Nate asks how to cure a jiggly bow in the upper half. Every time I see a jiggly bow, I also see a tight right shoulder. I want the right shoulder totally relaxed. Usually you see the jiggle happen during a down bow, but the cure is to start by relaxing the up bow.

On the up bow, the elbow (dangling) will dip in towards your waist at the beginning of the stroke. You will feel like your arm is traveling underhand, like throwing a ball underhand.

Here's the quickest way I've found to achieve this:

1. "deflate" yourself (hairball)
2. now that you've created a vacuum, open your mouth and let the air rush into you, inflating your whole chest. It should feel effortless. From now on, you never have to breathe in again! Just deflate yourself and create a vacuum, and the inhalation will happen easily.
3. now imagine that your knees are in charge of opening your mouth to let the air in: exhale and straighten your knees, then unlock your knees just the tiniest bit and use that to "pop" the air into yourself.
4. loosen your arms and let them swing back when you exhale, and then let them follow the knee movement as air rushes into you. They will swing slightly forward.

Here is your new way to do up bows:

1. set the bow at the tip.


2. let your arm weight settle into the bow.


3. pop your knees and let the right hand/arm follow the knees' movement, pushing the bow up. You should strive for the feeling that the knees are doing all of the work and the arm is just going along for the ride.

Your shoulder should feel totally relaxed if you are bowing like this. If you leave your arm weight in the bow and leave the shoulder that relaxed, you will be able to play a full down bow without jiggling in the upper half.

This post makes me think about arm weight, another potentially tricky thing to master! More on that later.

This is an exercise adapted from Kato Havas's book "A New Approach to Violin Playing". I was looking for a way to explain that kind of bow technique to kids who have never played the violin, and explain it in an efficient way that's fun to practice.

A relaxed bow hold is important, but true relaxation can only come after you have developed the muscles in the right hand. Below is how I ask my students to form their bow holds, and an exercise that they can do while sitting (for example, when they're watching TV and a commercial comes on).

Eventually this will have pictures, when I can get one of my friends to stand over my shoulder with a camera...

Setting up the Bow Hold

1. clip your fingernails!


2. sit on the floor with your legs crossed under you.


3. if you hold your right hand in front of your face loosely with your thumbnail pointing towards you, the top corner of your thumb is what will be touching the stick (wood part) of the bow.


4. OK, hold the bow in your left hand, tip pointing left. Move your left arm so that it crosses your body, bringing the bow out to the right of you. You'll see why in a few steps.


5. with your right hand knuckles up, fingers pointing away from you, bend your thumb slightly and put the thumb corner between the stick and the hair of the bow, so that the tip of the thumb just touches the black plastic/ebony. The thumb should not go inside the U-shaped hole in the black plastic/ebony.


6. drop the 2nd and 3rd (ring) fingers onto the stick so that the 2nd finger is over the thumb. The fingers are pretty straight and are touching the stick in the middle section of the finger. Your hand will look like a shadow puppet animal.


7. let those fingers (the animal's "nose"), curve now, so that they bend down and touch the black part of the bow.


8. to the right of the 2nd and 3rd fingers, you will see that your bow [probably] is not perfectly round, but has distinct faces. Put your pinky next to your other fingers, on the face that is in back of the top face (the "back shelf"). You should have plenty of room to do this, because your bow is all the way to the right, leaving you more space to place the pinky.


9. let your 1st (pointer) finger go wherever it wants for now, and maybe forever!


10. now gently move your left arm left so that your bow hand is resting on your right knee. You'll see that it will make your pinky curve more on the bow.


11. relax everything in your right arm.


12. lift your hand slightly off your knee and feel the balance in your right hand between the thumb and the pinky. Can you balance the bow between them? Both thumb and pinky remain curved.


13. with right hand back down on your knee and right arm/shoulder relaxed, press down with the pinky as if you're typing on a computer keyboard. The tip of the bow will rise. This is a "pinky pushup". Do several of these until your hand needs a rest or you lose the bow.