Violin Bowhold | 6 Ways to Flexible Fingers

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Here are 6 of my most effective ways to develop flexible left-hand fingers.

It is very common for students’ fingers to be locked up and inflexible. This makes many techniques difficult or impossible; playing with a straight bow is hard work; a good sound is hard to produce, and fast playing is much more difficult.

Freeing up your fingers is a key step to developing a great sound on the violin and it is also critical to enable smooth bow changes, clear articulation and many different types of bow strokes.

I started writing a list of the types of strokes that would be improved but realised that I’d have to list almost every bow technique!

Use this video to free up your own fingers and share with your students so they can work on theirs.

Here is a list of the exercises as a reminder:

Spider Pushups
Collé (on the string)
Everyday Movements
Resistance Training
Active Exaggeration
Raising Fingers Exercise

One extra tip for if your pinky keeps falling off the bow:
The bow stick is an octagon at the frog. Instead of putting your pinky right on top of the octagon, put it in the top/side closest to you. It will still fall off sometimes but this should help!

Good luck!