So I got my violin for Christmas, and being a music,I thought that I could try it out. So I rosined up the bow, played for about and hour and had a great time. When I was finished, I losened the bow hairs and safly put the violin and the bow in it's case.
So, today, and take it out and to play it, I tune the violin and tighten the bow hairs. I draw the bow over the strings of the violin and I didn't get a sound. I thought scence yesterday was the first time I used it, it probably just needs more rosin. I added more rosin. I could play and open G string with my bow going down and thats it (when I moved my bow up on the G string, I didn't get a sound). I added more rosin and I didn't help. I kept repeating this "trying and failing" for about a half-hour... and I never got it to work.
It feels, when I play, like the bow isn't grabbing the strings.
sometimes it can take a while for the rosin to stick. that or because the vilin is new (if its not second hand) the rosin cakes onto the strings and so the bow doesn't quite grip it. wipe the strings with an extremely clean never before used rag or the violin cover from your case and give it another go.
if not, check that your bow hair is actually horsehair and not nylon, i don't think the rosin sticks well to the nylon. i doubt it is nylon, it is noticeably plasticy when you break a string.
and yay for getting a violin for xmas! i got mine early one year for xmas too, after i broke the first one....
very good piece of advice- don't drop it!
I have had new bows that need rosining for literally ten minutes before you could play them. Just dont get frustrated and keep rubbing that stuff on the hair.
Bows often come pre-rosined. The most efficient way, in my experience, to apply rosin to a bow that has no rosin on it at all is to place a chunk of rosin on a piece of paper, fold the paper over the chunk, hammer the rosin chunk into powder, then open the paper and draw your bow across the powder. You should only have to do this at most once each time your bow is rehaired--in other words, very rarely.
This, of course, wouldn't explain how you were able to play the first time you tried. Are you sure you tightened the bow enough the second time? If the bow doesn't tighten properly, its screw may be stripped.
I don't know how but it now works.
I dropped my rosin cake and I split in half.
I rosined up my bow using the part where it broke.
Maybe I just didn't roughen up the rosin well enough in the first place... but that dosen't explain how it worked the first time.
It makes a better sound now that I used the broken part of the rosin.
also, the problem could be in the rosin. usually when you get a new sitck or rosin, it's very smooth. I have a kinda cheap kind of rosin (orange) so what i do when i get a new one is scrape it's surface until i see white powder, then i rosin my bow. it breaks in the rosin and gets to the actual working part. unless you have a fancy shmansy rosin, then you probably don't need to do that :P
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