To play the erhu, you can have a bow that suits you, and you can better play the advantages of the erhu. We practice the erhu every day, and the erhu bow is always with us. The erhu bow is a key tool for erhu playing and pronunciation, and its quality has a great impact on erhu performance. For high-end erhu, you should choose a better quality erhu bow, because a bow with good elasticity will make it easier for you to learn various bow skills with your right hand.

For amateur erhu lovers, before trying the bow, by observing the quality of the bow's appearance and craftsmanship, in fact, it is possible to roughly distinguish the good from the bad. An excellent bow reflects the deep and rigorous manual skills of the bow maker. Of course, in addition to the workmanship, the material used for the bow shaft and bow hair determines the grade of the bow, and there are many questions in this.

1. About the bow

The raw material of the bow shaft is natural bamboo. Fujian bamboo has a relatively high hardness and long bamboo joints.

Since it is a natural bamboo pole, of course, there will be bamboo joints, and the thickness may not be exactly the same. For a real good bow, the bamboo joints will be polished and smooth, and the bow will not be felt when the bow is moved. The transition between the two sections is even and the thickness is moderate. The low-end bow looks very standard, and the thickness is exactly the same. In fact, it has been over-processed, which has destroyed the natural elasticity of the bow. Everyone must distinguish.

When you pick up a high-quality bamboo pole, you can immediately feel its hardness and elasticity, while a bow that is too light or too thin will be soft and weak when playing.

2. About bow hair

Regarding bow hair, now we rarely use pure black ponytail bows. All the ones on the market claim to be natural white ponytails. However, are there really so many natural white ponytails? Even if we haven't been to the pastoral area in person, we can understand by watching TV, how many of the 100 horses are white horses? And some white horses don't even have white tails, so most of the white bow hairs you see are actually bleached and dyed.

The high-quality non-bleached and dyed white horsetail hair is not the bright snow-white color. The scales on the surface are even and the edges are sharp. It is easy to add rosin, which is very beneficial to the friction of the strings. Whether the erhu can make a beautiful sound plays a vital role, and the black horsetail or flower horsetail has been bleached and dyed with chemical potions, the hair scales are often damaged, the playing volume is low, and the timbre is noisy. Some special timbre processing is simply impossible. played out.

Today, some bad ponytail processing merchants often shoddy. The natural color of inferior ponytails is usually black and gray, and some merchants treat them with chemicals, bleach and dye them into white, and sell them as high-quality ponytails. People who don't know how to do it are easy to be fooled if they don't identify carefully. However, in the process of washing and dyeing of inferior ponytails, not only the potion bites the scales on the surface of the ponytail, but also the inner quality of the ponytail itself is greatly damaged. The high-quality ponytail that has only undergone a simple cleaning process has sharp and complete scales, and the elasticity and toughness of the ponytail itself have not been damaged. When used on Erhu bows, its sound performance is incomparable to inferior ponytails.

Therefore, everyone must be aware of the bow hair. The appearance of a real unbleached primary color ponytail cannot be exactly the same, and it is usually white at one end and gradually yellow at the other end.

The origin of horsetail is generally Northeast, Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang. The land in the northeast is fertile, nutritious, and the horses are strong. The high-end ponytail is a pure male ponytail. Observed under a microscope, the barbs of the male ponytail are triangular in shape. The advantages of a pure male ponytail are: the scales are larger, sharper, and can hang on strings, which is more than ordinary white ponytails. It should be thicker and more uniform, with strong pulling force and good hand feel. It feels handy to play the strings, the volume is louder, the tone is purer and sweeter, and the service life is longer.