From Zero to Mozart
Stage 5The bowLesson 12 of 38 · The bow

Legato, and slurred bowing

Legato means smoothly connected — no gap, no re-attack between notes. The way the music tells you to play connected is a slur: a curved line over a group of notes meaning take all of these in one bow. You met the symbol in Stage 2 and Stage 3; here you make it work.

A slur is a bowing instruction

The bow moves continuously in one direction while the left-hand fingers change the notes. That split — right arm doing one smooth thing, left hand doing a busy different thing — is the whole difficulty of legato. Nothing about the bow stops or restarts; only the fingers move.

60 bpm

How to play it

Down-bow from the frog for the first four, up-bow back for the next four. Divide the bow into four equal parts — a quarter per note. Listen for a completely unbroken sound.

Four notes under one slur — one down-bow — then four under the next, one up-bow. The bow travels at an even speed the whole way; the fingers do all the work. No bump when a finger drops or lifts.

Dividing the bow — stop first, then smooth

Four notes in one bow means each note gets a quarter of the bow. The way to get that even:

  1. Play the slur as separate stops — actually halt the bow a moment at each quarter-point. Now you can hear and feel the four equal portions. (This is really a rhythm exercise, and rhythm is your strong suit.)
  2. Take the stops away, keep the portions identical. Now it's legato.
60 bpm
Bar 1: the slur played with a deliberate stop at each quarter of the bow (portato — you'll meet it properly soon). Bar 2: the same, stops removed, portions kept. That's the trick for an even slur.

Slurring across a string

When a slur crosses from one string to the next, the connection lives in the left hand: don't lift the finger on the old string until the new note has already sounded — a hair of overlap, never a gap. The bow rolls between the arm levels (the crescent path from string-crossings) without a bump.

60 bpm

How to play it

Down-bow for the first four, up-bow for the next four. The crossing happens between beats 4 and 5, inside the up-bow — let the arm roll to the new level without slowing the bow.

A one-octave G scale, four notes slurred per bow — the second slur crosses from the D string to the A string mid-bow. Keep the bow speed even straight through the crossing so there's no accent where the strings change.

Bowing variations — the best bow workout there is

Take a one-octave scale and apply one bowing pattern to the whole thing: all separate; two slurred + two separate; three slurred + one separate; one + three; hooked. Then the next pattern. The Russian teacher Yuri Yankelevich drilled his advanced students on the Kreutzer studies this way for years — "one of the single most effective methods of practising and improving bow control."

Each pattern is a small rhythmic cell laid over the notes — which plays straight to your ear for grouping. Feel "2 + 2" or "3 + 1" first, then let the bow follow.

72 bpm
G major, two patterns: bar 1 is 'two slurred' all the way up; bar 2 is 'three slurred + one separate'. Make up your own — 'one + three', hooked, a long slur the whole octave. Same notes, a different bow puzzle each time.

Try it

Try

One octave of G major, three ways: (1) all separate détaché; (2) two notes slurred per bow; (3) the whole octave in one slow bow, up and down. For (3), you have to save bow — use less than feels natural early so you don't run out before the top. Then invent a fourth pattern.

The usual mistake

Letting the bow bump every time a finger drops — an accent on each note inside the slur, so it comes out as a row of little separate sounds instead of one line. The bow speed and weight stay flat and even; the fingers move independently underneath. The other mistake: a long slur that starts with big bow and runs out — plan it backwards from the last note.