From Zero to Mozart
Stage 6Beyond first positionLesson 26 of 30 · Left hand

Left-hand pizzicato

A pluck with a left-hand finger instead of the bow-hand's — a genuinely different gesture from the pizz. you already know (Stage 5), and one that lets you pluck a note while the bow is still in motion somewhere else, or busy holding a different note.

The + sign

A small + printed above or below a note means: pluck this one with a spare left-hand finger — usually the 4th (pinky), since it's the one most often free. Nothing about the bow changes for that note; it simply doesn't touch the string.

64 bpm

How to play it

Bow the G and D normally. On the A, lift the bow off (or leave it resting elsewhere) and pluck the string with a free left-hand finger — the pinky is the usual choice.

Two ordinary bowed open strings, then the last note (marked with a small + in real notation) plucked by a spare left-hand finger instead of the bow. The bow can stay wherever it is — on a different string, in the air, mid-stroke — because this note doesn't need it.

Why it's a genuinely different skill

Ordinary pizz. (Stage 5) is a bow-hand decision — you set the bow aside and pluck with the same hand that normally bows. Left-hand pizzicato lets the bow keep doing something else entirely while a single note gets plucked on the side — useful in orchestral writing where a plucked note has to slot into a still-moving bowed line, and, at the opposite extreme, in virtuoso writing (Paganini-style passages use the same + sign for rapid-fire effect).

Try it

Try

Play the phrase above. Then try it with the D string held down as a normal stopped note (instead of open), plucking the A afterward with your pinky while a different finger stays down for the D. Notice how the "spare finger" the pluck uses depends entirely on what the rest of the hand is doing at that moment.

The usual mistake

Reaching for the bow out of habit when a + appears. The whole point of the sign is that the bow does not touch that note — if you catch yourself bowing it, you've missed the mark entirely, not just played it a little rough.