Bow Placement on the Double Bass: a Notational Proposal of Bow Regions and String Contact Points

1. Notational context of bow technique on double bass methods

Historically speaking, methods designed to teach musical instruments (from now on referred only as “methods”) have been too succinct or neglecting as far as the communication with their readers about pedagogical concepts, principles and objectives. Rarely authors of methods make clear the learning process that occurs in lessons with the face-to-face relationship between teacher and student, involving factors that affect the acquisition of motor skills, such as demonstration, verbal instruction, feedback, establishment of goals and deliberate practice (Lage et al. 2002). Although the aural-oral communication system has never been substituted by notational systems in Eastern music, Grier (2012: 89) talks about the increasing complexity and semiotic nature of its symbols and marks, and the great potential for a symbiotic operation between verbalized and written communication.

Music methods emerged from the necessity to complement, intermediate or even remediate the absence of the contact between teacher and student in the learning process. Although presenting various kinds of approaches, the great majority of methods usually have an introduction with the purposes, then proposed exercises for the basic techniques to be learned and finally etudes or excerpts aiming at approximating the student to the music repertory he or she will face in concerts or recitals.

Among the reasons why methods rarely show what each exercise or etude is clearly designed for are the historical difficulties for the authors — usually instrumentalists specialized in one instrument — to express themselves in the text format, as opposed to the oral tradition. In a recent panoramic study about 3.500 music research publications in Brazil in the 21st century, we found that, among the major problems among music performance researchers (from which instrumentalists represent the great majority) are their difficulties in text production and the form to present results to the public (Borém; Ray, 2012: 142-144, 160-161).

Among some of the pedagogical treatises on the violin by Francesco Geminiani is The Art of playing the violin (Geminiani 1751), considered by Krevelen (1998: 52) “… by far the most famous and influential… the only source of any importance in Italy and England in the first half of the eighteenth century.” Within its 24 exercises and 12 compositions (duets to be played with bass clef instruments) Geminiani uses mainly numbers as instructional symbols, indicating both fingerings and the strings where they should be played. It is not surprising that Krevelen (1998: 52) notices that Geminiani delivers a “… relatively small number of precepts… ” and therefore “… it is evident that that tuition by a good teacher remains essential”. But half way through his method (Example XVI, p.6 and 22), Geminiani resorts to the small letters g and s (he does not refer to the origin of these symbols) to “… denote that the Bow is to be drawn downwards… [and] upwards” (Figure 1). Not much later, the first double bass method ever published - Méthodes pour aprendre à jouer de la contrebasse à 3, à 4 et a à 5 cordes, written by Michel Corrette (1773) also brings similar bow direction indications (p.8), notated with the capital letters P (from poussez, what means to push) and T (from tirez, what means to pull) (Figure 1).

But Correte was not a double bass or violone (the contrabass gamba) player and wrote this method (along with some other 17 other methods for various instruments) due to the general lack of the instrument’s literature. The double bass pedagogy only began to consolidate into the so called schools of playing during 19th century Europe in isolated initiatives. The immediate concern of the early bass teachers-authors was the standardization of left hand techniques, much needed in the middle of what Marangoni (1929: IV:42) calls, in his 7-volume bass method, a “Babylon” of fingerings.

Letters symbols, such as those by Geminiani and Correte were soon to be substituted by what became standard terminology and symbols for all bowed orchestral string instruments, namely shapes resembling the frog () and the tip () of the bow to respectively designate “down bow” and “up bow”, which refer to the relative movement of the violin bow in relation to the ground. Most early bass methods written by bass players absorbed these symbols related to the right hand, such as pioneer bass pedagogues Franz Simandl in Austria (1874), Castro Latorre in Spain (1870) or Giovanni Bottesini in Italy (1865).

But some methods do not even mention them or any other instruction concerning the use of the bow, such as the first double bass method written out of Europe, the Methodo pratico, ou estudos complettos para o contrabaxo by Brazilian Lino Jozé Nunes (1838). A pioneer of the literature on the bow of orchestral string instruments in Brazil, Dourado (1998: 116-119) presents bow exercises (which he calls “cells”) in the last part of his book O Arco dos instrumentos de cordas. However, he resorts only to the traditional symbols for bow direction (up and down) and does not describe the placement of the bow on the strings as far as the bow regions or string contact points. In the only extensive survey on pedagogical materials used by double bass teachers in Brazil, Motta (2003) does not mention any literature containing notational instructions or symbols related to the use of the bow, either about its regions (frog, middle, tip) or its contact point on the string (from sul tasto to sul ponticello).

These two traditional symbols of down bow and up bow still comprise the only notational devices included in most bowed string methods from the Baroque up to today. The great majority of today’s referential double bass methods and tutorials for both adults (Simandl 1964; Bottesini 1928; Billè 1919-1922; Caimmi 1924; Marangoni 1929; Grodner 1977; Rabbat 1977; Streicher, 1978; Rollez 1980; Petrachi 1982; Stanton 1982; Hertl 1989; Rabbath 2005; Bradetich 2010) and children (Brauninger c.1980; Hanskov 1987; Karr 1987-1988; Vance 1987-1995; Suzuki 1991) do not include symbols on the music staff to instruct about the region of the bow to be used or the point of string where it should be placed.

Isolated efforts to change this scenario with the inclusion of more specific information on the right hand technique were first carried out by pedagogues of the violin. Sparsely and gradually they began to introduce other notational symbols to describe the region of the bow to be correctly used in specific passages. A good example was Otakar Ševcík (1852-1934), who taught some 5.000 students and whose principles were translated or adapted for the other members of the violin family, including the double bass (Dourado 1998: 27). One of his innovations was the inclusion of abbreviations of German words (Figure 2) to denote 9 bow regions: all the bow (G, for ganzem), half bow (H., for halbem), lower half of bow (u.H., for untere Bogenhälfte), upper half of bow (o.H., for obere Bogenhälfte), one third of bow (1/3 B.), frog of bow (Fr., for Frosch), middle of bow (M., for Mitte), tip of bow (Sp., for Spitze), middle of bow and, finally, tip and frog of bow (M*). A good deal of Ševcík’s notational abbreviations have being adopted in bass methods, such as in Heinz Herrmann revision of 30 Etudes by Wenzel Hause (Hause c.1956), who can be considered the first bass player to write, in 1809, a bass method.

Violin pedagogue Max Rostal (1971: 9) recognized the limitations of notational devices based on the abbreviation of words: “preference is given to the use of graphical signs which would be understood by everyone, rather than verbal descriptions which are limited to one particular language.” Brazilian pedagogue Paulo Bosisio (2005: 107) praises Rostal’s “[…] intelligent and analytical usage of correct bow division, contact point in relation to the strings and, above everything, his revolutionary chord technique which took the right hand approach to a level much higher than that of [Hungarian violin pedagogue Carl] Flesch.” Rostal was known by his “capacity to make the student think deductively and objectively. The analysis of the cause and effect principles, so different from the subjective violinism of the 19th century; different even from a great part of the 20th century [violin teaching] (Bosisio and Queiroz 2005: 112). In his revision of Jacob Dont’s Etüden und Capricen, Rostal organized a set of 28 notational symbols. Among them, he created 6 drawings signs based on the bow design (some examples are shown in Figure 3) to indicate the following bow regions: whole bow, upper half of bow, lower half of bow, tip of bow, middle of bow and heel (or frog) of bow.

In his method on bow technique for the double bass, Zimmerman (1996) focuses on the development of string crossing technique employing various articulations at various speeds to be later applied to difficult excerpts of the orchestral repertory. For a better communication with the reader, he designed realistic drawings to show precisely three elements: bow direction, the portions of the bow to be used and change of strings (Figure 4). In spite of Zimmerman’s major contribution to the double bass pedagogy with this work, his innovative notation is more adequate to be used in small fragments of bow patterns to be practiced repeatedly out of a musical context. The size of the symbol would be too large and too complex to be drawn by the teacher or student in a daily basis in the regular bass parts of the orchestral or solo repertory.

Methods for bowed orchestral string instruments written under the perspective of popular music are not common even today. One of the early examples is Violin rhythm: a school of modern rhythmic violin playing by Joe Venuti, who was a classically trained violinist. Not surprisingly, the author is very succinct when it comes to describing the use of the bow. In the entire 98-page method, in one of his few remarks about the use of the bow he only mentions to play with “…not more than nine inches of the top of the bow” (Venuti 1937: 3, 91).

Gary Karr is one of the leading double bass pedagogues to address the importance of controlling the contact point of the string where the bow is placed. Is his two-volume The Gary Karr Double Bass Book for children he emphasizes the importance of keeping the bow not very close to the fingerboard (a common mistake) even in the case of beginners (Karr 1987- 1988: I, 22). But he also gives graphical explanation about the amount and region of bow to be used related to the pitch (less bow for lower notes). After explaining the amount and region in bow drawings, he devised a notation to show it on the staff with the fractions 1/4, 1/2, 3/4 and 4/4 (full bow), as it can be seen in Figure 5.

But the inclusion of string contact point by means of a notational device on the music staff has not being done yet. Although Diana Gannett (1996) does not propose any notation signs for the string contact point, she advances the notion of string contact area, focusing on the region between the end of the fingerboard (“usually a high b” on standard double basses as she says) and the bridge. She names these areas as Quadrants 1, 2, 3, and 4 and associates them with stylistic periods and their respective sonority: Baroque, Classical, Romantic and 21st Century. Based on Karr’s seminal ideas and Gannett’s concepts of Quadrants we will discuss our proposal of notational symbols that integrate bow direction and bow region and the contact point of the bow on the string.

2. An experiment to choose the most effective notational signs for the use of the bow

An experiment involving 20 double bass players, students from both undergraduate and graduate programs from 3 Brazilian major universities — Federal University of Goiás (UFG), Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) and São Paulo State University (USP) — was conducted. The first main goal was to find the most effective notational symbols to convey bow division, region and direction simultaneously. As far as the design of the symbols, our first inspiration came from observing the way cartoonists reduce a face or a scene into simple contour lines. Thus, we came to three simplified marks: the dash, a small ball and a small dot.

All volunteers received a form with 6 questions, each question representing a situation involving bow direction (down or up), and bow region (frog, middle or tip). Each situation began with the question “What do these marks mean to you?” and was followed by a rectangular box with three options of bow symbols. The volunteers were asked to mark the best representation of the situation with an X on the left column (or with a circle around it) and describe it on the space in the right column. Figure 6 shows the first situation (“down bow at the frog”) with its three symbol options.

The next 2 questions were also for “down bow” (“in the middle” and “at the tip”) and the final three were for “up bow” (“at the tip”, “in the middle” and “at the frog”). Volunteers had access to the forms through electronic mail. 12 out of the 20 double bassists contacted returned their forms indicating their choice of symbol. An expressive majority of the participants (84%) preferred the symbols with a short dash crossing (as can be seen in the in Figure 6) both the traditional down and up bow symbols.

The participants gave various justifications and description for their options but they all understood the symbols as containing 1) an indication of bow direction and 2) an indication of where to place the bow in order to start the movement. However, the information on the amount of the bow to be used seemed confused to them.

3. Symbols to convey simultaneously bow direction, bow position and bow region

With the most effective symbols of the experiment in mind, we moved on to the task of integrating bow region (directly related to the amount of bow) to bow direction and bow division in the same symbol. In order to show the use of combined regions (i.e., tip + middle, middle + frog or whole bow, that is, tip + middle + frog) we added more dashes as needed. The resulting collection of 12 possible symbols is shown in Figure 7.

All 12 symbols indicate the exact part of the bow the movement is beginning. In addition to that, a single dash means the bow is to be used within a determinate region: down at the frog (1), down in the middle (2), down at the tip (3), up at the frog (9), up in the middle (8) and up at the tip (7). Double dashes mean half of the bow is to be used: down frog to middle (5), down middle to tip (6), up tip to middle (11) and up middle to frog (12). Triple dashes mean the whole bow is to be used in either down bow (4) or up bow (10).

4. The string point of contact symbols

During the experiment on bow placement/bow direction, a new issue emerged: the string contact point of the bow. As there was no way to include this issue in our ongoing experiment, we began to discuss that possibility based on our experience and that of professional performers, double bass teachers, music performance researchers and music editors. Most teachers agree that the need for studying bow placement and contact point should be approached early on double bass teaching especially due to the great dimensions of the instrument and variability as far the contact point. The spot where the bow hair first touches the string (understood here as the contact point) is greatly responsible for the best results on dynamics and tone quality.

Our attempt to add new information to the bow placement/bow direction question of this study lead to the creation of another symbol to represent string contact point. It departed from observing the strings in the space between the end of the fingerboard and the bridge, which we call the contact point region (Figure 8).

The contact point region is the higher 5th portion of the string (on standard fingerboards), approximately 18cm (or 7 inches) on a 3/4 size bass. The next step was to work on the simplification of the essential visual information of this region, with its four quadrants, in order to create the new symbol. The idea here was similar to the bow placement/direction: a mark simple enough to be detected and easy enough to be drawn by teachers, students and players. The process is demonstrated in Figure 9.

Accordingly, Figure 10 shows the representation of string contact points in the four quadrants.

These proposed notational symbols are not extensively tested yet. They are only a proposal to convey bow and string information that is not readily available in the literature of orchestral string teaching that spans over almost four centuries, from Ševcík (1901) and Rostal (1971) to Vance (1995) and Gannett (1996). Thus, the last part of this paper deals with the application of these two proposed symbols in the repertory. Excerpts from the bass orchestral and soloistic literature were used.

5. The two new notation symbols applied to excerpts from the double bass literature

A quick look at the approaches of Rostal (1970) and Sevcik (1901) in section 1 of this paper shows the advantages of having a unified way of marking bow direction, bow division and bow region in one symbol. For both orchestral and solo repertoire a unified symbol is even more relevant due to the practice most performers have to use the space between staves in printed music to notate their individual markings, such as fingering and dynamic reminders, what leaves less free space on the paper.

Another aspect of the use for the new symbols is its pedagogical approach. Teachers first concentrate their attention on elementary topics such as rhythm, intonation and tempo, leaving the interpretation and phrasing nuances for a later stage, when students seem more mature and have a more solid grasp of the technique. The use of the proposed marks may allow the student, very early on the instrumental study, the advantages of thinking about bow placement and contact point. Phrasing and tone quality of some volunteer students seemed to improve significantly after using the new marks on their solo and orchestral music. As no measurement of this information was in the outline of the experiment, more research should be done in that direction.

The following examples show excerpts that were selected to demonstrate the use of the new symbols proposed. They were both part of the standard double bass repertoire and suitable to illustrate the various possibilities of the symbols.

4. Final Considerations

Despite the gradual development of notational devices in the history of orchestral strings teaching, as can be seen in relevant methods and tutorials since the Baroque to the present, some crucial elements of technique, such as bow region and string contact point of the bow - were long neglected. A few pioneering materials, especially by pedagogues of the violin, proposed notational devices to represent the regions of the bow (from the frog to the tip) to be used. Some of them used letters derived from abbreviations of words which, in spite being practical and easy to notate, had the drawback of the vocabulary differences among different languages and countries. Some others used more or less realistic drawings which were very cognitive, but not easy to notate in daily practice. None of the materials found in the literature, however, integrated the representation of bow division (starting point from the frog to the tip) and amount of bow to be used (regions from frog to middle) in a single symbol with the traditional bow direction symbols (up or down). This paper proposes a symbol with these features, based on an experiment involving 12 participants. This is an attempt to combine these elements in a single bow mark, easy to understand and to notate in the daily practice.

The present study also revealed another neglected representation of a technical element in string teaching, namely the indication of the contact point of the string where the bow should be placed. Based on our experience and colleagues’s from other federal universities in Brazil, we proposed here a symbol based on the simplification of the four quadrants of the string, located between the fingerboard and bridge. The combination of both proposed symbols are intended to cover all possibilities in any repertory of the double bass.

To illustrate the application of both proposed symbols, we selected excerpts from the double bass orchestral repertory (Sonata in G Minor by Henri Eccles, Elegy by Giovanni Bottesini, Chanson Triste by Sergey Koussevitzky and Psy by Luciano Berio) and double bass solo repertory (Symphony n.39 by W. A. Mozart , Symphony n.5 by L. van Beethoven and Variaciones Concertantes by Alberto Ginastera).

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