Waching daily Jul 2 2017

Hey, everybody. I'm Alex the orchadork and today

We're going to be talking about warm-ups for a lot of stringed instruments

We tend to focus a lot on warming up our left hand the hand that we finger notes with

But our tone production is more affected by our Bow

If you find yourself with Shaky scratchy tone when you start playing it could be because you're holding the bow too stiffly

You're locking your fingers

Or you've just developed an awkward Bow hold

So to help fix some of these problems, I'm going to be showing

You some bow warm-ups that you can do before playing to help better your tone quality and also ensure that you have a nice

Relaxed bow hold and I would recommend doing these

Exercises for five to ten minutes before you start playing so before you start your bow warm-ups you want to check your own bow hold

to make sure that you haven't developed any bad habits, so if you think of all your fingers as

People hanging out at the pool

Everyone has their own way

They like the pool some people love the water and love swimming and some people hate the water

so if you think of your two middle fingers

as

the ones who like to be buddies and kind of sit at the side of the pool and stick their feet in that's what it's

Gonna be like on the bow

They're Gonna be buddies stuck together

And they're just gonna be dipping their toes in the water your thumb on the other hand loves the water, and he's gonna be swimming

Underwater all the time your pinkie hates the water

so he's gonna always be on top of the bow making sure that he doesn't get his feet in the water at all and your

Index finger likes to float on Floaties

So he's just gonna be laying on the floaties on the top of the bow, so that's kind of a silly

Analogy that you can use to remember out what your bow hold should look like and in between bow warm-up exercises that you should look

At your bow hand just to make sure that you still have this nice relaxed proper bow hold so the first bow warm-up

I have is called Windshield wipers, and this one is a good one

No matter what level you're on to help strengthen your bow hold and ensure that you're keeping your correct bow positioning

so what you're gonna do is maintain your nice bow hold and then move your bow back and forth side to side and

Try to keep the best bow hold that you can

And once you've done that for a couple of minutes

You can start going up and down and so doing that bow exercise for a couple minutes

Helps strengthen your hand and also ensures that you won't develop any weird bow holds later on in your playing the second bow moment I

Have is called Pinky push-ups this one is one of my favorites because it develops your pinky strength

So that you'll be able to have more control over what your bow is doing so what you're gonna do is hold your bow

Sideways and push the bow up as far as you can

Just using your pinky you want to make sure that you're not using your wrist

Because that's cheating and you're not going to strengthen your pinky and if you're having a hard time doing this at first you can ask

Someone to hold your wrist for you to ensure that you're not gonna cheat and use your wrist and once you feel stronger

You can do it by yourself and also make sure when you're doing this exercise

That you don't develop a kickstand pinky which was where your pinky locks out kind of like a bike Kickstand

Because that's gonna be a detriment to your finger flexibility

And it'll make it a lot harder to do bow techniques likes picado later on so this is a great

Exercise for tone production because it's not really a finger that we use a lot in normal Daily life

so you kind of have to work a little harder on that finger to make it strong enough to have good tone quality now the

Next exercise I have is called the spider

So what you're gonna do is you're gonna hold the bow straight up and down and maintain your nice bow hold with your bent pinky

And bet thumb

And it flex and contract your fingers this exercise is if you're working on passages with Picado or saw Ta

anything that involves bouncing or

fast passages

You're going to need really flexible hands a flexible and helps your tone quality because it gets rid of all the tension in your arm

So rather than having a really stiff Shaky bow

You're gonna be able to have a really smooth tone quality that sinks into the string

So that's a great way to learn how to have

Flexible fingers

Without doing awkward things with your bow and the last bow on up that you can do kind of relates to the spider

It's called the spider Race

So this is something you can do with your orchid or friends or you can just do it

By yourself what you're gonna. Do is you're gonna hold your boat up and down and

with your good spider boat hold you're going to slowly crawl up the boat and

The trick is you have to make sure that your bow hold stays correct and that you're not

spreading apart your fingers or locking them or doing anything weird you have to keep your good bow hold and

You're gonna crawl all the way up to the top of the bow and then when you get to the top

you're gonna flip the bow without using your other hand and

Crawl back down to the truck if you can crawl up and down the bow

maintaining your good bow hold

You'll be able to have really flexible fingers when you're playing those are the bow warm-ups that I have to share with you guys some

Things to watch out for when you're doing these are like I mentioned before

Locking out your fingers rather than having them nice and flexible

Also, you want to watch out for the Kickstand bike pinkie because that's gonna make it kind of impossible to have flexible fingers also watch

Out for what I like to call the dirty dish grip if you're ever doing the dishes at home

And you touch a piece of food on it, and it's just disgusting you always kind of like hold the dish like with two fingers

that's what you want to watch out for because I see that a lot with students when they're holding the bow they're

Concentrating so hard on holding everything that they start to let go with their fingers

and

It just doesn't help them at all and it makes them have a really shaky bow and really poor tone quality you want to make

Sure that you're holding on to the bow with all of your fingers

it's not a dirty dish and

You want to be able to be comfortable with the boat then after you've done all these exercises for about five to 10 minutes before

Playing you can see your progress by playing a really long

Open string and when you get to a boat changes try to make the bow changes as smooth as possible the more

Flexible your fingers are the easier it's going to be to make smooth bow changes, so I hope you found this video helpful

Feel free to comment any bow

Exercises that you like to use that help you with your tone production and help you get rid of Shaky boat

I'd love to hear your guys's ideas. Thank you for watching and I'll see you next time. Bye

It's like 90 degrees