Playing Upright Bass Spiccato With a Bow

Video Transcript

"OK, we're back. Let's get away from long bows for a minute and we're going to talk about a different technique called playing spiccato with the bow. It's the term for the bouncing bow. And that's done all down here near where your hand is holding it. And for example if you're going to draw the bow across and just bounce it off the string. And that's the sound you want. Just do four on each string. And going back we'll just speed it up. Now let me show you that with the German bow as well, because you're going to be seeing it a little different. I find you can get a little more bounce with this one. Notice we're not letting the bow bounce out of control. We're keeping a good grip on it. And this is a technique you can use to generate a lot of rhythmic excitement when you're playing the bass."