Now that we've figured out some basic things about our bow, we want to do is we're going to figure out how to hold the thing. And this comes before we do the rosin stuff. So I'll show you that in a little bit. But what we're looking at is our frog, this wood piece here, and you can see the little Florida Lu on the front. You can see there that way, right. And the screw Of course, which was which is going to be in play here.

And we also see where the stick is, right here. It's going to butt up against where this frog kind of comes out. So I'll put it up against my face, you can see it better. So see how it curls like this. So part of that frog where it meets in touches the stick of the bow is also We're going to look at so that's what we're going to do. First, we're going to take our thumb, and this is on our right hand.

Hopefully your right hand player and if your left hand play won't work very well for orchestras, but if you're a fiddle player, I just wanted to learn on your own. Definitely, you can get a left handed violin. But for us right now, we're going to take our right hand and the only thing that we're going to use is our thumb. And where we're going to touch it is right here where the frog just like we did before the frog. The frog means the wood. So thumb, touches right there and noticed.

I have my thumb, if it's faced towards you, so if you see if you see yourself in the mirror I'm going ahead of the bow, some, the my thumb is more forward than where the bow is. So I'm going in front of the strings, and then take my thumb and putting it where the frog meets the stick of the ball. So from this side, it looks like this. From the side, it looks like this. So from your perspective, it will look like this. Right.

Okay, so now that we have our thumb in place, we're going to make sure that we're holding the bow and in the middle part of the bell, it doesn't have to be super in the middle, it can be in kind of anywhere in here. And we're going to hold the bow with our left hand, we're going to be careful that we don't touch the horse here. So we're just holding The Stick of the ball, then thumb goes right there, where the frog would park meets the stick. Okay. And then the rest of it. I'm going to explain this way.

I teach an ergonomic style, there's a French style, there's a German style and all sorts of different ways to hold your fingers. As you know, there's books on this. But what I like to do is, I like to do what's comfortable for you. And if you're doing what's comfortable for you chin, generally you're going to do it right for you. So what we're going to do is we're going to have our fingers kind of reach over, and where the point where this knuckle is. So we have this knuckle that bends there, and this knuckle that bends there.

So we're looking at this number right here and on the opposite side of it. We're at the The knuckle on the opposite side is going to touch is on the wood. Okay, so we're going to be careful that it doesn't right on this knuckle, which is pretty common for beginners when they do this, but instead we're going to try to touch it right on that knuckle. So, thumb is in place, the finger comes down and touches right underneath that knuckle on the wood. Okay, so that's their first step. Now the next part that we're going to do is we're going to have these other fingers kind of rest down here.

And when we have a relaxed hand, so if you make a fist, it's all clenched up and you can see that there's no space in between my knuckles. But if I relaxed my hand, you can see the space that exists between the fingers. And that's kind of what we're going for and If I can set up the other way, I can have to two tenths of the hands and I have a lot of space in between those fingers we're looking for is just relaxed, whatever that is for you. So it might be a little bit like this might be a little bit like that depending on the shape of your hand. But make sure that your, my wrist is literally hanging, making my, my wrist is making my hand hang down from this point. And then the fingers are just being kind of dead weight.

So thumb, fingers are dead weight, making sure that the knuckle underneath this knuckle touches the wood. Okay. And then after I do that, and I still have this nice curl in my wrist because it's just hanging in there, right. I'm going to get my pinkie to come up and touch somewhere where it's comfortable for you here, sir you're not squeezing in and then you're not reaching real far but just Where your pinkie decides where he wants to go. Then you're going to make sure that the knuckle is bent. So, bent is opposite of stretching out the finger and pressing down hard.

You want to curl that knuckle and then just have the edge of the finger pointing downwards straight on the violin bow. So again, step one thumb for the woodwinds, the frog, the frog is the wood part. The fingers, curl around, touches underneath this knuckle. And then my pinkie comes up and touches the wood park on the very top and a curls around. After we're able to do this, and you can kind of see it back a little bit further I can still have this pearl the rest well we're going to try to do is to make sure that we had right And you may want to depending on how comfortable you feel holding the bow at the very first couple of times, you may want to have a little help with your left hand. So what we're going to do is we're going to take this Pinkie and do push ups with it kind of when you're doing push ups like you're doing on the floor, except there's going to be push ups with your pinky on the ball, so it looks like this.

Pinky comes down straight, like we weren't supposed to do. And then it comes up and becomes curled, and then straight and then curled, and then straight and then curled. And it gets you used to having a curl, Pinkie and it also helps you get used to the balance of your bone. So this is how we're going to hold our vows. Just practice that. Get comfortable with it before we move on.