Violin Bowing Techniques

The bow is where the sound comes from

The left hand decides which note sounds. The bow decides everything else: how loud, how long, how it starts, how it ends, and what it sounds like.

Two players with identical intonation can sound entirely different, and the difference is almost always in the right arm.

That is why bowing is the largest and most consequential part of violin study, and why a player can spend decades refining strokes they learned in their first year.

This page covers the 19 bow strokes in our violin dictionary, grouped by how they work rather than alphabetically, so you can find one by what it does.

The three variables behind every stroke

Every sound a bow makes comes from a combination of three things, and every technique below is a specific setting of them.

**Bow speed** is how fast the bow travels, and it is the main source of volume. Understanding that volume comes from speed rather than pressure is the single most useful thing a developing player can learn, and it transforms most students' forte in one lesson.

**Bow pressure** is the weight applied through the bow. It has a hard ceiling: beyond a certain point the string chokes and the sound gets worse rather than louder.

**Contact point** is where the bow meets the string, between fingerboard and bridge. It is the largest single control over tone colour and the one most students never think about.

Our free chromatic tuner is useful while working on tone production, since a well-produced sound is easier to tune than a pressed one.

On-the-string strokes

The bow stays in contact with the string throughout.

**Detache** is the default. One bow per note, alternating direction, no gap and no accent. Everything else is built on it, and making it genuinely even takes years. If a passage carries no articulation marking at all, detache is what is expected.

**Legato** is several notes in one bow, connected smoothly. The bow does one thing while the left hand does everything else, and the difficulty is distributing the bow so it does not run out mid-phrase.

**Martele** is a hammered stroke. The bow pinches the string, releases into a fast stroke, then stops. Sharp attack, clear stop, silence between notes. It teaches the relationship between pressure and speed better than any other stroke.

**Portato** gently separates notes within a single bow using small pressure pulses. It sits between legato and staccato and has a vocal quality.

**Staccato** means short and separated. The dot in the score tells you the sound wanted, not which technique to use, and choosing the right one is part of reading a part properly.

**Grand detache** is detache using the full bow, one note per stroke. It exposes every weakness in a bow arm, which is why it is a teaching staple.

**Whole bow** is a length instruction rather than a stroke, and mastering it solves most fundamental bow problems at once.

**Colle** is a very short stroke made entirely with the fingers, near the frog. Rarely written and enormously valuable as an exercise, because the finger control it builds improves every other stroke.

**Fouette** is a whipped stroke with a sudden biting attack, sharper and more sudden than martele.

Off-the-string strokes

The bow leaves the string between notes.

**Spiccato** is a controlled bounce. The player drops the bow and the stick's own elasticity throws it back. The bow lifts itself, and students who try to lift it produce a laboured, uneven stroke.

**Sautille** is what replaces spiccato when the tempo passes a threshold. The bow bounces by itself without the player intending each bounce. It is a genuinely different mechanism, not fast spiccato, and knowing when a passage has crossed from one to the other is a real skill.

**Ricochet** drops the bow and lets it bounce several times in one direction, giving multiple notes from a single throw.

**Flying staccato** produces several controlled off-string notes in one bow direction, each deliberately placed rather than left to momentum.

Use the free metronome when working on bouncing strokes. Their evenness is a rhythm problem as much as a bow problem.

Tone colour and special effects

Strokes that change how the instrument sounds rather than how notes are separated.

**Sul tasto** means bowing over the fingerboard, producing a soft, hollow, flute-like tone.

**Sul ponticello** means bowing near the bridge, producing a glassy, metallic sound with the fundamental suppressed. It is the standard orchestral and film-scoring device for tension.

**Tremolo** is rapid back-and-forth bowing producing a shimmering, unstable sound. Combined with sul ponticello it is the sound of dread in every suspenseful score you have heard.

**Col legno** means playing with the wood of the bow rather than the hair. Dry and percussive, and hard enough on a bow that most players keep a cheap one for it.

**Bariolage** alternates rapidly between strings, often including an open string, exploiting the difference in tone colour between them. Common in Baroque repertoire and idiomatic to the instrument.

**Chopping** is a modern percussive technique from American fiddle traditions, turning the violin into a rhythm instrument.

What to learn, and in what order

A rough sequence that most teaching follows.

Detache first, and it never stops being worked on. Then legato and bow distribution, because running out of bow is the most common practical failure in early repertoire.

Then martele, which teaches pressure and speed as a relationship rather than two separate controls.

Then the contact point range, which unlocks tone colour and makes dynamics work properly.

Then spiccato, then the faster off-string strokes as tempo demands them.

Colle sits outside the sequence and is worth doing at any stage.

The special effects come as the repertoire requires them, usually in orchestral parts before solo playing.

How we teach bowing

Bow technique is where most of a violin lesson goes, at every level.

We teach the mechanism rather than the label. A student who understands that volume comes from speed, that contact point changes colour, and that pressure and speed trade off can solve problems on their own rather than waiting to be told.

Soul Music Lessons teaches private and group violin lessons in Suwanee, Cumming, Alpharetta, Johns Creek, Roswell, Milton and across North Metro Atlanta, GA.

Book a no-commitment evaluation. We listen to where you are, talk through what you want to play, and build a plan around it. There is no obligation to continue.

Book your evaluation or call 470-789-2422.

Explore the rest of the dictionary

Left hand techniques covers vibrato, shifting, positions and double stops.

Sound and acoustics explains why these strokes work.

Instrument anatomy covers the bow itself.

Notation and markings covers the symbols that ask for each stroke.