Improve Your Bowing Technique: Mastering Bouncing Strokes
How to add sparkle and bite, and a dash of virtuosity, to your playing
The genius of Tourte’s modern bow design really comes to light with this third category of strokes in which the bow leaves the string between notes. These bouncing strokes—spiccato, sautillé, and ricochet—give sparkle and bite to music across a variety of tempos and add a bit of virtuosity to the look and feel of any performance. Because these bow strokes require clear, yet sensitive, communication between the right hand and the bow they are considered advanced strokes.
Once they’re mastered, though, they can feel like some of the easiest strokes because it’s really the bow, and not the arm, that does most of the work.
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