Bowing

I bought another new bow . . . Yes, I did . . . A carbon-fiber one. Very pretty. Snakewood frog, sterling silver hardware, very pretty white abalone. It's a beautiful thing.

And it got me thinking about the right hand again. And I certainly don't mean to be biased against any lefties out there - so let me just say by "right hand" I mean the hand that generates the sound by plucking or bowing. I guess I will always be obsessed with the right-hand part of playing, the textural side of technique. The right hand is responsible for more than half the tone. You can have an incredible violin, but if you have a bad bow, you're going to sound bad. You can have a so-so violin, but if you play it with a fantastic bow, you'll sound great.

Same with the guitar - you can know all the chords in the world, but if you can't keep time, or if you play the wrong strings when you strum, you'll sound awful. Likewise, if you approach a so-so guitar with command and confidence, it'll sound like a good guitar, but if you play timidly, even a super nice guitar will sound thin and hollow.

The left hand is the intellectual, mathematical part of playing, the knowing of the scales and chords, which are like equations and formulas. The right hand is the emotional part of playing, the painter daubing notes of color. We say great players draw or pull or coax notes from their instruments, which are emotional, tactile, verbal things, and have everything to do with the way great players use their right hands.

In some traditional kinds of Witchcraft, the left hand is the receptive or invoking hand, while the right hand is the sending or evoking hand, the hand that throws the fireball, so to speak. The left hand reaches out into the Universe for the knowledge, energy, or power needed, and the right hand puts that energy into action once it has been imbued with the Witch's will. The musician uses the left hand to make the intellectual decision about which notes to play, and uses the right hand to send those notes out into the world.

May your right hand know what your left hand is doing . . .