Tone colors: The past few weeks the high school orchestra has been experimenting with speed, weight, and sounding point to create different sounds with the bow.
Last Friday, we played around with speed and weight (fast/heavy, fast/light, slow/heavy, slow/light). We determined that fast/heavy is the loudest, and slow/light is the softest. As for the two in the middle, there is a different tone quality. I asked the kids to describe the sound of fast/light. The students said, “It sounds airy and light.” Then I asked them to describe the slow/heavy sound, and one student said, “It’s like Mom.” When I asked this comical cellist to explain himself, he said, “For most people, Mom is the fast/light and Dad is the slow/heavy. But it’s the opposite for my parents!” I’m not sure if he was referring to their appearance or to their personalities…. we’ll leave that open to interpretation!
Bow changes: Yesterday I was working with a couple violin students on making smoother changes in bow direction. Top-notch violinists can make an endlessly smooth sound – it just sounds continuous. These particular students had more of a sound of slapping a wall before turning around and going the opposite direction. It reminded me of watching Olympic swimmers. They too have to change directions fairly quickly, but they don’t just slap the wall with an arm or leg to turn around; they instead to a graceful “flip turn.”
We compared a bow change to a flip turn. Instead of just keeping the bow rigidly straight, it can round out a bit at the frog to soften the bow changes. Thinking of the visual imagery of a swimmer seemed to help the students smooth out the often crunchy sound of a bow change at the frog.
