Cello Video Lesson: The Arm-Weight Concept

Hello, this is Joseph Mendoes with another video for VirtualSheetMusic.com. Today I'd like to talk about a topic that is kind of contentious, actually. Because I know it's a very, very popular idea out there, but it's an idea that I have a lot of issues with. I only recently noticed how much this idea has entered not only into the way most people, most cellists, think about cello technique, but also the way other musicians think about cello technique.

I noticed this when I was watching recently, the fabulous documentary that the BBC did about the Russian cellist, Mstislav Rostropovich. I don't know if any of you have seen this documentary, but it's an hour and a half long. Wonderful movie with Rostropovich's family members, and friends, and colleagues, and students of his reminiscing about his life and all sorts of different footage.

Well, anyway, the reason why I mentioned this is because there's a little section of this documentary when the famous conductor, Seiji Ozawa, starts talking about how Rostropovich created his sound. And, first of all, I thought, "Well, this is a little strange. We have a conductor telling us how Rostropovich made his sound." And he started to say, "Well, you know, he was the one that used the weight of his arms the most, in order to produce a sound."

Now, this concept of arm weight is very interesting to me because I'm not really sure that it's what's actually happening when we create a sound. It may be something that was created at some point to describe a way to get power in an effortless way, but really, it has nothing to do with actually what we're doing when we're actually getting power on the cello. And it's kind of easy to illustrate, but first of all, to wrap up what I was saying there. It was amazing to me to hear that in that documentary, to hear Seiji Ozawa, the famous, long time conductor of the Boston Symphony, start talking about this idea of arm weight because, I guess, it's that common of an idea now that pretty much everyone talks about it.

Now, the idea is, of course, is that when you're bowing, in order to get the really big full sound, in the Dvorak Concerto, one that really projects that you can't press into the string, obviously, that you have to relax the weight of your arm to allow all the weight of the whole arm to go into the string like that. Now, let's take just a real good look at this, to see if this is really what's going on because I'm pretty sure it's not.

If we just imagine, for example, the idea of arm weight being somehow transferred into the string in order to get power, then what we first have to think of is we have to think, "Okay, well that weight itself, the weight of the arm then is something that has to be kind of dead, right, in order to be transferred into something." It can't be live. You see, if I put my arm just right above the string, then the weight of my arm is completely alive. I'm using it. There's no way it can be transferred.

So then as soon as I touch the string, then I somehow have to start to transfer that weight into the string. Now, if I want to transfer all of it in the string, then I have to completely have the whole system go dead. Maybe not from the back, maybe I exaggerated a little bit, but just from the shoulder like that. Now as you can see, this collapsed the whole bow, and then as soon as I start to draw a bow, everything just falls off to the side like that.

So, to me, there has to be something else going on for this idea to work. Another way to illustrate this is we'll have the cello act as a table here. But if you were to imagine the concept of arm weight, the concept of arm weight would be something like, okay taking the bow and hooking a weight or something onto the end of that bow and having that weight here, somehow transfer power into something over here. Well, see, it can't happen because as soon as I put weight here, this starts to happen, unless there's some type of counterbalance over here. You see what I'm saying?

And so when you're bowing on the string, there's no counterbalance on the other side of the bow. There's only a little tiny, tiny bit. I mean, we're talking about maybe, I don't know, 30, 40 grams or something of weight that's over here, that's balancing out the bow and we started at the frog. So that can't be happening. We can't have this kind of counterweight. See, if I had a counterweight, if I put my other hand over here, then I could demonstrate that.

I could make both my arms go dead and create a sound that way, but we can't do that, obviously, because we have to be able to use our hand up here. And we can't just hook the counterweight on the edge of the bow here. I may be using the wrong term, counterweight, there. But, anyway, you understand what I'm saying. So it just simply doesn't work like that. The way actually, we get power is through torque, is through this motion, this way. It's not through any sort of arm weight or anything like that. It's actually just through simply turning this way. That's all it is. So our bow hold, then, has to be able to go with that turning.

So for example, if we hold the bow like this, you know, I don't think any cello teacher would let you hold the bow like this. You can't really turn, see, you can't turn the arm. My bow hold is stopping me from turning the arm. I have to, at least, be here and then be able to turn that way, in order to get any sort of power into the stick. Now, when you watch Rostropovich play, he does this very, very, very well. And he holds the bow a lot deeper than me, but you'll notice that index finger of his is actually turned way, way, way over. He's getting a ton of power that way. And you notice the whole system works that way. He's never going like this, trying to transfer any sort of arm weight into that stick. He's here.

Now, to talk a minute about why the arm weight thing is such a popular idea, is that I think people started to talk about arm weight because they wanted to figure out a way to communicate to a student, who is really, really tight, that they can't produce any sort of power on the cello by being really tight. And I would completely agree with that idea, but I think that this search for less, and less, and less tension in playing can actually produce some strange results.

See, I think what we need is we need to be able to use our muscles and our bodies in a way to produce power that is efficient and actually does what the string needs in order to actually have it sound powerful, you see? So, of course, the string needs certain stimulus in order for it to sound powerful, and we need to figure out how to use our bodies in order to produce that in such a way that doesn't injure ourselves.

So ideas of arm weight, I think, they might be useful to some, and I'm sure they have been useful to some. But ultimately, I don't think it's the best way to explain actually how to produce power. Power is not only a combination of being able to produce torque and this turning feeling, this way, which actually needs to increase as we approach the tip in order to get that power. But it also has a lot to do with where we put the bow on the string and what everything is feeling like.

Do we feel like we're really pulling our sound? That, I think, is a more important idea. There, again, this feeling of pulling yourself back and forth and having the fingers feel passive that way. I think that's far more important than any ideas about arm weight. Now, I know maybe this video will be unpopular to some of you, because I know that there are many, many even of my colleagues who definitely use the arm weight idea and they use it, and it is effective to a certain degree. However, as I said, I don't think that it's ultimately the best way to describe exactly what's going on when power is being created.

Just one more little side point to this. If we think about cellists that used to play without an end pin. For example, David Popper didn't play without an end pin, and all the reports are is that his sound was quite large in the hall. How in the world, if you're holding the cello with your legs because they held between the legs with no end pin, how in the world then are you going to be holding the cello like this and use that kind of arm weight?

So you're going to have to immediately start thinking about where you're putting the bow, how to create torque, and all the things that I've already talked about. And that's, I think, another reason why this arm weight concept didn't really start to get really popular until about the last 30 or 40 years, or so.

So anyway, I hope there's lots of comments and lots of questions with this because I know this is kind of a heated topic, and I've been avoiding it. But I hope I see a bunch of comments. If you're watching this on YouTube, please go to VirtualSheetMusic.com and leave your comments there. I'll be happy to answer as many of them as I possibly can. And, once again, this has been Joseph Mendoes for VirtualSheetMusic.com.

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