TRANSCRIPT:
Hi, I’m Nathan Cole of natesviolin.com and today we're going to improve your sound with son filé, or long tones: the infamous oneminute bow.

So before you get started, get into a meditative place, a relaxed frame of mind... trancelike if you will. I should add that if you've had coffee or a lot of sugar in the last few hours, you might want to hold off on trying this until that's gotten out of your system. Because the last thing you want here is extra shakes.

Now the oneminute bow, or variations on that, has been around for centuries. Even Mozart's father Leopold wrote about how important it was to practice this exercise. Carl Flesch, Gingold, they all taught some kind of variation on this oneminute bow.

So when you're practicing a bow that long, as you'll see in a minute, the quality of the sound is not super important. What you're after is the even speed of the bow.

Now I should explain: you might see on my bow here, I've got some pieces of blue tape. I've divided the bow into quarters with that blue tape. And the reason for that is that i can use those as checkpoints when i'm looking at my stopwatch. So let's get started!

Have you rosined your bow well? And recently? You want rosin all over the hair, and you'll see after you try this exercise that you may have to reexamine your rosining technique too!

It's OK if you're having trouble with a bow of only 10 seconds. We're going to build this up gradually.

For a twentysecond bow, now each quarter is going to last five seconds. I'll reset my stopwatch here. Each quarter is going to last five seconds and little cracks in the sound may start to appear.

So some of that sound was decidedly not what I'd want to have on the concert stage!

And now as we get to 40 seconds, I'm going to double it again. Now you've got to strategize some, because the start of the bow is going to be so important. If you can't get through 10 seconds here, by the time you get to your first mark, you're going to be in trouble because some of the easiest slow bow is actually going to be near the frog. And if you need help starting these bows or playing near the frog, watch a video of mine called Soft Starts and Smooth Bow Changes at the Frog. That will give you some tips on how to get started there really quietly right at the frog.

So now let me reset again and go for 40 seconds.

I almost overshot that one! I think I was planning for the minute bow later, so I had some extra left over at the end. That's not going to happen for the minutelong bow! And for that we're going to do a little closeup just so you can see what happens to the bow in the middle of all that. I think you'll find it interesting and it will show you just how alive a bow can be even when you're playing a very slow note.

Here we are set up for the closeup of the one minute bow. Take a look at just how much happens to the bow as it's traveling so slowly. And now each of my quarter markers, remember, has to last a full 15 seconds.

Well, I hope I don't have to sustain a bow for 60 seconds on stage any time soon! That's why I'm doing it in the practice
room, because this exercise is so wonderful for giving yourself confidence in those slow bows. And wasn't that interesting to see all the activity that happens in the bow when it's moving that slowly? That's not really shaking from the bow hand; it's the springiness of the bow interacting with the elasticity of the strings right where the hair and the string meet. There's so much electricity and energy, and that's what makes the violin such an amazing instrument.

And so after playing a oneminute bow, for example, the beginning of Mozart's 5th concerto... it seems like child's play! I can almost play it at half tempo, right?

And that just feels so wonderfully easy now after the son filé. So I'd love for you to try this yourself! Get your stopwatch ready, start with those shorter time divisions, and i would recommend putting the little quarter marks on the
bow. I just did it with some blue masking tape that you can find in any hardware store. It really helps you plan the bow, and then to know if you're getting a good start.

Remember to rosin properly! And once you've tried this and you've seen what it will do for your sound, leave some comments for me on this video.

And once you've done that, visit natesviolin.com. Make sure you get signed up for my emails, because I'll send you all my latest tips and tricks and videos. So happy practicing!

And remember to get in that meditative
mood before you try the son filé!