Hooked bowing, and retakes · From Zero to Mozart

Two small right-hand moves that solve the same problem: getting the bow where it needs to be. A hooked bowing plays two notes in one direction with a stop between; a retake lifts and resets the bow between phrases.

Hooked bowing — two notes, one direction, a stop

A hooked (or "linked") bowing takes two notes and plays them both down-bow (or both up-bow), with a clean stop between. Written as a slur with a staccato dot on the second note.

72 bpm

How to play it

Down-bow the dotted long note, stop, then a small down-bow for the short note without changing direction. Then up-bow the next long note, stop, small up-bow for its short note. The stop keeps the bow from marching off to the tip.

A dotted rhythm — long note, short note — with the short note hooked onto the same bow direction as the long one (down-down, then up-up). A stop, not a slur, between them.

Why bother? Two reasons:

Bow economy — a long string of dotted notes played with alternating bows walks the bow right off the end. Hooking the short notes keeps it in place.
Landing the strong beat — it lets you arrive at the next downbeat on a down-bow, which matters (see below).

Your dotted-rhythm fluency from Stage 2 makes this easy to feel — the bow just has to stop cleanly where your ear already puts the gap.

Retakes — lift and reset

A retake is a silent lift of the bow off the string, moving it back to a more useful part, then setting it down again — a grammatical pause "filled only with resonance". You met the symbol in Stage 3 (down-bow-up-bow-and-the-retake); here you make the gesture.

Use it to get the bow home before a phrase: you played out to the tip, and the next phrase wants to start down-bow with lots of bow — so during the breath, you retake. The motion is a small circle, not a stab: the bow loops up and back rather than jumping.

60 bpm

How to play it

Play the first note as a full down-bow to the tip. In the rest, loop the bow off the string and back to the frog (counter-clockwise). Land and play the second note, another full down-bow.

Two down-bows in a row, with a rest between. In that rest you retake — lift the bow in a small circle back toward the frog, so the second note also gets a full down-bow. The rest is the retake.

The rule of the down-bow

By long tradition, the strong beat wants a down-bow. A down-bow is naturally heavier — gravity and the arm both help — so the first beat of the bar, and accented notes, fall on ⊓. Hooked bowings and retakes exist largely to keep it that way when the note-count doesn't work out on its own. There's a whole lesson on this coming (the-rule-of-the-down-bow); for now, just know that's why you'd choose to hook or retake.

Try it

Try

Take a dotted-rhythm fragment of a tune you know (the "Oh, when the saints" pickup works, or any march). Play it with alternating bows and notice the bow drifting toward the tip. Now hook the short notes onto the long ones — down-down, up-up — and feel the bow stay put. Then practise one retake: a full down-bow, a loop back in the rest, another full down-bow.

The usual mistake

Making the hooked short note a slur instead of a stop — so the two notes run together and the rhythm goes soft. There must be a clean, tiny silence between them. For the retake: doing it as a jerky lift-and-drop instead of a smooth circle, which lands with a thump. Loop it.