Settling in to the Sofa

This is a follow-up to an earlier post on a tonalization I love, called the "sofa exercise." It's a great warm-up that involves dropping released arm weight into the frog from above the string. At least ten down bows on each string reveals a lot of opportunities to improve body use.


The follow-up exercise builds on the heightened awareness of released weight, but extends slightly more toward expressive gestures. Instead of just doing a simple, released down bow, try starting closer to the string (or lightly on it), and slipping in an up bow just before the down bow as you are releasing the weight.  It should sound like a pickup leading to a beat, so that the down bow is still the loudest and heaviest part of the gesture. Think of a sixteenth before a half note, with a crescendo to the half note. Feel the weight reach the bottom as you make the down bow, with it still on its way down during the short up bow.



After this is good, add another pickup note. Now it will sound like two sixteenths before the long note, played as down-up-down. You can keep adding pickups if you like. Other explorations might include a longer pickup, still thinking crescendo on the up bow, and releasing weight gradually so that the heaviest point is at the change to down bow at the frog.


Finally, extend this exploration away from the frog, where you are now needing to use "imitation weight" instead of just released, hanging, balanced arm weight. You can do up bow to down bow gestures in other parts of the bow, and also reverse to a down bow pickup going to an up bow beat in all parts of the bow.


The gesture of pickup-beat is one of the most fundamental to music. Working on this gesture helps shape phrases clearly. For student players, often each bow change has somewhat of an accent, breaking up the musical line. See if this fundamental exercise helps.