Spiccato

What it is

Spiccato is a bouncing bow stroke where the bow leaves the string between every note. The bow drops onto the string, sounds a note, and rebounds into the air before descending again for the next one. More of this kind of thing is in the bowing section.

The Italian means "separated" or "distinct". The sound is light, crisp and clearly articulated, with genuine silence between notes rather than the near-silence of an on-the-string stroke.

Spiccato is the standard bouncing stroke for slow to moderate tempos. Above a certain speed it becomes physically impossible and gives way to sautille, which works on an entirely different principle.

How it is produced

The stroke depends on the natural elasticity of the bow stick, and on finding the point along the bow where that elasticity is most usable.

The arm moves in a shallow horizontal motion with a small vertical component. The bow descends, contacts the string, and the stick's own flex throws it back up. The player does not lift the bow; the bow lifts itself.

That is the crucial insight and the one that takes students longest to accept. Effort applied to lifting produces a stiff, laboured stroke. The arm's job is to control where the bow lands and how often, not to raise it.

The balance point

Every bow has a point, roughly a third of the way up from the frog, where it bounces most readily. Finding it is the first practical step in learning spiccato.

The standard method is to drop the bow onto the string from a few inches up and let it bounce freely without any arm involvement, moving along the bow until the bounce is easy and even. That location is the balance point for that bow.

It varies between bows, which is why a student who changes instruments or bows sometimes finds their spiccato has stopped working. The point moved.

Tempo and the height of the bounce

Slow spiccato uses a higher bounce and more bow. Fast spiccato uses a lower bounce and less bow. The player adjusts continuously.

There is an upper limit. Beyond roughly the speed at which the arm can complete a controlled vertical cycle, spiccato stops working and the stroke has to change to sautille, where the bow stays essentially on the string and the stick's vibration does the separating.

Students often try to force spiccato past its limit and produce a scrambled, uneven mess. Recognising when a passage has passed into sautille territory is part of learning both strokes.

What goes wrong

Lifting the bow. The near-universal beginner fault. The arm actively raises the bow after each note, which is slow, tiring and produces an uneven stroke. The correction is to stop trying and let the stick rebound.

Wrong place in the bow. Spiccato attempted near the frog or near the tip does not work well, because the elasticity is different there. Students who have not found their balance point struggle indefinitely.

A tense bow hold. The stick cannot flex if the hand is rigid. Spiccato is one of the strokes most obviously blocked by a locked hand, which is why colle is such a useful preparatory exercise.

Uneven bounce height. Some notes are louder than others because the bow is falling from different heights. This is a control issue and usually resolves with slow practice. Our metronome is free and useful here.

Bouncing too much. The bow leaves the string so far that the next contact is late, and the rhythm degrades.

How it is notated

There is no dedicated symbol. Spiccato is usually written as staccato dots, sometimes with the word spiccato added.

Because dots are ambiguous, the player decides based on tempo and character whether a dotted passage is spiccato, on-the-string staccato, martele or sautille. Editions vary and players disagree, which is normal.

Where you meet it

Extremely common from the Classical period onward. Fast passages in concerto and sonata repertoire, orchestral writing of all kinds, and virtually all etude collections.

Any light, quick, articulated passage is a spiccato candidate. It is one of the strokes that most defines the sound of Classical and Romantic string writing.

How it is taught

We start with the free bounce, no arm motion, just dropping the bow and letting it rebound, to find the balance point and to establish that the bow bounces on its own.

Then a slow pulse, one bounce per beat, on open strings.

Then gradual tempo increase, with the bounce height reducing as speed rises.

Then the left hand, then string crossings, then repertoire.

The single most common instruction in teaching spiccato is to do less. Students who struggle are almost always working too hard.

Questions about bow technique like Spiccato are the kind that get answered quickly in person. Private and group violin lessons in Buford, Duluth, Sandy Springs and Brookhaven: call 470-789-2422 or book a no-commitment evaluation lesson.