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Jonathan Swartz
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WHEN YOU START LEARNING TO PLAY the violin, you think the trickiest part will be getting the fingers of your left hand into the right spots at the right time. But soon you realize that your bow arm isn’t just going to take care of itself. How, exactly, are you supposed to hold your bow arm? And what’s all this about arm weight?
“If you want to use arm weight to produce sound, and somebody just tells you, ‘Relax your arm,’ that won’t ensure the weight of your arm gets into the bow and onto the string,” warns Arizona State University violin professor Jonathan Swartz. “With a limp arm, all of the arm weight falls toward the elbow, so we need a support system in the bow arm that helps transfer the arm weight to the bow and ultimately the violin.”
Talk of a “support system” might make you think of a contraption full of girders and pulleys and gears, but Swartz suggests you think in terms of something simpler: resting your arm against a flat surface. The surface is simply the plane of the string.
“Just put your bow on a string, and it shows you what the plane of that string is—the level and angle that the bow travels across the string,” says Swartz. “Go one step further and imagine that plane everywhere, as if it’s filled in like an invisible wall that exists under your bow and out toward the violin’s scroll, and also the other direction, underneath your bow arm. Now, imagine resting your bow arm on that wall, and pulling and pushing your bow across that wall.”
OK, but how do you get the weight of your arm to rest on this plane when a limp arm will fall below it, and holding up the arm is not resting? Swartz has an exercise you can do to figure this out; it helps identify a support system for the bow arm. You’ll need help from a partner for this exercise. You’ll need imagination as well.
WITH IMAGINATION, YOU’LL GET THERE
First, without your violin or bow, stand with your arm completely limp, hanging naturally at your side. Now, have your helper, standing beside you, lift your bow arm underneath your elbow, while you maintain a completely limp arm.
All of your arm weight should now be resting in your helper’s hand.
Next, have your helper place her other hand a couple of inches away from the elbow along the underside of the forearm, and imagine your arm weight transferring to the placement of her new hand. As your arm weight transfers to her new hand, have her slowly remove her original hand so all of your arm weight is now resting in her hand under your forearm.
Then, have your helper repeat this process multiple times, each time placing her free hand a few inches further down the forearm. She may need to switch around her hands so she does not get crossed up like in a game of Twister, but have her do this as seamlessly as possible so you do not lose the feeling of arm weight. It is also important not to move on until your weight is truly resting in her new hand—if you sense yourself starting to hold up your arm, or if the weight sinks back toward your elbow, just have your helper go back a step to recapture the weight. If successful, your helper will end up holding only your hand, with your arm weight in the hand while your arm appears supported.
Get used to how this feels, so you can transfer your arm weight on your own when you’re holding your bow.
And if you’ve done this exercise correctly, your elbow will naturally be where it belongs, resting against the imaginary plane that your bow travels across.
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IT’S IN YOUR HANDS
So you’ve established a good support system for the bow arm. Now that you’ve got it, how do you use it to play music?
“One of the variables in playing the violin is that you produce different sounds, different colors, with different amounts of weight,” says Swartz. “The trick is manipulating the amount of weight that is used without disrupting this support system.” Swartz equates this to the way water flows through the pipes in your home.
“Your house has a water tank in the basement or garage,” Swartz says, “and there’s an intricate system of pipes running through the house. When you use the water at the kitchen sink, you turn it on and off at the faucet, not at the water tank—you don’t turn it off at the source.
“If I want less arm weight, I’m not going to lift my shoulder or elbow. I’m going to adjust the faucet, which is the connection of the bow to the bow arm: the fingers. It’s your fingers that determine how much weight gets into the bow. Just as the water is constantly in the pipes, ready to be used at any time, the arm weight is constantly in the support system, ready to be used at any time. And you can increase or reduce the amount that is used by transferring the weight through different fingers—the index finger transferring the most weight, and each finger after, less and less.”
Swartz says that just about everything you do with the bow when you play near the frog is possible without using the index finger; you already have plenty of weight going through the bow onto the string, because your hand is right over the instrument and the bow is heavier at the frog.
But to maintain a good, healthy, even tone as you pull the bow toward the tip, you have to put more weight into the bow. And this you can do by allowing the weight into the bow through your index finger.
Pulling the bow toward the tip also involves adjustments to the level of your bow arm. Back to imagination.
According to Swartz, every bow stroke has a vertical (up-and-down) and horizontal (side-to-side) component, and the details of those components change a bit with every stroke, and from string to string.
But what’s consistent, especially in legato playing, is that the vertical component is arm weight, resting on the string. The horizontal component is the bow pulling and pushing across the string.
This is easy enough to visualize when you’re playing on the G string, because the plane is pretty much parallel to the ground. But the planes slope on the other strings, to the point that on the E string “horizontal” looks more like up and down than side
to side.
Don’t let that throw you.
“Regardless of the position of the bow in relation to the ground, I’m thinking about the position of the bow in relation to the individual string and its own plane,” says Swartz. “So in my mind, I’m always pulling across the plane and using my weight against the plane.”
If you keep your elbow resting on that invisible wall, you’ll notice that it doesn’t stay in exactly the same place as your bow moves. As you play near the tip on the D, A, and E strings, your elbow, to remain on the string’s plane, moves closer to your body following the slope of the plane.
That’s how it’s supposed to work, so you can maintain even weight through each bow stroke.
You just have to keep that concept of the plane or imaginary wall in your head. Like so much else in music, even controlling your bow arm begins with an act of imagination.
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