One may think that the musical notes of bowed string instruments like violin cello etc or of reed-winds like clarinet , saxophone , etc are of the same description musical notes as the notes by plucking the strings of musical instruments like guitar, mandolin etc. This by far it is not so! If the mousical note by plucking the string of an instrument like guitar has 3 dimensions :
1) Pitch,
2) duration
3) volume,
the corresponding note of a bowed string instrument like violin or cello etc has 5 dimensions
1) Pitch,
2) Bows-speed/pressure timbre (color) and reed-pressure or reed-length-in-the-mouth degree of winds.
3) Bow moving left-right direction changes and rhythmic pattern of it
3) Bow moving left-right direction changes and rhythmic pattern of it
4) duration
5) volume.
By playing a single musical note of the latter type of fixed pitch and volume we may even conduct the rhythm on its continuous duration by changing the speed of the bow, thus by changing the Bows-speed timbre (color) which in spectral decomposition of the sound means changing the weight center of the harmonics of the sound higher or lower. Therefore somehow this Bows-speed timbre (color) is also one-dimensional quantity. Similarly how much we put the reed in the mouth and how much we press it changes in a quantitative way the timbre of the note.
Here is ancient 2-voices music from the kazakhs violin which is called kobyz, which makes it more obvious
COUNTING THE RHYTHM WITH THE LEFT-RIGHT MOVES OF THE BOW
THE RHYTHM IN IMPROVISATIONS REFLECTED ON THE BOW LEFT-RIGHT DIRECTION CHANGES REGARDLESS OF THE MELODY NOTES CHANGES:
In the bowed instruments when improvising we have a very simple and efficient way to reflect the rhythm and this is by making the bow left-right direction changes exactly at the rhythm of a measure in other words as the up or down measurements of the rhythm.
And we do so either if we play a single long lasting note (long note that nevertheless reflects the rhythm too) or when we play many notes, each note a single or an integral number of bow right-left moves. (so we avoid many notes with the same direction of the bow move and if necessary we jump to the next division of 2 in realizing the rhythm). In this way we shape the left-right moves of the bow with a simple pattern that of the rhythm rather than random left-right moves which might feel more complicated in improvising. In this way a part of the melody with a more desne number of notes might still be played with the same density of left-right moves of the bow. If necessary we may jump to the next division of 2 in realizing the rhythm, but always counting the rhythm.
Based on the above we may say that the bow has as modes of speeds of change of directions the powers of 2 of the written melody (integrals, halves, quarters, eighths, sixteenths, etc)
