Abstract
Bounced bow strokes are sometimes treated as an intermediate technique by string teachers, but the benefits of introducing these concepts early can be many. “The early introduction of spiccato bowing is beneficial and stimulating for the beginner,” writes Paul Rolland in The Teaching of Action in String Playing. “Children like to bounce the bow, just as they enjoy bouncing a ball. The unhurried bouncing of the bow, when properly done, helps to develop balance and control of the bow.” 1
George Bornoff advocated the introduction of spiccato within the first few lessons. “Just as détaché is introduced as the basis for the coordination of large movements and freedom of stroke, spiccato is introduced immediately as the basis for flexibility. … Spiccato can be introduced immediately because it is no more difficult for the beginning student than the détaché, and besides, it's fun!“ 2 In his book Basics, Simon Fischer suggests that bounced bows may even be easier to play: “To sustain the sound requires doing, i.e., pushing against the springiness of the wood of the bow, bow hair, and string. Lifted bowings require letting, i.e., not resisting the natural bounce of the bow out of the string.“ 3
Off-the-string strokes can be a great carrot to dangle in front of any student who might need reinforcement of fundamental issues. Students with stiff holds and straight pinkies and thumbs will find bounced bowings tiring. If upper-string students slump forward or hold their instruments low, the bow will tend to slide toward the fingerboard and lose the bounce. A right arm level that is too low will result in a thud rather than a dribble. The lure of advanced techniques such as sautillé can be the greatest motivation for change!
Letting Gravity Do the Work
How many of us get uptight when asked to bounce a ball? We know there's no cause for worry. We instinctively understand that the basic principles of gravity, and Einstein's theory of equal and opposite reactions, will make it happen. Once we've had a chance to experiment and find the necessary coordination, we can bounce a ball with hardly a thought. Those same basic principles, when applied to playing spiccato and sautillé, can bring about a measure of success with these bowing techniques surprisingly quickly. In as little as half an hour, you can introduce students to off-the-string bowings and lay the foundation for the development of spiccato and sautillé.
First, let's think a bit about gravity and this idea of bouncing a ball. What happens when you drop a basketball on a nice hard surface? Does it ever fail to bounce back up? If you put more energy behind the drop, you can change how high or how fast the ball returns to you. Isn't it nearly effortless? Aren't your hands relaxed and supple as you push the ball down and let it bounce back to you? Now, think about throwing the ball up in the air. Doesn't that take a lot more effort on your part? And to keep it up in the air, you have to work harder and harder, and your muscles get more and more tired. If we deduce some natural laws from this activity, we find: 1) dropping is easy, lifting is hard; and 2) the more energy is in an action, the more energy there will be in the reaction.
Step 1: The Dribble
When we approach off-the-string strokes with the same understanding of these natural laws that we have when we bounce a ball, they can feel equally effortless. Learning to let the bow drop on the string and encouraging it to bounce is the first step in a presentation of off-the-string strokes. The dribble approach works very well. Think of the word in two meanings: in the sense of letting the bow bounce like dribbling a ball, and in the sense that after the initial impetus, you allow the bounce of the bow to “dribble out.”
While the dribble is more easily demonstrated than described, here is the basic technique: aiming for the middle/balance point of the bow, drop it to the string from an inch or so above, and then extend the arm out in a down bow, letting the natural bounce dissipate at its own pace—like a relaxed ricochet. This motion both embodies and demonstrates natural laws. Dropping the bow on the string requires little effort, and the bow bounces up away from the string in accordance with however much energy was put into the initial drop.
Most students will be fairly cautious with this motion; encourage them to experiment with more energy in the drop to see what happens to the height and number of bounces. Other students may try to actively create each bounce; encourage them to let the bow do the work for them. Because the first years of playing are generally devoted to eradicating any natural bounces in the bow to create a solid, in-the-string stroke, the initial sense of a loss of control over the bow can be disconcerting. Rather than controlling the bow, the student can think of guiding or even “riding” the bow through the dribbles.
Students are best prepared for this step when they have relaxed bow holds and arms and a sense of the Galamian “system of springs.” 4 The best-sounding dribbles will be achieved by those students with relaxed bow holds and curved pinkies. Springy joints in the fingers can be developed through preparatory work with collé.
Dribbles should be practiced on open strings until the students are fairly comfortable with finding the optimum point on their own bow to make the drop for bouncing, and letting the drop make the bounce. In a class situation, allow them to experiment at their own pace, during which time you can help individuals as needed.
Step 2: Pairs
The second step starts as a dribble, but turns into a quickly bounced down-bow and up-bow pair. Drop the bow as though you were going to do a full dribble, but after the very first bounce, use your forearm to move up bow as the bow hits the string for the second bounce. Let the bow rise off the string with the energy of the bounce, the way a ball rises from the floor. The wrist should naturally come more into play at this point, snapping back up along with the forearm to make the up bow. The result is a pair of bounced notes, in which the up bow is an effortless rebound from the energy of the down bow. Thinking of the pair as the first two sixteenth notes of a quarter note, at a speed between 80 and 100 on the metronome, will ensure that students aren't lifting each stroke individually. Again, let students experiment at their own pace; an open D string works well for arm level.
As students become comfortable with this step, the concept of playing the pair together as an ensemble (or with the beat of a metronome for a private student) should be broached. Conduct the group playing one pair of strokes at a time, giving just an upbeat and downbeat. While the first few tries will probably sound like a phase-music experiment, students quickly learn to time lifting the bow with the upbeat in order to bounce on the downbeat. Isolated pairs with unconducted (and not necessarily predictable) time between them work best at first.
As this skill improves, conduct in 4/4, with the pair being the first two sixteenth notes of the first beat. Students prepare for the next downbeat for the remainder of the measure. Change to 3/4 as this gets comfortable, then 2/4. At this point, there should always be at least one beat of rest between the pairs. Eighty to 100 for a quarter note on the metronome is a good range of speed for this exercise.
Other aspects of the stroke should be explored while working with this exercise. Listen to the quality of the sound being produced. Galamian and describes the stroke as an arc; if the tone is too percussive, suggest that the stroke be shaped more like half a football shape 
rather than U shape 
.
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I use the analogy of shaping the stroke like a soup plate rather than a coffee mug. The idea of vowel and consonant sound in the stroke helps make a round tone as well. In both cases, the flatter arc and the vowel sound should produce more horizontal motion in the stroke, and help avoid a “whacking” sort of spiccato.
Change the string on which students play the pairs by calling out the string name during the rests. Students will soon realize how crucial proper arm level is to successful bouncing. Introduce string crossings in the pairs by calling out the string names, or demonstrating in the rests.
Open strings are more satisfying for initial bouncing practice because of their more resonant response. When you begin using fingered notes, encourage students to try to match the open string resonance. To do so, they will have to use a bit more bow, and thus more horizontal arm movement in the stroke, dropping the bow more heavily in order to sink deeper into the string on the bounce. Asking students to use “more energy” is often more effective than saying to use “more bow” in the stroke, as the attempt to use more bow can lead to flailing. Alternating an open string pair and a fingered pair will give them the opportunity to compare the tone on each. Play through scales using the same sequence of 4/4, 3/4, and 2/4 meters described above, with the same pitch for both notes of the pair. When students are ready for the coordination challenge, change pitches with each stroke.
Step 3: Building Stamina
One of the biggest problems with off-the-string playing is sustaining the stroke through a passage. Once the technique of playing the pairs of notes is developing well, students simply think of learning to string the pairs together to make a longer chain. Spiccato can be thought of as a renewable resource. Each pair creates its own energy source through the impetus given to the down bow. The ability to sustain the stroke depends on the continual renewal of energy through the down bow drop, which in turn creates the up bow—which in turn creates the height for the next down bow drop.
The logical place to begin the building process is to extend the previous exercises given for pairs to two sets of pairs. Keep extending the number of pairs. I find using the open string cycle first introduced by George Bornoff a great exercise for building stamina to sustain the stroke. Begin with cellos and violas on the C string, playing four beats of sixteenth notes; violins and basses join them on G, D and A, playing eight beats of E together at the top. Cellos and violas join again on the change from E to A. At the bottom, cellos and violas immediately continue with three beats of C, and so on through two beats and then one beat through the cycle. At first, you can alternate a beat of sixteenth notes with a beat of rest as needed. 6
To apply the sense of using pairs as the building blocks for an off-the-string passage, practice stringing together groups of two notes, plus the first note of the next group. The overlap is very important. It provides a connection of coordination from one building block to the next, making extension to larger groups of notes much easier. Ask the students to play the next group mentally during the rests. In educational literature, string crossings in an off-the-string passage will often coincide with beats or down bows.
Playing a small group with the overlap puts the string crossing in context, without trying to digest too large an amount at one time. For example, in Sandra Dackow's popular arrangement of Trepak, measures 5 through 8 can be practiced as an ensemble using this technique. Bounce each beat, plus the first note of the next beat, as one gesture. With at least two beats of rests between each gesture, play through the four measures in three-note groupings. Next, practice the same way with five-note groupings (two beats plus the first note of the next beat). For this piece, you will be playing a measure plus the downbeat of the next measure each time. You can extend this next to seven-note groups, or try skipping to two full measures (plus the downbeat eighth note of the next measure) at a time.
Bowing terms are often used inconsistently among string teachers, or the terms will have slightly different connotations depending on the source.
ASTA's Dictionary of Bowing and Pizzicato Terms (4th edition, 1999) provides the following definitions:
The Dictionary of Bowing and Pizzicato Terms by Joel Berman, Barbara G. Jackson, and Kenneth Sarch (1999) also provides important information on the terms’ usage history.
In the Basic Principles of Violin Playing (also published by ASTA, 2000), Paul Rolland describes sautillé as a rapid détaché, but with a stroke that has a slightly oblique angle to the direction of the stick. “The downward flipping of the bow brings out resistance in the elastic stick, which wants to bounce off the string. If the vertical factor of the stroke is considerable, the bow will leave the string; if it is mild, only part of the hairs will leave the string, yet the beating of the stick will create a crisp spiccato-like effect” (pp. 42-43). Whereas Rolland considers sautillé an on-the-string bowing, he writes that there “are two main types of spiccato, the slow and the fast. The slow spiccato is a thrown bow in which the bow is glanced against the string, then after meeting the resistance of the string, the bow is kicked back” (p. 43).
This type of isolation is particularly helpful if string crossings or shifts occur in a group. Students can focus on the specific problem area and gradually integrate it into a larger whole. Should the combination of spiccato and left-hand coordination be a problem, try practicing the passage on the open strings only to isolate any issues concerning the bowing itself.
The Rebound Approach
The rebound action connecting the strokes is more characteristic of sautillé than spiccato, and thus may seem like a more advanced technique with which to begin. I prefer to have my students start with a quick rebound—which forces the hand to relax and use the natural springs—and slow down to a more controlled spiccato than the reverse.
Spiccato is generally defined as a bowing in which each stroke is made by an individual drop and lift of the bow in an arc-like motion. (See sidebar on the left.) Emphasis is frequently placed on lifting the bow rather than dropping it. Recall that Simon Fischer refers to bounced bowings as “lifted bowings” in the introduction, above. The arm is kept in the air, actively picking the bow up from the string and then allowing it to touch down momentarily to make the stroke. This motion is much closer to trying to keep a ball airborne than letting it bounce, and correspondingly much more tiring.
Above all, learning off-the-string strokes requires patience
The rebound teaches a student from the start to use the spring in his or her joints and bow (such as it may be with a fiberglass bow), so that the execution of the technique is always relaxed and working with gravity, not against it. It is a simple matter to move the stroke lower in the bow and lift a bit more for a slower or sharper spiccato.
Even with the emphasis on dropping the bow, these are still bow strokes. Another advantage to the rebound approach is that to create the up bow out of the down bow drop, lateral arm motion must be used. If students have difficulty coordinating the drop and the lateral motion, try miming the stroke in the air. Ask students to pretend they are cracking a whip, then rotate the motion sideways along the path of the bow and mime it again. While the arm initiates the motion, the wrist snap really helps transmit the energy of the drop into the bow at the same time it moves laterally. Try exhaling along with the bow drop to help relax the motion as well.
Approach with Patience
Presentation of this material can be approached in several ways. Depending on the level of the class, a single session can include as little as dribbles and pairs, and as much as all the steps outlined above. However much is presented in that initial session, follow up with a few minutes of work each day will develop the technique over the course of months. Another approach would be to introduce individual components only (such as dribbling) to a class and work with that technique for a little bit each day before progressing on to the next step. In this case, students must be shown at the beginning what the end result will be, or crucial motivation can be lost.
Above all, learning off-the-string strokes requires patience to master the technique over a long period of time. In this approach, students do receive an immediate reward by creating a bounce using the natural springs. They can measure their progress through the additive process of the pairs, spending a little time each day toward the end result. Following this process, students learn not only how to bounce their bows, but will also expand their knowledge of practice techniques, discrimination of good tone, ensemble precision, coordination, and relaxation.
