Slavica Ilic: My name is Slavica Ilic and in this clip I will be talking about holding the violin bow.

One of the most difficult things or important things is to get a correct bow grip. What we have to do, before we properly put our fingers around the bow stick maybe we could try to hold our hand just without any bow stick in your hand up in the air and try to make a circle between your thumb and the middle finger. Try to have your hand in a natural position absolutely relaxed and then try to get the same thing, try the keep the same shape of your fingers when you place your fingers over the bow stick. So, the most important thing is to make sure that your thumb is placed in between the end point of the frog at this leather cushion and the thumb should be always bent. Please never hold the thumb this way, the thumb needs to be bend and needs to have a contact with the middle finger.

The other finger, the ring finger you place next to middle finger slightly over the frog, pinky should be always curved on the top and point finger needs to be slightly away from the middle finger between first and the second joint placed over around the bow stick. Our all hand, as you can see, should be slightly turned towards the bow tip.

We have to make sure that all the fingers are all the time curved and relaxed and our hand should be absolutely in the relaxed position. The thumb should always stay curved and having a contact with a middle finger. The position, the hand should be flat, never let your fingers be in a straight position, with your knuckles being up. So, the hand should be relaxed, fingers curved over the bow stick, pinky is on the top, its curved, thumb is bent.

My next clip will be how to produce a good sound on the violin.