Holding the violin bow

Holding the violin bow correctly is a skill that needs to be mastered over time. It takes many many hours of practice before the skill is properly mastered.

To hold the bow correctly, one’s fingers are stretched in an abnormal way, making it feel like the bow is about to fly out of your hands. If it feels like the bow is about to fly out of your hand, the bow is held correctly.

Many people struggle getting the hold of the bow correct. There are several methods, but the most popular method is the one I will show below. To hold the bow correctly, you need to curl your thumb into the frog, hold your ring finger and middle finger together over the frog on the side, and point your little finger at the top of the bow by the little mechanism that winds the bow. Your pointing finger kind of just rests over the bow. The following image illustrates holding the violin bow correctly.

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If you do not hold the violin bow correctly, you will find that your sound will be affected as you play. You will also find that when you play fast, you might actually have the bow fly out of your hand. These are the two main reasons you need to hold the bow correctly. But there are more reasons too.

Holding the violin bow correctly also influences how you bow. Every good violin student is taught to bow straight. But if you are not holding the violin bow correctly, you will not be able to bow straight without huge effort and it will affect your performance.

There are several ways that you can practice holding the bow correctly on the violin. On Amazon you can buy a bow grip which you attach to your bow to help you grip the bow correctly. Or some of my students have actually used elastic bands to train their middle finger and ring finger to stay together.

There are many ways that you could practice holding the violin bow correctly, but whatever you do, make sure that you practice it right, and don’t practice holding the violin bow incorrectly. This is a very important part of playing the violin.