JAVS Spring 2022

When you were experimenting with Exercises 1, 2, and 3, you might have noticed that in creasing the weight too much caused the sound to be come scratchy and harsh. Likewise, when decreas

the string to make the clean, clear sound we normally intend; the string simply isn’t strong enough for that density level. There are three ways out of Scratchtown : the first two are to decrease the bow weight or increase the speed. Doing either of these things—or both—decreases the density, which takes you out of Scratchtown and back into the Tone Zone , where we find our normal clean, clear sound. This is shown in Figure 15, which depicts Scratch town as a black wedge in the upper left part of the sound chart. The white area to the lower right is the Tone Zone . I’ve removed the triangle and arrow showing the loudness and density to unclutter the chart. The third way to return to the Tone Zone is to move Scratchtown itself. The Third Law says that you can play higher density sounds closer to the bridge (because it is stronger there); thus, moving your bow closer to the bridge pushes Scratchtown upward, out from under your current sound point (Figure 16).

ing the speed too much. If you de creased the weight or increased the speed too much, the sound lost its core and became wispy and indistinct. What’s going on here? The Third Law: P represents the contact point, which is the exact point on the string the bow is contacting. It’s common to think about this in terms of bow “lanes,” usually five of them: lane 1 is right up next to the bridge, with the lane number increasing as the bow moves farther out until it reaches lane 5, which is at the edge of the fingerboard (all the previous exercises, being halfway between the bridge and fingerboard, were in lane 3). The Third Law says that increasing the density of the sound typically requires a de crease in the lane number of the contact point (i.e., mov ing closer to the bridge). But it’s a bit more complicated than that, and we need to dig into it. Exercise 5: Pull a string—as if to pluck—at different contact points, and you’ll find that the string is much easier to pull far ther away from the bridge, getting more difficult to pull the closer you get to the bridge. You should think of this as the string being stronger nearer the bridge (i.e., with lower values of P, or lower bow lane numbers), and so it’s more capable of handling high-density sounds there. This is the essence of the Third Law. Increasing the density past a certain point—whichever method you use to do it, whether by increasing the weight or decreasing the speed—causes the sound to become harsh and scratchy, possibly without an identifi able pitch at all (this is usually not a sound we want to be making). When this happens, you’ve crossed over into what I call Scratchtown , where the density is too high for Figure 14: the weight and speed can be increased or decreased together to increase or decrease the loudness, without changing the density.

On the opposite end of the spec

trum, if we decrease the density enough, we get to a point where the sound loses its core and becomes unclear. It sounds like the bow is floating across the top of the string instead of gripping it properly (we usually don’t want this sound, either). We have now ar rived at Wispyville . Similarly, to the case of Scratchtown , there are three roads out of Wispyville : decreasing the bow speed, increasing the weight (both of which increase the sound density), and moving the bow far ther away from the bridge, which moves

Figure 15: escaping Scratchtown by increasing the bow speed, decreasing the weight, or both.

Figure 16: to return to the Tone Zone, you can move Scratchtown (and the Tone Zone ) upward by moving the bow closer to the bridge.

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Journal of the American Viola Society / Vol. 38, No. 1, Spring 2022