Guide to a good bow job

There are many cool French and Italian terms for different bowing techniques. The texts have explanations of each of the different bow strokes, but these explanations range from excellent to confusing to plain contradictory (just google détaché). These terms refer to things the section does ‘under the hood.’ As an orchestrator, it is important to understand these, as they are the rudiments of string playing. Remember that in the end, though, the important thing is to know how to notate your intent; the section will take care of the technique.

When discussing bow technique it is important to note that several terms players use to describe a stroke are also terms used in notation; however, they have a slightly different meaning in this case. The two main ones to watch out for are staccato and legato, which will be discussed in this section.

The default for bowing is to play on the string and change direction with each note.

Long Notes

Long notes are played on the string, or shorthand on, meaning that between notes the bow does not leave the string, but rather maintains contact. The bow will change direction for each new note. If you want more than one note per stroke, use a slur to designate how many notes should fall under each bow.

How many notes you can write per bow depends on several variables. Some are non-negotiable; for example, at loud dynamics the bow must move faster to maintain a full tone, so fewer notes are possible. When the dynamic is soft, many more notes can be played and the number of changes and the speed of the bow can make some nice colors. Watch a section bow; the speed changes all the time and this is what gives the phrase life. There is a third variable: placement. Players will put the bow in slightly different positions on the string to produce different sounds. The extremes are sul ponticello and sul tasto, but there are many little variations in the middle that when combined with speed and pressure give every note a unique sound.

The reason why samples have no ‘life’ is that every note is recorded at similar speeds and pressures, so there is no relationship between technique and musical context.

Short Notes

The default is still to play on the string. If you want the playing heavy and on the string, you can label it marcato. Marcato is a term that refers to the attack; for strings it is performed with the martelé stroke. Notes start on the string and have a big attack due to extra pressure applied. Note that marcato does not necessarily mean short; it affects the attack, and due to the physics of how it is performed, the notes will have a separation, and so by default will be shorter. A series of marcato eighths will give the impression of being staccato. It’s important to realize the distinction though, and understand that a normal short on the string bowing is called staccato bowing.

The alternative to bowing on the string is, of course, bowing off the string. This is where the bow leaves the string between notes. The most common example of an off the string bowing style is spiccato. One common misconception is that spiccato itself is the way you label a passage as off the string. It is not. It is just one particular style of off the string bowing. However, if you do use that word and it is perhaps not the correct stroke for the phrase, players will do what they do best and adapt their bow stroke to the current musical context.

I believe the misunderstanding and misuse of the terms marcato and spiccato is due to certain string libraries using these names for their short note patches. In the real world it is impossible to play spiccato as loud and heavy as it sounds in these patches, and as mentioned above, historically marcato is a type of attack, not duration.

‘Off-ish’

Spiccato is a very useful and common bow stroke, but if you look at the physics of it, it is not useful for heavier attacks and louder dynamics. For these we need more contact with the string and bouncing the bow off does not allow this. But we still want the bow to come off between notes, even if it is very slight. This is a stroke that is between a spiccato and a marcato. It is not discussed often but if you watch a section, you will see it is what naturally happens when they have to play short and heavy notes. I have also noticed that even when asked to play on the string, when the music gets fast and loud, the same thing happens and they gravitate to this same stroke, the bow seems to lift a little as it changes direction. They also often do this for clarity. In cello and bass, playing fast on the string does not project or come through as well as it does on the violin.

Under Pressure: Looking at the Bow(ie)

Notice how I have bowed the above phrase. Even though I have not marked a crescendo, there will be a slight one as the bow speed and emphasis change and the sound gets more intense. If I did mark this as a crescendo I would also want the same bowing. The louder the sound, the faster the bow has to travel to maintain a quality tone. If it were a big crescendo and I had not marked it like this they would automatically go to at least two bows per bar as the music gets louder.