Violin bow exercises for beginners

Violin bow exercises are incredibly important to correct your violin bowing technique. Especially when you are a beginner and you are struggling with balancing the bow on the strings and hitting different strings at the same time.

Violin is not an instrument that can be learned overnight unless you are a super musical genious. There is a lot involved in learning the violin. A lot of technique and also musical knowledge goes into it. Part of the technique is getting the bowing right from when you are a beginner. For that you need the right kind of violin bow exercise for the particular issue that you are struggling with.

There are several exercises that you can try to correct your bowing. The most important one is learning how to bow. I have outlined some exercises below that you can use to get your violin bowing right.

1. Try to bow a long full bow on just one string. This would be from the end of the bow to the tip. This should have enough pressure to make a nice sound, but not so much that it scratches. If you hear a scratchy sound, you will know that the bow is being put down too hard. You will also need to balance the bow so that it only touches the string you want to play. Do this exercise going up and down several times at 60 beats per minute (use a metronome) on each string. Count four. After you have done this on each individual string, do it on different strings eg A D G D A E A E
2. Do the same violin bow exercise again except this time, use only half the bow.
3. The same exercise can be done again using a quarter of the bow and counting one count per note.
4. When you get the balance right, do a down bow, full bow. Pick up the bow and put it down for another down bow. Just do down bows.
5. Do the same as no 4 except now its an up bow.
6. Try two strings on a bow. Move from A to D on the same bow without stopping. If this is an issue, try stopping in the middle of the bow first and switching. When you get that right, you can try the switching without stopping.

These violin exercises will help with the basics of the bowing. If you can get these right, you should be good with beginner violin bowing.

You can see more on my YouTube video regarding beginner violin bow exercises. Below is a link to the video on violin bow exercises.

Link to YouTube video: Violin Bow Exercises for beginners