I just started taking violin lessons after decades of self-study. This guy's advice pretty much mirrors what my teacher is trying to beat into my head, and he explains it in a clear, concise manner...at least to my ear.

youtube.com/watch?v=mOi3cGavSfw

I would add that regardless of technical advice, listen intently to the sounds you produce. There are a lot of factors that work together to produce clear, rich tone. Like the components of a golf swing, they must work together and you have to learn to recognize the *feel* of that sweet spot.

I guess one important thing would be knowing what type of music you are playing on your fiddle. Classical bowing is probably a lot different and more demanding than OT, for example...which could be why the one is more often learned by lessons and meticulous ergonomics and the other is learned by just listening and doing, doing until a person feels they have found their way.

I personally am a huge fan of what they call (some dread to hear the name...lol...but you gotta call it something) "Nashville Shuffling," or "Taters," etc. For me, it's been the mother of all OT bowing...but that might not be the kind of thing you're looking for, and of course it's not everybody's cup of tea. For me, it's absolutely the ultimate bowing...one of the big things is that it's not really down bowing or upbowing, which people obsess over; rather, it's either way you want. Probably most people in OT or folkish stuff, American rural folkish stuff which I'm most familiar with, probably tend toward down bowing but might find situations where upbowing or going back and forth might work out well. Another thing I like about it, is that, sorta like the bum diddy of OT banjo...it fits in with most rhythms, but unlike banjo, you can jump out of that regularity of static rhythmic doldrums while the beat goes on, and then jump back at will...the in between moments will reveal themsves as you practice and learn, to be all the other parsed out bowing "licks, patterns, etc." that you don't really have to spend a buncha time working on...as long as you can keep the rhythmic thread running true as you skip in and out of that N. Shuffle at will. Time spent playing that shuffle reveals all of that to you...at least I feel like that's how it's worked for me. I've had lengthy discussions on my own observations and experience with back porch bowing and made a few youtubes about it to try to explain what I mean more clearly. Have a look if you want...if it ain't for you, then don't bother with it. But here's part of some explanations I've tried to show during discussion with some friends over our bowing ideas...youtu.be/Zvg06JHmF18?si=cMKbd0Jg_v82mX0D And remember, as the great OT banjo teacher always used to say..."Speed Kills." Slow practice does show you a lot of stuff fast playing might cause you to overlook.

As one great OT fiddler once advised: How to learn bowing is to sit on the porch and fiddle, keep fiddling, and when the shadow of your bowing arm wears a hole in the porch floor boards, you finally know what you're doing. Lol.

The point is time and practice and noticing what's going on while you experiment. Maybe I'm off base here...maybe not getting to your concerns...so just ignore this if I'm not getting it right. Either way...stick with it and understand it's very confusing for everybody at first. But time will make a big difference.  As much as it seems like rocket science in the beginning, it ain't rocket science.  Anybody can do it.  just stick with it long enough to see yourself doing it.

According to legends, a musician seeking virtuosity can meet the Fossegrim to learn to play as well as him. But the Fossegrim does not give his knowledge for free. He demands specific offerings, often food, sometimes smoked meat placed on a rock for four consecutive Thursdays. If the offering is made correctly, the Fossegrim will guide the student...

kykvendi.com/en/blogs/blog/cre...fossegrim

I would say get a teacher to check your bow mechanics and instrument. Spend the majority of your time working on tuning and producing a long pleasing consistent sound from just the open strings. Long smooth strokes Everything grows from that.

I apologize for not mentioning my music goals and likes. I have loved bluegrass and old time, forever. I play rythm guitar and sing, and have for many years. Fiddle is my favorite instrument though, and I just want to be able to play a few tunes well at jam sessions and the like. My timing, pitch, and feel for the music is good. I love harmony and do a pretty good job of tenor on many BG songs. I am pretty good at what I can do, but not good on the fiddle. Occasionally I shock myself and play a tune or two halfway respectably, but I cannot do it often, nor consistently. I'm sure that my main issue is in my bow hand, not my left hand.

Points already mentioned:
*get a live in person teacher. Preferably, one with a few years of classical training. There is just no beating a classically trained violin player for technique.
* that exercise where you put your bowing shoulder in a door frame was one of the best developmental lessons i ever had.
* watch that video Barry Collins attached
Most importantly, Dont give up, practice consistently, daily for at least an hour.
You’ll get there.

I play with a couple guys with the same resume, every week. Actually, they're fine to passable fiddlers. They are over critical of themselves. So they bring a guitar instead of a fiddle. Get a handful of tunes you know cold. It's tempting but don't move on until those 5 tunes are ingrained.
Isn't there only about 5 tunes anyway?

Personally, if I were to switch over to American old time, I would take Groundhogpeggy's playing as my model. I would suggest that you listen to a couple of her recordings on youtube, and if you want to play like that, pick her brain here for everything you can get out of it - she doesn't know any better than to give away her hard-won knowledge for free ... ! If that's not what you're after, well, listen to and consider what the others here are saying - a number of them are accomplished players, from the bits and pieces I've heard. The single most important thing I've learned is to relax - both emotionally and physically - shoulders, arms, wrists, fingers, neck, jaw .... Oh - and if something hurts, stop. Let "No pain, no pain!" be your motto.

post a video or 2 of you playing. One picture is worth thousand words, a video is worth a million..

I’ve been playing fiddle for less than 2 years (mentioning as a point of reference). I’ve also focused on my bowing as I’ve determined much of the instrument’s sound quality (good or not so good)is a result of my bowing technique. I can share what I focus on which may be of help to you. Play in front of a mirror. Focus on bowing straight and parallel to the bridge and trying to stay even spaced between bridge and fingerboard. The mirror really helps. Play long bows, slowly in front of the mirror. Like 30 long bows on each string. Go slow. The other thing I can suggest is pay attention to how much pressure you apply to the string in conjunction with how fast or slow you bow. I’m basically just a beginner and for a time I was really frustrated with the sound I was producing. Either wispy and/or scratchy. Not pleasing. But by focusing on what I mention over the past months has really helped me.

Bowing effectively is sooooo hard! Your hand has to be so relaxed yet responsive, and each of your fingers has to be doing its thing for the good of the whole. So many ways it can go wrong. There are multiple ways to approach doing it correctly*, but us adult learners are at a big disadvantage compared to those playing since age 5. The first time you get it to work right, you'll know it. Then you'll spend years chasing the ability to do that consistently. At least, that has been my experience. Bottom line, as said above, don't give up!

*One way worth mentioning is via Gordon Stobbe's bowing DVD - he teaches a very fluid bow hand and also provides slowed down videos of a bunch of good players to show what is going on. He also has some of the key lessons up on YouTube -- try this one for starters youtube.com/watch?v=b_SrarVcXlM

I remember when I realized that you need to play with a fair amount of pressure to pull a good tone and make the instrument resonate. There’s a baseline of volume required. That of course has to be coordinated with good tracking and slightly faster bow speed. If your tone is scratchy and thin, double down on the pressure and see if things improve. You may be surprised. Volume is controlled through the index finger. The pressure comes from the wrist applied to the frog in a counter clockwise force.

The biggest hurdle is that playing the violin well (in almost all styles) is immensely difficult unless you really hammer out fundamentals when you start.

It’s tempting to jump right into playing tunes you like immediately, but the problem there can be that you end up focusing on the mechanics of the tune but the mechanics of playing go out the window—it’s hard to be focused on multiple things at once before you’ve developed fluency. It’s also quite easy to get tangled up by repertoire that contains elements you haven’t learned yet—it can lead to bad habits and lots of misunderstanding of the tunes.

A teacher can really help to isolate things so that your progress can be more solid and more substantial and rapid in the long run.

The violin is considered a right handed instrument because it’s played with the bow arm. This highlights just how important the right hand is. You can really never focus too much on right hand technique, and the better you get at playing, the more you’re likely to obsess over the way you approach each note. A professional musician can play a whole program that’s beautiful but end up disappointed over the phrasing of one single note.

From the sound of it, you’ve already begun to employ some good exercises to focus on bowing path. It does take a while to develop fluidity. One exercise that I find very helpful in teaching beginning students is to do a wrist motion without the violin or bow. Hold the right wrist straight out in front of you with the palm parallel to the floor. Imagine that the bones of the wrist are connected via a string to a point above, like a puppeteer’s string connecting to a limb. Raise the wrist as though it’s being pulled up by the string and allow the fingers and arm to be completely relaxed so that they follow the wrist. When you reach the top of the motion, imagine that another string is attached to the underside of your wrist and that that string is pulling your wrist back down. This means all changes in direction are begun at the wrist. It really helps to unlock a stiff wrist and reinforces the idea that it’s the lower half of the arm that guides everything, not the upper. Because you don’t need any instrument or other device to do this, you can do it anywhere, like while sitting on a train or watching a TV show. It can work wonders for bow changes.

At my workbench, I nicknamed my straightedge “The Teller of Truths” because nothing exposes the problems in a surface that’s not properly flattened than a dead flat straightedge. I think of the mirror the same way for playing. It shows you any things about technique, but as you advance, it may even help you to think about your musicality and expression as well. At the most basic level it shows you things about your posture you can’t see for yourself. The teacher can explain what you should aim to accomplish and the mirror can allow you to make sure you’re doing things as directed. Even something as simple as holding the instrument high enough is important, as one of the problems beginners face in keeping the bow on track is dropping the scroll down, making gravity pull the bow off course even if the other motions are appropriate.

Be very careful with YouTube videos. There is a lot more bad information out there than good and anyone can make a video and present it as authoritative. Pay attention to the sources of information. That’s not to say you can’t find good information, but it needs to be sifted heavily.

Allowing yourself time and accepting that it’s a long and arduous process is a major part of it. It’s not too hard to make some progress when you’re just starting out, but you hit a plateau quickly where you’re not always able to perceive the development that may be going on. This is the point where beginners tend to get frustrated and quit. But forcing yourself to overcome the frustration can lead to those moments of discovery that you can play something new or that a lesson has finally sunk in. Those moments justify all the hardship.

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Originally posted by Peghead

I remember when I realized that you need to play with a fair amount of pressure to pull a good tone and make the instrument resonate. There’s a baseline of volume required. That of course has to be coordinated with good tracking and slightly faster bow speed. If your tone is scratchy and thin, double down on the pressure and see if things improve. You may be surprised. Volume is controlled through the index finger. The pressure comes from the wrist applied to the frog in a counter clockwise force.

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Good post!

If I give someone a fiddle, I tell them, don't try to play quiet. That comes later. Go somewhere you can get loud and noisy until you get it. That's why they called it "woodsheding."

quote:

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Originally posted by Peghead

I remember when I realized that you need to play with a fair amount of pressure to pull a good tone and make the instrument resonate. There’s a baseline of volume required. That of course has to be coordinated with good tracking and slightly faster bow speed. If your tone is scratchy and thin, double down on the pressure and see if things improve. You may be surprised. Volume is controlled through the index finger. The pressure comes from the wrist applied to the frog in a counter clockwise force.

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One of the most frustrating changes I had to make when I started lessons a couple months ago was getting away from controlling volume with my index finger, which is what I always did.  Teach would not let me apply *any* pressure with the index, insisting on a focus on bow speed and arm weight.  She says the index finger can be used to transfer arm weight into the bow, but you shouldn't use the muscles of the hand or finger to apply pressure.  That's an extremely subtle difference that I can  understand, but can't seem to execute.  Just one more maddening facet of changing everything I thought I knew...

"...that you need to play with a fair amount of pressure to pull a good tone and make the instrument resonate."

I would say you should be able to pull a good tone with only the weight of the bow.

I studied "Six Lessons with Yehudi Menuhin" (book title). In which he explains the functional role of each finger of the right hand: The middle finger and thumb form a circle, the index is the channel for the arm weight, the third finger guides the bow along the string, and the forth finger balances the bow at the frog.
A good exercise to keep the bow straight is to to actually make the bow move in the opposite curve that it commonly tends to move; around the body, i.e. This is the your body + and this in the curve around the body, +) , thus draw the bow in the opposite curve; +( , keeping in mind the duty of each finger.
Also important is to be aware of excessive tension by learning to 'recognize' it and then how to 'release' it. A good exercise is to tense a fist and release the tension in increments from 10 to zero.
Somewhere I read that it is the beginning of the bow stroke (about an inch) that plucks/attacks/initiates the string to vibrate and the rest of the bow stroke is to maintain the string vibration by only using the appropriate arm weight.
After practising all that I still found it difficult to be constant in producing a pleasing bow stroke. Then I began to practice imagining the elusive bow stroke, this was best done at bed time. I knew what to imagine because I had achieved a glimpse of the desired results through the practice of the above exercises.

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Originally posted by JonD

"...that you need to play with a fair amount of pressure to pull a good tone and make the instrument resonate."

I would say you should be able to pull a good tone with only the weight of the bow.

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Yes of course one should strive for good tone regardless of volume. I've found that playing softly requires a lot more control and finesse than playing at a medium baseline volume. Kind of like the saxophone. The weight of the bow by itself is very light and varies depending where you are on the stick. Consistant volume along the length of the stick requires either lifting at the frog to play soflly (quite difficult) or activating a reasonable volume at the frog and adding pressure at the tip to sustain it. My feeling is that it's easier to produce a reasonably full sound and learn how to carve it as more technique is acquired. There's quite a sensation when a student learns to dig in and the instrument rings in the ear. It's also an essential aid to intonation. Naturally, the louder and sooner you hear the note the quicker you can correct it. lol. My violin teacher urged me to play loud. He said "don't compound ignorance with inaudibility" just my opinion for all previous. 

I get where you are coming from Greg, but I spent a lot of time 'digging in' by default which was covering up my beginner's tension and poor control. I've had to learn to lighten up and fix my bow hand to see the path forward to better tone. I think bacfire's teacher as mentioned above is the one I wish I had had....

I'd suggest taking just one or two lessons from each of 2 or more teachers. Each player has their own mechanical approach, and their own way of understanding and describing it. The more varied points of view you can get on the subject, the better.

In-person is best, of course, but there sure are a lot of good instructors available online.

I wouldn’t recommend pressing into the string too much when playing. This can set up a lot of tension in the arm and shoulder, and the bow arm should be relaxed. What is really impressive about good players is how much sound they can draw out of a violin without really pushing. I also would agree that playing softly is where the finesse really shows, just as it can show a lot about a violin. Beginning players tend to scratch a lot at first because there is a tendency to use too much weight and to lead from the upper arm. A really good player will have such a relaxed arm that it will seem as though you could just pluck the bow right out of their hand effortlessly.

I was taught to form a ring with the middle finger and thumb as the basis for the bow hold. The other fingers would fall into position naturally once the “anchor” was established. To reinforce this, my father had me play with just the one finger and thumb. It’s harder to maintain stability without the balance of the other fingers, but it should be possible to produce a decent tone. A violist from the Marine band once told me that the difference with the viola hold was that the index finger could be used to add just a bit of weight to account for the thicker strings and slower response.

If you’re playing for long stretches, economy of motion and energy are crucial for endurance, especially if you’re playing repertoire that involves lots of technical challenges.

I’d put more emphasis on evenness than on volume as you’re getting started.

Mike, It takes YEARS to learn to fiddle. Be patient with your progress. I started when I was 50. I'm 73 now and am a passable fiddler. Not great, but no one tells me to play my mandolin instead of my fiddle. One thing of the many I have learned. A proper fiddle set up, and a good quality bow and a fresh set of strings make a huge difference in actually playing rather than fighting a fiddle. The suggestions about getting a teacher for a few lessons is a valid one. That person can make suggestions about any "equipment" needs or modifications you may need. Good luck, play daily, you will get "there'.

A lot of beginners are not prepared for the steep learning curve of the fiddle, especially adult beginners who are competent in so many other aspects of life. They get disappointed because they think they’re not improving or improving too slowly but they’re actually right on track. It’s folk music after all but it still takes focus and perseverance to sound ok, much more than a fretted instrument which sounds good in a reasonably short time. 2-3 years or more for fiddle? depending on your practice habits and the instruction you receive. It’s important to have fun along the way.

I started late in life, after good experiences with classical guitar and then mandolin. I knew that fiddle would be more difficult so I have closely monitored my technical progress and my level of satisfaction/dissatisfaction, feelings of accomplishment/frustration.

I have made sure to not allow myself to become unhappy with the overall project. After all, this is something that I choose to do, not something that somebody else is forcing me to do. If I’m not having fun, whose fault is it?

When progress seems to stall, I fall back to my fiddle’s first cousin, the mandolin. It is always a good experience to push my mando skills a little higher, and it lessens the pressure on my “developing” fiddle skills.

And of course I am slowly becoming a better fiddler. Sometimes I am thrilled to see how well I can play!

People sometimes say that one should focus on the journey, not the destination. I guess that’s a cliche, but it fits my fiddle adventure pretty well.

You can read all the advice here, and it's good, but maybe this is not the way you connect with learning. I did all of the above and after 14 years of working at old-time fiddle I was still at the point you mention in your first post. I was self taught on all the other instruments I play and thought violin would be the same; not the case for me. 4 lessons with a classically trained instructor (graduate of the Indiana University School of Music) and it all became clear. He clearly explained and demonstrated the physics/technique of tone and clarity in playing violin (which apply to fiddling just as much.) Everyone that heard me after that thought I had purchased a new violin. Haha