Spiccato Basics

All spiccato involves a combination of vertical and horizontal motion. The more vertical the bow stroke, the sharper and percussive a note will sound. The more horizontal the bow stroke, the rounder and softer a note will sound.

Slow spiccato may be played in any part of the bow. An approach to learning slow spiccato is to begin by dropping the bow without moving the bow horizontally.

The bow is easiest to control in the middle.
As the bow moves towards the frog there is less bounce.
As the bow moves towards the tip, there is lots of bounce, but it is harder to control.

Another approach to become familiar with the bouncing bow is to let the bow bounce freely in the hand while moving in a down bow direction. This is called ricochet.

PREV | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | NEXT