The Xplanation

At the end of eighth grade, I put my violin in its case. It remained there for years, until last December, to be precise, when I decided to reteach myself how to play. This little wooden noise box makes a lot of screeches now and I play a lot of sour notes. Relearning is a slow process. It’s not like riding a bike. When I look at the sheet music I played in grade school, I’m amazed at its complexity. My fiddle licks are improving, though. The dog no longer tears things up when she hears me play.

My parents rented this violin until they realized it would be cheaper just to buy it. Designed for beginners, the instrument had been well used when I got it. Scratches and scrapes on its body suggested a long history of use and abuse and my junior high bow had been in too many eighth grade sword/bow fights. Too many oily fingers had touched its hair. I bought a new fiberglass bow when I started playing again, but…

I didn’t like its sound. Or the way it strayed when it moved across the strings. Or how it floated on some strings and screeched on others. So at my request, the luthier down the street repaired the old bow and rehaired it with Siberian horse hair. He told me to use a lot of rosin on my newly reconstructed bow.

Rosin is a solid sap from pine trees violinists rubbed across the bow hair. Without a rosin coating, a bow’s horse hair makes no sound. Rosin creates the friction that produces the vibration that creates the sound. My grade school instructor always had her students rosin our bows before we played. I wondered whether that remained the best practice.

I googled “how often to rosin a violin bow” and links to ten thousand five hundred websites appeared.

One site said to rosin up the bow every time you played. Doing so ensures the rosin evenly coats the hair and helps make the sound consistent.

A different site said no more often than every three times one plays. Too much rosin creates a drag on the strings and distorts the sounds.

Another read: Rosin the bow every fifth time you play. It’s not needed more often than that and it’s a waste of time and energy to do otherwise.

One website provided guidelines so you’d know whether you had too much rosin or too little.

One posting said the frequency of use was really a matter of personal preference.

Rosin your bow every time you play, a blogger wrote, to protect the hair of the bow.

The consensus seemed to be: Use enough rosin but don’t use too much rosin.

The web provided me this tautology and a chorus of different opinions. How does one determine an authoritative answer out of this multitude of anonymous options? If I were in a room of violinists who all had a different opinion, there are a number of ways I could discriminate to arrive at a definitive answer. I could listen to the players and follow the recommendation of the one who made the best music. It would certainly be possible to follow the lead of the person who had been playing the longest. Maybe I’d listen to their opinions regarding other musical issues and see whose thoughts seemed most logical and consistent and rosin my bow as that person suggests. Maybe someone had experimented and whose practice followed those results.

On the Internet, how does one determine what is authoritative? By whether the website is cool? Whether the person talking at you on YouTube is likable or seems to be a goober? Whether you can determine one’s training and experience for the opinion offered? Whether they report their own experiences? Whether the other comments a person posts seem reasonable and credible? Whether others confirm or dispute what is written?

In person or on the web, maybe you end up in the same place — questioning, testing, eliminating, and drawing your own conclusions.

So, how often should one rosin up a bow?

I don’t know. Mine, I rosin every time I play.

That’s what my teacher in elementary school taught me to do.