Bow practice?

[brake]

I was given a bow from a great fellow bass player at school and he showed me how to hold it properly (french) but I really don't know what to practice with it.

I have a teacher but I am on Christmas break from school currently and won't be back until January. Having all of this free time is great for practice but I want to work the bow in there somehow.

[jallenbass]

Nothing wrong with just playing open strings. Allows you to concentrate on just your bow hold. Hold it as lightly as possible, use plenty of sticky rosin and for now just let the weight of the bow sit on the string so that you figure out what it does all by itself.

[psycholalia]

+1

You can also practice familiar scales that your fingers know by rote, but hearing the bow drone on open stings is good to get the initial feeling.

[Paul Warburton]

Yep, and take heart! If you can get a good sound on open strings, you're most of the way there....Well.... a good part of the way there anyway.

[Pat Harris]

Practice SLOWLY with the bow, IE: moving the bow slowly. Scales work well, or just playing fragments of scales that use don't use any string crossing to begin with, then move on to complete scales.

Make sure the contact point with the string remains the same so the bow just moving perpendicular to the strings rather than up and down while moving side to side.

I would go easy on the rosin, put just enough on there to grip the string rather than caking it on and pulling as much sound as you can.

Playing arco is really something you can devote as much time to as the bass itself.

-Pat

[brake]

Thanks all! I have trouble with putting too much pressure on the strings..playing with a bow is like learning another instrument

[Chris Hodges]

Tension is the key. I've been playing for years and still have to watch my grip tension when I bow.

Also, look for the Carl Flesch book on scales (green cover) It has really good exercises for arco and pizz.

[Damon Rondeau]

You'll want to practice long tones. Open strings are fine. Use a metronome. Set it to 60 bpm with a little ringie-dingie on the "1". Do an up-bow or down-bow as many bars as you can handle; use the whole length of your bow; switch from up to down and vice versa on the "1". There are some folks on the board here who can get a crazy amount of time out of one bow stroke....

This (along with scales and etudes a la Simandl) will really help you with arco tone and control. You'll get the feeling of keeping the string moving with optimal and controlled bow movement. It's a very good thing, although your housemates may not think so.

Aim for smooth transitions from up to down stroke and back again.

You'll want to move the bow as close to the bridge as you can handle to get those really loooooooong tones.

[MDEbass]

Yeah...everyone so far has good advice. For now, work on getting the technique so you don't develop bad habits as you learn to play more advanced music with the bow. Assuming you're a jazz DB'er (Jazz Technique Forums), I would reccomend listening to some of the bowed bass solo's of PC (if you havent already). Transcribe these yourself or there's a book out by Jim Stinnett called "Arcology" which is basically a ton of PC bowed solo transcriptions. Great way to work on your bowing, especially in a jazz style. Good luck

[wineaux]

Bowing was incredibly difficult for me to pick up. Part of it, I think, is that I'm left handed but play stringed instruments right handed. It helps having my "dominant" hand on the fingerboard and when my right hand is pizzing, it's no big deal. But mastering the coordination of bowing was a bit more complicated.

I still have a long way to go, but now when my teacher says "let's try the bow," I don't break out into a cold sweat or pee on the floor!

Also, there's some great advice in this thread that I paid to learn. So pick up your bow and get after it.

[chop_1992]

It is a good idea, as several here suggest, to play long tones with the bow. You also might want to add a couple of exercises playing short scale fragments like:
On the G string, play G A B C D C B A G, rest, repeat.
You can also try a chromatic exercise (no shifting here) using the notes:
G Ab A Bb Bb A Ab G rest, repeat.
Play these little scale fragments in eighth-notes between tempo m.m. 60 - 80. Use only a tiny bit of bow length (stroke), about 2 to 4 inches long, right in the part of the hair starting about 1/3 (of the bow length) away from the frog. You can concentrate more on the bow arm when you play something simple in the left hand. Concentrate on coordinating the left-hand attacks or shifts with the change of bow direction in the bow arm.

Remember that your bow sound is made up of three main factors:
Distance of the bow from the bridge, bow speed and bow pressure on the string.

By trying these short little fragments, you can get the feeling of playing eighth-notes with the bow. You should start with manageable little licks and scale fragments. This combined with the long-tone exercises that others are suggesting here should put you well on your way to Edgar Meyer or Paul Chambers or Slam Stewart-land.

[Johnny L]

For me the most important step is having a clear idea of what I want to sound like when I'm using the bow...so I listen a lot to the records I've got with people using it.

I don't get to know where they have the bow lying on the string or how much weight is getting put on the string or how fast the bow's moving, but I get some kind of sound to shoot for and it makes experimenting with the technical aspects meaningful to me.

And of course all the good advice that's being offered above and below my post...

[chop_1992]

Originally Posted by Johnny L

For me the most important step is having a clear idea of what I want to sound like when I'm using the bow...so I listen a lot to the records I've got with people using it.

Right you are Johnny . . .