Learn the Parts of the Fiddle

Video Transcript

"I have my own website www.davidkaynor.com, and I hope you’ll visit it and find out more about me and what I do. Fiddles are made of variety of materials, but traditional materials are wood. And at some point it was found that some specific woods from South America were preferable, had the best combination of weight, stiffness, and handling factors and beauty. This bow has the stick made out of pernambuco, which is an exotic wood of which there is less and less. The hair is on this bow is horse hair; horse hair has become somewhat of a debatable matter because the current focuser is Sumerian horse hair, which is considered the best, is less and less available. Most bows have a grip of some kind—this is leather—and the winding is made of nickel silver; there are some windings that use to be made of whale bone. That is not politically correct anymore, and so they are made out of plastic. It looks like whale bone. And the grip can be made of different sizes and weights in order to help effect the over all weight and weight distribution of the bow. The frog, called that for some reason, both holds ends of the hair and also changes the tension of the hair. You have the frog screw; there is a threaded screw inside, and turning it one direction allows the frog to move towards the tip, loosening the hair. Turning the other direction holds the frog away from the tip, tightening the hair tighten gradually, until when it is about a quarter to a third of a inch off the stick, it is considered to be at a reasonable playing tension. Playing with a really wide dynamics range between soft and loud, a fiddler will often tighten up the hair somewhat tighter; and then if it is all going to be played in a uniform soft volume, the fiddler might leave the bow slightly loosened."