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| Fiddling On A Bad Hair Day | ||||||||||||||||||
| from "Learn to Fiddle" | by Beverley Conrad | |||||||||||||||||
| When you have a bad hair day, so can your bow. | You can wear a hat to remedy the problem. Here is how to deal with the hair on your bow. | |||||||||||||||||
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It's as simple as this. Your hair is made of hair. And if the hair on your bow is horsehair, it too is made of hair. So when you have a bad hair day - so can your bow. But all is not lost! For yourself, you can wear a hat. For your bow, you can tighten it or loosen it accordingly. On the days when you wake up and look like you've got a headful of tangled baling wire on your head, your bow hair will have stretched out some as well. You will have to tighten it more than usual, but even then it may still be somewhat slack and closer to the stick when you play. Don't worry about it. It's the nature of the hair. I don't tighten my bow a lot -- generally only about the space it takes to put the tip of my index finger betwixt stick and bow hair halfway down the bow. Overtightening the hair can lead to different problems. The hair will stretch out permanantly and you will have to get your bow re-haired sooner that usual because it will lose all it's grip. And if left overtightened it will eventually cause the stick to bend wrong way round and ruin your bow. The good thing is, because wood breathes, the violin sounds better on a humid day, than on a high and dry day. Some people keep a tube with a dampened sponge inside their case just to keep a bit of humidity in the wood of their fiddle. (Conversely some oldtimers used to drop a rattlesnake rattle into their fiddles to keep their gut strings dry. I have one, a gift from a friend, but just keep it in the case.) However, humidity causes rosin to build up on the strings faster than usual, so it will help to wipe down your strings every now and then as you play. Just use a dry rag, shirtail or bit of tissue to do this. Every now and then it helps to clean the strings. Plain rubbing alcohol works well for this. Hah! Now what about one of those high dry days in the winter when the sky is blue blue and the heat is on in the house and your hair sticks flat to your head and crackles when you take off the hat you were trying to hide it with? Your bow will act accordingly and the hair will tighten up. You will need to loosen the hair and check it every now and then to see that it has not shrunk back further and overtightened itself as you play. This will happen as well, if you are playing outside and the clouds part to give you a sunny day. And it will happen if you happen to be playing on stage. You may have tightened your bow just right in the hallway, but the heat from the lights will cause the hair to dry and your bow to tighten up. Check it. Loosen it. On such a dry day the violin sound changes and with changing seasons it changes. If it starts to sound brittle and bright and not pretty but really annoying, you might want to take your fiddle to someone who knows what they're doing and have the sound post (little piece of dowel inside the fiddle) adjusted - moved one way or the other to allow it breathing space. Also, if your weather is constantly changing -- Dry. Wet. Rainy. Cold. Hot. Hurricain here. Twister there. Be sure to clean your strings. Then your notes will stay nice and clear. Copyright Beverley Conrad 2000 All Rights Reserved | ||||||||||||||||||
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