Bowing patterns - how do you make them stick?

Even when I was a schoolgirl, I always found it hard not to lose being on the correct down bow or up bow in a piece of music. I remember asking my violin teacher boldly why it mattered and he said, ‘If every member of an orchestra was bowing whatever way he fancied, just think how messy it would look!’ It didn’t convince me, as I had no plans to be an orchestral violinist!

When I took up fiddle three years ago, my teacher wanted me to stop doing separate bows for everything, and made up schemes for the reels and jigs to get me to slur across bars etc. I found it very difficult sticking to them BUT I did learn to ‘do my own thing’ in quite a fluent way.

Now we’re on to ‘learning ornaments’, and Fiddle Guru is very keen on my starting these slurs across bars on an up bow. Inevitably, I seem to get mixed up and be doing them on a down-bow, thinking to myself that it doesn’t really make much difference. Am I wrong? Is it important to stick to up-bow, down-bow schemes, or can you just bow it how you want it, if it sounds fluent and traditional?

That’s one question. But assuming that I’m just being arrogant, and bowing schemes *are* important, how on earth do I get them to stick? I’ve just spent an afternoon fitting (somewhat filthy) words to ‘Toss the Feathers’ so that I can remember how to bow it. For example, ‘devilish’ sounds to me like a bowed triplet, and ‘Delaney’ is a good word for a slurred triplet that goes across the bar. I am a person in love with words, and figures and diagrams don’t help me remember anything - only words. So, for example, I make up rhymes to remind me how to dance a Scottish reel or strathspey - I can’t use the diagrams from Pilling’s book.

I think, though, it would take too long to set words to all the Irish tunes that I’m learning. Is there, perhaps, a diddling ‘scheme’ that would help me to remember how to bow them? Or what do you do to remember?

Just out of interest, and a bit of fun.
Thanks for any replies.

Some years ago I asked Tommy Peoples about bowing patterns in Irish music, or remembering when and whether to start a phrase on an up- or down-bow. He told me that, since you never know how your bowing would end on the note before the phrase in question, that it was best just to get on with the tune in whatever way made sense to you at the time.
Forty years on I think that’s pretty good advice. I do generally like to start a bowed triplet on a down-bow but that requires that you always finish the phrase *before* the triplet on an up-bow, and that isn’t always the case. You hit the nail on the head (with a down stroke) when you said “…you just bow it how you want it, if it sounds fluent and traditional…”

If Tommy Peoples said it… that’s fab! 🙂
Thank you!

Full disclosure here I am not a fiddler. Though I know many fiddlers the light from fiddle playing doesn’t reach me! What I can do is pass on some wisdom (?) I heard from Alasdair Fraser during a string player workshop I attended to try and glean some advice on using my bass in Irish music. I paraphrase here.

If you play in an orchestra with more than one violinist it’s probably important to have everybody use the same bowing, for purposes of uniform phrasing and even the visual effect. After that the sound that comes out, is all that matters. You get to decide how you wish to “speak” the “language”. Pick a figure (Alasdair called it a “groove”) and play it. If it was what you wanted to say, in a way you wanted to say it, and that is the larger question, then it was the right way to play it. Bow up, bow down, doesn’t matter.

I suspect that if you drew up a list of the 200 best Irish traditional fiddlers of all time and posed any question about bowing to them the answers you get would run from a very rigid “one-true right way”, through “whichever works for you”, to “I don’t have a clue how I do it”. If you laid them all head to foot on the ground you still wouldn’t reach a conclusion. I know one fiddle instructor, a wonderful player and good guy, who says that his students pay a lot of money to take lessons from him specifically, so they best learn it his way…each bow stroke. At least some of his students go on to become great fiddlers. Other instructors may well choose to help you find your own voice…and at least some of their students go on to become great fiddlers. Funny how that works out.

For anyone else interested in ‘bowing patterns’ in ITM here is a vid of three fabulous fiddle players all from the same family, notice how their bows do not match at all:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ga4qocQkH0A

play video

“best just to get on with the tune in whatever way made sense to you at the time”

This, coupled with the advice from Tommy Peoples, should surely be enough to take notice of….

I play what’s in my head at the moment, and any given phrase can easily become something else. If I were to have a pre-set bowing for every tune, I could never change anything (which is something I do all the time). I think that players who always play things a certain way (and God forbid if they do something else, even if it’s just a treble instead of two eight notes) are the ones who want strict patterns and have difficulties breaking the bowing rules to explore the tune on their own.

This means that I’ll change my bowing so it “makes sense” regarding the phrase I’m playing. This happens in real time, of course.

The music should dictate the bowing, not the other way round

All too often I think of a tune as being in my left hand, where the note pitches are (I’m right handed). It’s a great feeling when the tune is in my right hand, in my bowing. That’s when I feel as though I’m really playing. But my bowing doesn’t follow patterns. It follows principles. Like slurring across bar lines into the downbeat--but only sometimes, when the melody seems to want to be expressed that way. I use figure-8 bowing to create smooth cross-string passages. But the next time through the tune I might try to use single stroke bowing for a more staccato sound. I’d be careful with full-blown bowing patterns, which might lead to a mechanical, one-size-fits-all approach like a guitar playing boom-chuck monotonously throughout a tune. Irish music is a great deal more slippery than that, with lots of push and pull. By ‘be careful’ I’m not saying ‘don’t study or practice them’--just learn what you can from patterns but be aware of their limitations and don’t let them get in the way of creating music.

But how to make them stick? Well… practice should do it. Be patient, be persistent, and it will happen.

@ Fiddle Aunt

This is all good advice about bowing the tune musically rather than through a pre-formed pattern. I especially like what Joe said about having the tune in your right (bow) hand rather than left fingers.

I’ll guess at what your teacher was trying to show you by having you slur across bars via upbow.

Slurring across the bar is a technique that gives ITM part of its unique sound and lift. Using an upbow lets you “push” slightly into the slur, something that a downbow does not. Both ways will sound good in the hands of a good fiddler, and if the upbow push is overdone, then it can take away from the smoothness of the tune. But it’s something that feels good when you do it, so it gives you a tangible connection with the style.

You don’t have to do it all the time, of course. But I’m guessing that’s why your teacher is saying to use the upbow.

In ITM, there aren’t too many instances where a specific bowing ‘pattern’ is vital. I myself just think in terms of whether I want this or that passage to sound more staccato (in the sound sense, not the bowing sense… a separation between the notes) or more legato and fluid, and then whether I want a bit more volume here or there, which you can do with more bow pressure (including that ‘push,’ but you can manage it on a down bow, too), or more bow speed, or a combination of changing pressure and bow speed (and bow tilt angle and point of attack and whether you’re on the frog end or the tip end of the bow or in the middle). That’s a lot of dynamic options before you get to the bow direction.

Obviously, the people we think of today as ITM fiddle greats have many different approaches and they’re all beautiful in their own way.

There are are a few conventions it’s good to have under your fingers, such as the 3-3-2 pattern that’s been written about elsewhere, a nice 2-stroke engine piston action you can draw on for polkas. Those are nice to have in motor memory to draw on, as a sort of ‘wax-on, wax-off’ drill. Meaning it’s so ingrained into your motor memory that you don’t have to think about it. It just happens. And then you can use variations from there to break things up.

So back to your original question… If you want to make a given bowing pattern ‘stick,’ then you would do it just like any martial arts drill, or baseball drill, or anything else… break things down into their component parts, execute them painfully slowly at first, and then keep it up not just until you can’t get it right, but until you can’t get it wrong. Then gradually increase the speed until you reach ‘tune speed,’ whatever that is for you.

This thing about bowing “patterns” is akin to looking for short cuts rather than dealing with the nitty-gritty of having to figure out how to play a tune. Bowing is about expressing the phrasing and it’s helpful is to get some tunes--reels/hornpipes with bowings marked by someone truly fluent in the style and to commit these to memory asap, for a start.

Thanks for all these interesting & helpful replies so far. From what has been said, I suppose Fiddle Guru is trying to set up my ‘motor memory’ so that I can draw on it for future tunes & make my own decisions about how to vary things? I am groping my way - for example, I didn’t realise about the ‘push’ of an upbow; it’s really good to get advice from more able fiddlers.

At this stage I need this sort of direction & practice. But I also see the point of those who have said that ultimately, it doesn’t matter, and I should be flexible when playing and choose the best bow pattern which will bring out the beauty & essential nature of the tune as I see it. It will be a while before I have the skills - that’s a breathtaking understatement - but I am enjoying the journey.

By the way, the tunes that I am cutting my musical teeth on are those ‘tunes for learning ornaments on’ that were recommended by Session members a couple of months back, and they’re lovely! 🙂

Super grand post there, Jason, especially your last paragraph. You’re a man after my own heart! Now I’ve nothing more to say! 🙂

Except for, maybe (do I ever shut up? 🙂 )

Molly, perhaps for getting the thing to “stick”- if you did have a good pattern / style for a particular tune, you could mark it up on the paper music, and stick to it rigidly, until you can play it totally fluently without the music. I’d get that overseen by The Guru too.

Now keep regularly playing the tune over the next days / weeks etc, but don’t look at the paper music again, ever.

Now go back to the paper music, and see if your bowing has changed, or evolved. Chances are it will have.

I a few weeks time, compare your original bowing to your new bowing and note the differences, and any new nuances or even significant changes which have crept in.

One last thought - the phrase “bowing patterns” rings alarm bells for some players, but they need not be concerned. Patterns, and combinations of patterns are a simple fact of life for fiddlers, and as such are inescapable.

Some may not even be aware of them (especially players who play purely by ear with no reference to the printed page, and many of them make a great sound and are often revered by all [this was hinted at by Ross earlier]) or those have discovered them retrospectively when pressed on the “how do you do that?” question.

I think it’s important that we are able to communicate the “how’s that done?” answer to questions from players, especially to those who are still learning and ask questions about bowing.

I think this focus on looking for patterns is kind of misguided--the phrasing is what’s important--and a way to express this phrasing that will hold up at session speed. For sure, there are phrases that come up that can be bowed in particular ways and these do , of course, repeat. Being familiar with these is very useful.

Any well-known fiddler has a recognizable style.
Part of the reason *why* we can say that and
why you can guess who it is, is that they have personal
bowing patterns that keep coming up in their playing
even if they deny using patterns. Mr Peoples has one of the
most distinctive styles and therefore distinctive bundle of patterns.

People mostly talk about up bow and
down bow as patterns but it’s also about what kind of
articulation at the beginning of the stroke, how the strokes
end, use of dynamics, bow pressure, speed and placement, rhythmic
distortions. There are also strategic silences in Mr Peoples and others’
playing - like pauses for breath - a pattern that is the absence of bowing.

I am a violist but, same concept since I play traditional on it, I am unable to take lessons and have only had 3 in the past, I kind of just wing it and just bow the notes without thinking about it, I only worry about correct posture and bowing straight, mostly I go by how it sounds, then again I am not playing fast, what you said about using slurs sounds like it could really muddy up the sound, atleast it would for me. I never play any fast music though, just airs.

No, the slurs don’t muddy the sound - they add a sort of nonchalant gaiety. Separate bows are good too. (And a mixture can sound very ‘organic’, as if the tune has its own fingerprint.)
I am lucky in that Fiddle Guru is a performer - in a baroque ensemble and a ceilidh band - but mostly that he is a young man of spirit and character. Lessons can be very funny, very dramatic, or full of argy-bargy - never a dull moment!
I am also lucky to have all these great replies. Thank you, everyone! I want to learn all I can, not only about playing, but about the history and culture of fiddling, particularly in Ireland and Scotland.
I’m starting to wonder how I managed to live for forty-five years without my fiddle! 🙂

You can internalize the bowing suggestions by understanding what it is that they are doing. Try focusing on the effect that the bowing has on the melody. The example of slurring into the one on a jig is a good one, because you can easily hear what it does. If you can relate to that ‘as a sound’ then you can just conjure it up and your arm will know what to do.

Broken slurs can be useful if you want to start a next note in a specific direction.
I suppose the ideal is to be comfortable playing a note in any direction, maybe that is what needs to be practiced, is it a good idea to try out marked bowing?, [for example Cranitch tutor] and then start off in the opposite direction, thus practicing a bowing pattern in a tune but aiming to become comfortable starting on an up or a down, but would this eventually enable the player to throw away rigid bowing patterns?
Cheeky Elf, that is good advice

“One last thought - the phrase ”bowing patterns“ rings alarm bells for some players, but they need not be concerned. Patterns, and combinations of patterns are a simple fact of life for fiddlers, and as such are inescapable.”

I think the word “pattern” is unfortunate and misleading. Even triggering. I think convention, technique and phraseology is closer to the mark. In these threads, some folks seem to advocate a do-what-comes-naturally approach, but that approach may or may not make it ITM. And making it ITM is the point. There are things we do with our bows that make it ITM. If the word “pattern” applies at all, the “pattern” lasts for just a handful of notes, judiciously applied.

If you can do it, you can choose to do it or not do it.

If you can’t do it, you are technically deficient. That may not matter - you may never need the deficiency - but that’s what it is.

Many Scots fiddlers never start a repeated triplet (birl) on an upbow. That’s a natural part of the idiom, but in fact most of them can’t if they try.

@Matt:
“If the word ”pattern“ applies at all, the ”pattern“ lasts for just a handful of notes, judiciously applied.”

Yeah, it’s one thing to be able to spot a 3-3-2 (or 3-3-1-1) in a certain bar, or that the fiddler in question happens to start a treble on a down bow, and maybe the majority of strong beats are also played with a down bow. The video clip with father Kelly and his two sons was striking. On occasions they did the same thing but suddenly it was a new measure and everybody went on their own again.

The only thing that’s consistent is that there are loads of patterns, or rather - the traditional way to do it is to vary one’s bowing.

Bowing patterns at certain places in a tune may stand out.

Perhaps practise these bowing patterns for five or ten minutes a day.

Revisit playing the whole tune at the end of a week, two weeks, three weeks.

The tune could be recorded at different stages of learning to compare the sounds.

I’ve been playing some tunes for years and am still mastering the bowing patterns!

The fun is in the journey and the different musical conversations which evolve!

‘musical conversations’ - what a lovely phrase! 🙂

"People mostly talk about up bow and
down bow as patterns but it’s also about what kind of
articulation at the beginning of the stroke, how the strokes
end, use of dynamics, bow pressure, speed and placement, rhythmic
distortions. There are also strategic silences in Mr Peoples and others’
playing - like pauses for breath - a pattern that is the absence of bowing."

Well-said, Mark!

Ergo, Mark, I don’t disagree with your logic, but for me these things are implicit in patterns. Sure, in notation accents (for one) are often not marked, but they are implied, depending on the pattern (eg in a bow direction change). They are for me, anyway.

Talk of bowing patterns is blasphemy around here.

shame on you!

Take an example of paragons of spontaneity such as myself and never speak of such patterns again.

No shame in free and honest discussion. I like to read differing viewpoints and experiences.

Arthur was jesting, Fiddle Aunt. Should be taken with a grain of rosin, nothing more. ;)

Of course he was. But the subject of ‘bowing patterns’ has sometimes provoked argy-bargy, so I wanted to indicate my neutrality and interest. 🙂

For me the interesting thing about the argy-bargy is not about *which* bowing pattern, but about the concept.

From what I can tell the concept & the argy-bargy are part of a paradox for musicians ~ distinct patterns (the basic repetition in music) & the art of allowing music to be free enough to change; to always seek variation, improvisation, yet still being able to find your way back to the basics.

[*From what I can tell the concept & the argy-bargy are part of a paradox for musicians ~ distinct patterns (the basic repetition in music) & the art of allowing music to be free enough to change; to always seek variation, improvisation, yet still being able to find your way back to the basics.*]

I don’t think there’s any paradox at all. I think musicians do all that anyway, without any problem.

I think it’s just that many don’t like to analyse this stuff in depth, that’s all.

I am in my tenth year of playing and still loving it - concentrating now on Scottish tunes with some Irish and Playford tunes.

I have reread this thread and found the remarks very helpful.

I still don’t stick to bowing patterns much. I think it’s because I like to feel and express the tunes in a personal way and therefore I choose what to do with my bowing and emphases. I am still not convinced that ‘bowing patterns’ matter all that much in traditional music.

The exception is, if there is a particular way of bowing that is linked to a historic folk tradition. For example, I try to play strathspey clusters - dowf and dowy (rhythm) - with a downbow followed by three upbows, because that’s how Niel Gow did it. Or in the B part of Sleep Soond ida Morning, I try to follow the Shetland bowing pattern of slurring three notes on an upbow and then a single downbow, because that is what I learned from my Scottish tutor books. And of course, as someone says above, slurring across the bar in ITM does give it a lovely fluid traditional feel, as my fiddle teacher (of Irish extraction) used to tell me. I still need a bit of practice with that, though.

Time is growing shorter, but I will still try to play the tunes that I love in the very best way that I can. And I will still keep myself open to learning new tunes and new ways of playing.