive than I was able to come up with: