Arco and pizzicato · From Zero to Mozart

Normally you draw the bow across the string. The word pizz. tells you to set the bow aside — keep hold of it — and pluck the string with a right-hand fingertip. The word arco tells you to pick the bow back up.

The marks

Mark	Means
pizz. (pizzicato)	pluck with a right-hand finger
arco	back to the bow (cancels a `pizz.` passage)
`+` above a note	left-hand pizzicato — pluck with a left-hand finger (usually 4th or 3rd), so you can pluck without putting the bow down
a small circle with a line rising from it	snap / Bartók pizzicato — pluck so hard the string slaps the fingerboard, a percussive crack (20th-century — you'll see it, you won't meet it in Mozart)

A plucked passage usually gets pizz. once where it starts and arco once where it ends — not on every note.

Hear it

80 bpm

Bowed for the first bar, plucked for the second, bowed again for the last note. The playback keeps the bowed sound throughout — but on the page, 'pizz.' has changed the instrument in your hands.

Left-hand pizzicato

72 bpm

The + over notes 2 and 4: pluck those with a left-hand finger while the bow keeps going on the others. It lets a plucked note drop into the middle of a bowed line. Paganini built showpieces on this.

Try it

Try

Keep the bow in your hand — thumb and the last two fingers holding it out of the way. With the fleshy pad (not the nail) of your right index finger, pluck the open D string just over the end of the fingerboard. Aim for a round, warm "boom". Too near the bridge it's glassy; too far up it flops.

The usual mistake

Plucking with the fingernail — thin and harsh. Use the pad. Plucking in the wrong spot — over the end of the fingerboard is the sweet spot. And forgetting to actually re-take the bow at arco, so the first bowed note comes out as a pluck.