William Fitzpatrick - violin expert

The Many Stories of Bill Fitzpatrick: Stephen Clapp and my bow grip

A new story about changing the bow grip

In this video, Prof. Fitzpatrick tells a story about Stephen Clapp and his bow grip advice.

Released on August 17, 2022

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DISCLAIMER: The views and the opinions expressed in this video are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Virtual Sheet Music and its employees.

Video Transcription

Stephen Clapp, my teacher while I was at the Blair school and his wife Linda were very important to my life's growth. I was constantly at their place, they were my second family. Stephen would let me practice in his studio at Blair when he wasn't teaching so one day I stopped practicing and was looking through his books and ran across the Galamian book. I started looking through it and stopped at the pages on bow grips. Stephen came in, saw what I was looking at and asked me what I thought about it? I then blurted out "I want to change my grip to this" and showed him pictures from the book and he immediately started explaining how to accomplish that. Years later when thinking about this moment, I realized that he had shown me how to change my bow grip from the one he had taught me. Stephen was truly an incredible teacher!
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Comments, Questions, Requests:

Tosh * VSM MEMBER * on August 17, 2022 @8:35 am PST
I had to change my bow grip from the one my first teacher taught me because it never felt right and made it very difficult to do certain bowings like the staccato required for Kreisler's Schon Rosmarin. The change which came later was one I developed through trying to find the best "balance" point of the bow, which was for me a fraction of an inch farther up the grip. I suppose where it is for each individual will be different, depending on the size of their fore arms and hands and how they employ and position their fingers on the bow grip. Don't think one size fits all.
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