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Fiddling with Darol Anger: How to Rosin the Bow

Ok, so you got yourself a fiddle and are looking to become the best fiddling fiddler your town as ever seen… You got the right attitude, but it's still going to take some serious practice and a good fiddle teacher if you really want to reach that next level. Lucky for you there's people like Darol Anger who can teach you everything you'll need to know when it comes to fiddling (he's that good). One of the first things you'll need to know is how to rosin the bow, and that's exactly what you'll learn in this fiddle lesson from Darol's online fiddling school. So make sure you're comfortable, take the phone on off the hook, and get ready to learn how to rosin the bow!

But before we rosin the bow, let's take a step back from fiddling and just talk about the bow itself. Do you ever think about what happens when you take the bow out the case? Think about it… If you notice, the hair on the bow is pretty loose when you first take it out. The reason is because you don't want to put strain on the bow when you're not fiddling, so fiddlers always loosen the hair on the bow before putting it back in the case. 

So when you take the bow out the case, you'll need to tighten the hair by turning the little screw on the end of the bow. Darol recommends not making it too tight, but also notes that there are a variety of opinions on this. In Texas Fiddling it's common to have the stick sit right down on the hair, so having it a bit loose is fine - but Bluegrass Fiddling requires more force so you'll want to tighten the bow a more when playing bluegrass. The sweet spot to find where there's just a little bit of spring as you press the stick down on the hair... 

rosin the bowOk, NOW we're ready to rosin the bow! Rosining is a very important part of fiddling, and while everyone has their own theories as to WHY we rosin the bow, in the end it really just doesn't matter… If you're playing fiddle, you'll need to rosin the bow and we're going to show you how right now.

Take a regular ol' piece of rosin, it doesn't need to be anything fancy, wrap it in some cloth, and get ready to rosin the bow. Use a little bit on the frog (the base), then a little on the tip (but not too much), and then run it down the hair smoothly. You don't need a lot to properly rosin the bow, and if you use too much rosin your fiddle will sound scratchy and grainy and you'll probably make a mess too. So just use what you need to rosin the bow, just enough to run it through the hair 2 or three times is fine. And that's it, pretty simple really.

So now that you know, how often should you rosin the bow? Darol does it every 3 or 4 days to a week, but also recommends that you should rosin the bow if you're feeling any slippage from the bow while fiddling. The key is you want a little bit of stickage so that the hair can just draw across the bow and make a sound.

 

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