My spiccato journey and questions thread

Are you playing in an orchestra? Why the focus on spiccato?

Spiccato is not difficult or hard. It is a common bowing that comes up in orchestral rep, but it is not everything.

Play your current version of spiccato, only five or ten minutes each day, then move on to other important aspects.
Don’t spend a ton of time on any specific bowing every day.

Intonation, ability to bow softly and sound beautiful, impeccable shifting, locking in with a violin section playing fast 16th note runs, etc are significant skills that require your practice time.

Spiccato will come. The magic formula is regular attention. A great spiccato may take a very long time.
A great spiccato requires great left hand skill, which gets us back to the fingering & shifting basics.

A pro can show you his spiccato and how he got there.
It could be a long journey. That’s normal.

Looking forward to what others say on this.

 

I'm with Casey here. Don't put so much time into it unless you really need your Beethoven 5 excerpt or something to be perfect within a month. Some people figure it out quicker than others, as with everything, but don't worry about it. In actual repertoire there's very few parts where you actually need it, you can get away without doing it and just trying to do short strokes. I took a lesson with Tom Derthick recently and when going over Beethoven 5, he actually suggested that I try playing the trio without spiccato. "If it sounds like spiccato, it is spiccato!". Doesn't mean you should stop practicing it, but like Casey said, five to ten minutes is plenty of practice for a day.

 

I totally get where you are coming from. Working on spiccato really helps your bow control and makes you think about it differently.

 

"And when the bow dances...":

 

My first collegiate teacher was Murray Grodner, who dates back to the days of Toscanini and the NBC Symphony. He had the most remarkable spiccato stroke—even Gary Karr mentioned it in his memoir. I'll share an excerpt from his book, A Double Bassist's Guide to Refining Performance Practices (©2013, published by Indiana University Press, ISBN 978-0-253-01016-2), which I hope will help.

I found learning the spiccato stroke with Prof. Grodner to be quite like riding a bicycle. It's tricky at first, but once you get it, you never forget how.

Incidentally, Murray just celebrated his 100th birthday this past August—a living connection to the great American orchestras and conductors of the postwar years.

 

Thank you, csrund, for the Grodner book excerpt. I met the Professor very early in my career, when he came to Sydney in the late 60's or early 70's and gave a recital and masterclasses at our Conservatorium. What I cannot clearly remember is which bow he used, German or French.

Scott Lynch, I'm quoting the following to show how I approach spiccato, not to say that this is better than anyone else's. I am a French bow user but I believe the principles are the same for German bow. I believe that looking down at the string movement in relation to the bow/hand/arm movements and the resulting sound is most important. It turns the bass into your best teacher when it comes to studying bow strokes. A good or even better quality bow helps but you still have to trust its flexibility and bounce to do most of the work for spiccato IMO.

 

@David Potts: Murray Grodner played German bow. I came to him as a French bow player, and whenever he grabbed my bass and bow in the studio to demonstrate technique, he would invariably switch to a German hold after a few bars. All of his students were made to learn their “non-native” bow in their third year of study with Prof. Grodner; however, he retired after my second year. I wound up learning German bow from Bruce Bransby, which was a great experience.

Regarding spiccato differences between French and German, I think (in addition to the motion of the forearm cited by Prof. Grodner) the index finger is key for the French player, whereas the thumb becomes crucial for the German player, as these are the respective digits that keep the bow controlled and directed into the string, where it gets its bouncing energy. Does that make sense? (I suppose for players using the Streicher hold, it would be the index and middle fingers.)

 

@Scott Lynch: Check out this and other videos in the series by Andy Anderson. Good stuff—hope it's helpful!