(Definitely putting a coffee/tea disclaimer on this post, since it is of necessity a bit long.  Any of the 'attention-span challenged' members who do decide to suffer through reading it, all I can say is that the exercises I'm explaining aren't super exciting or fun either, and they take longer to do than to read about.)

For most of my first year I haven't really practised bowing itself.  I mostly worked on a few scales to limber up the fingers, and then would play the songs I like to play on violin.  

After my 6th month, I got my Hoffmann Amadeus model (which I call Amelia) because I had a bit of funding available to spend on music and it seemed reasonable to try a violin that might be a bit better than what I had been playing on.  Sort of a combination celebration and incentive "treat" for myself, for having stuck with a new instrument for 6 months of playing some on it daily.

I do consider myself as playing several instruments, but only one (guitar) seriously enough that I put in a considerable amount of time over the years both practising and playing on.  The rest, I can play some songs or improvise on, but I mostly just play on those, I do not do much if any actual dedicated practice on a regular basis.   There are only so many hours in a day, and my life is not such that I can spend them all on music.

So for most of the first year, I have done little of what I actually consider practice, and have just played and amused myself.  That was intentional, since I was not familiar with the instrument and what sounds it was capable of, so the intention was to approach the instrument for that time as a child might.  Doing mostly what came easily and was fun/enjoyable. 

When I got my newer acoustic violin, I decided to spend the first 30 days (the usual return period) making sure it got some hard play, so anything that was going to shake loose or start rattling in it would do so while it was in the time frame when I could have it replaced easily.  So I set aside 15 min a day to go into the basement (to spare the ears of housemates at least somewhat) and would play on open strings as loud as I could manage.  Just BWAH, BWAH, BWAH, BWAH, over and over for 15 minutes.  I think I did gain something from that.  I got more accustomed to playing strong notes sometimes, and reassured myself that the instrument wasn't going to break if played hard.  LOL  (That may sound silly, but especially the acoustic violins have always seemed fragile to me)

When I was nearing the end of that month, I was advised to not drop that bit of practice, but to refine it just a bit.  To watch the vibration of the string, and try to bring it to maximum vibration as early in the stroke as possible by use of bow pressure and speed, and to try and keep it at that level of vibration to as near the end of the bow stroke as possible.  To make the note not just loud, but as steady as possible for as much of the stroke as I could manage.  I think I gained a bit from that as well, since it took using more control over bow pressure to get a good strong loud note, whether I started the stroke from frog or tip.

The next bit of advice was to add some practise involving rhythm.  To take a slow waltz tempo (60 bpm) and play it on the open G and D strings, with the first beat on the G string and played with as much power as possible while keeping it sounding good.  After about a week of that, it was suggested to work on lifting the bow between strokes, to play a very strong LAAA on the first beat lift and to a lighter zum, zum for the 2nd and 3rd beat, but for those two beats to sort of glide the bow to a smooth landing on the string.  So that's another 15 minutes.  I feel that has helped because my bow landings were not very smooth, they bounced or didn't sound good for the first instants of the note, and even though the tempo seemed maddeningly slow at first, it was challenging enough to try and make the exercise sound at least maybe reasonably good.  A later refinement added to that has been to view the space between the end of the fingerboard and the bridge to be 5 "lanes" the bow can be in for a stroke and to vary which one is used to experiment with the differences in timbre and volume, working towards using those sound qualities intentionally in playing as opposed to trying to find and stay in just one "sweet spot" for the contact point.

The latest addition has been to take the scales I practice as warm up for the left hand (always from the keys at least one or two songs I plan to play/work on later are in) and do at first a full octave of the scale as a single bow stroke, working on getting the note changes as clean as possible and the string changes smoother.  That's now another 15 minutes.  And more recently, going from doing one octave with a single bow stroke to two octaves with a single stroke, which is still being more than a bit challenging for me.  Still working on getting that one to actually sound good.  LOL

I feel it is being helpful, because I was tending to cover string changes by changing stroke direction at the same time, and being aware of how much bow I have left while fingering the scales is a bit more challenging than I expected.

So I am currently spending about 45 min a day just on practice that focuses on bowing.  I have to admit, I did need it.  Bowing is a very unfamiliar motion to someone coming to violin from guitar, and my bowing was not very good.  it still isn't, really, but I can see and hear some slow and steady improvement in my playing from working on it, and so I have been keeping up with the practise exercises I've mentioned.  I view practice as a separate and distinct activity from playing.  Practice is what I do so my playing can sound a bit better when I actually play songs or melodies.

Ok, folks, do you do anything similar, or what do you do to work on bowing?  Any exercises or insights you'd feel comfortable sharing here?