[The Lesson]

[Overview]

I finally learned something “new” in my lesson. After spending these past weeks learning pentatonic scales in different keys, we’ve finally moved on to learning 快弓(Kuai Gong) or fast bow. According to my teacher, the exam for level 3 is all about fast bow. Before we move on into any repertoire for level 3 he had to teach me the technique for fast bow.

[Technique]

Fast bow as the name implies is a bowing technique. From my understanding it’s just using short and fast bow strokes to play notes in quick succession. The idea is simple but going over it in the lesson was a a little difficult for me. To play fast bow successfully I had to fix a lot of small things with my bowing. The most fundamental correction was with the way I use my wrist to bow. The movement of the bow must start from the wrist. At the same time you must make sure to a good grip on the bow so you have control over your sound. The wrist movement feels unnatural, keeping a good grip on the bow feels unnatural, and maintaining the wrist movement and grip when switching between inner and outer string is difficult. After practicing the etude meant for practicing fast bow and switching between strings this week, I hope I can see some progress with this technique.

[Repertoire]

We started a new etude that focuses on fast bow technique. The technique itself is new to me, so I had some difficulty playing it. But, I especially struggled with measure 11. So we’ll see how practicing that goes this week.