By Joel Kennedy

In today’s video, I’ll be talking about how to bow smoothly like a professional. In other words, how to learn the collé bowing technique on the violin.

Bowing smoothly on the violin takes a lot of practice and even if you learn the colle’ technique properly, it takes years before it truly feels comfortable and fluid.

collé is French for “stuck” or “glue”. The collé technique will have a glue effect to the frog of your bow that will make the bow seem stuck to your violin strings. Collé is important because if it occurs naturally in your violin bow hand, then many other bowing techniques on the violin will work better because colle is only possible when your bow hand is relaxed. Proper collé will enable you to play smooth bow strokes like a professional and enable you to learn advanced spicatto techniques, like sautille.

There are 4 exercises I teach you in this video. Practice them every day and you’ll have a smooth violin bow in no time!