Students get vexed in the early stage of learning to play violin or fiddle. They try to play just one string, but the bow goes and hits another string. This produces a sound they don’t intend to make. It’s an annoying habit of the bow for a beginner.

Later, as they advance in their studies, they try to play on two strings. Now, the bow is reluctant to touch the other string! More annoyance from the stupid bow.

This is a humorous way to state the problem. But, that’s what it looks like from my perspective as a violin and fiddle teacher.

First it’s a frustration about only playing on one string. Then it’s another frustration about playing on two strings. Many students comment on the irony of the situation when they get to the two string challenge.

My perspective and advice on the one-string-at-a-time issue parallels The Inner Game of Music. When you get exasperated with yourself you only get in your own way.

You know what you intend to do. You know what sound you wish to hear. Just go about your practice as you do and trust that this problem will sort itself out.

This is how the problem really arises. If you wanted, and intended, to play only one string, you could do that. You have the ability to move the bow back and forth on any open string as much as you want to, if that is your whole purpose and effort.

It’s when you focus on another aspect of playing, particularly the left hand, that the bow bumps another string.

This is common. This is not a problem. Or, look at it this way, the real problem is to keep your focus on the main issue while ignoring the distraction of the bow touching the “wrong” string.

As you are learning to play violin or fiddle, there are many issues to address and give your attention to. It doesn’t pay to jump quickly back and forth between them. It pays to focus on one issue at a time and achieve a definite gain before moving on.

Let’s analyze the objective reality of the bow and the violin or fiddle strings.

You have four strings and three pairs of strings you can bow. That makes a total of seven planes that cross the arc of the strings.

That arc is produced by the bridge and gets more shallow as the strings get closer to the nut at the edge of the peg box. At that point there’s almost no arc at all.

Your greatest margin for error on the middle strings is less than 30 degrees. That’s a generous allowance for variability when you get used to it.

Playing on two strings evenly has very little margin for error, and is thereby more difficult.

The compass of the seven planes of bowing is clearly less than 90 degrees. Somewhere between 70 and 80, is my guess. That’s a big arc.

Going from one plane to the adjacent plane is a small arc, by comparison. This is a matter of developing fine control of the arm and strong subconscious memory of where the arm has to be.

Both traditional violin pedagogy and fiddle instruction emphasize the four planes of single string work at the beginning. I’m now inclined to experiment with bowing all seven planes on the open strings right from the beginning.

I’ve never seen this recommended, or warned against, for that matter. So it will be new for both me and the few beginner students I have. If this concept has any practical merit, I’ll make a YouTube video to demo the exercise.

Eventually the knowledge of how to bow each of the seven planes gets ingrained or entrained in the subconscious. That’s where it needs to be. Then, you can easily play one string or two as you choose.

One last comment to echo an earlier post. Since flattening the bridge flattens the arc, is it not obvious that this makes the arc of difference smaller? And that makes the ability to play in seven planes harder to learn?

I suppose if your intention is to only play pairs of strings, the flattened bridge would not matter. But, I’ve not met a fiddler who only plays the pairs of strings, avoiding any single string playing.

To sum up, I would recommend:

• Be patient and trust the natural process of learning.
• Accept playing in seven planes as a goal.
• Get used to the kinesthetic feel of playing in each plane.
• Learn to move smoothly to the adjacent planes.
• And remember to practice only one thing at a time.

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