A video of my 'safety move' for soft starts and bow changes at the frog

Written by Nathan Cole
Published: June 13, 2015 at 10:27 PM [UTC]

The following video originally appeared at natesviolin.com.

Maybe it's because I'm currently in the midst of taking care of two-week-old twins (boy and girl), but my thoughts have turned to "tips" and "sure-fire" methods. When you want kids to sleep in the middle of the night, you'll try just about anything that someone writes about, especially if they say it's guaranteed to work!

I won't make a guarantee, but I do have a very useful "safety move" or method for starting notes super-quietly at the frog. It's also useful for making really smooth and quiet bow changes there.

This video shows you how. I have another one I'm planning on making about bow shakes as well, because both problems revolve around the same concept. Let me know if this helped you with your "crunchy frog"!

From Karen Collins
Posted on June 13, 2015 at 10:56 PM

Very interesting, thanks!

From 98.234.53.228
Posted on June 14, 2015 at 7:00 AM

Thank you for your demonstration! It has solved the my difficulty of the problems that you had described (abrupt start/accent). The technique helped to produce that extra finesse for smooth and dynamic control.

From Trevor Jennings
Posted on June 14, 2015 at 11:10 AM

A good example of lateral thinking. Another problem solved! Many thanks.

From Stephen Brivati
Posted on June 14, 2015 at 10:15 PM

Brillant!
It ties in very beautifully with the idea that we can actually produce tone by raising the violin into the bow rather than pressing the bow into the violin. I try to get students to get something like ten percent of the sound from an upward feeling.
Many thanks for the great videos
Burp

From Ramón G Castañeda
Posted on June 14, 2015 at 11:13 PM

Most useful! Thank you. :-)

From Kate Little
Posted on June 15, 2015 at 9:44 PM

Interesting and well presented. Thank you.

From mike mccauley
Posted on June 20, 2015 at 2:38 AM

Was wondering why..now so easy ! Thank you..

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