How to make a beautiful sautillé?

Sautillé is a bowing technique where the bow leaves the string (jumps) and you can play very fast short notes. Sautillé does not differ that much from spiccato. However, with spiccato you control every movement of the bow and with sautillé the bow jumps out of itself. Sautillé is for fast short notes, so do not try to make it too big.

Place on your bow

The place on your bow is also different from spiccato. For spiccato the place on the bow is just below the middle, whereas for sautillé you use the bow somewhere above the middle. However, note that this can differ per bow.

Know how to play spiccato

Before you start with sautillé, you should make sure you can play spiccato quite well. Sautillé is the next step. You go from playing spiccato, slightly under the middle, moving your bow slightly up until you find the place on your bow where the bow jumps out of itself.

Experiment!

There is no one right way to do sautillé and opinions differ on what works best. It also depends on the piece you are playing. So, try to experiment with this technique and build it up slowly to see what works for you!

I hope this video is useful for you!

Love,
Zlata

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