Hello, I’m Nathan Waller, the inventor of Tadpoles. I’ve taught elementary and middle level orchestra for over 10 years. My musical journey began in 5th grade band on the trumpet. It was in high school that I began playing cello and studying conducting and I continued to play both instruments while getting a music education degree at Concordia College in Moorhead, MN.

During my 2nd year of teaching, I was teaching at a summer orchestra camp for my district. We started 75 fourth graders on string instruments. As a staff we spent an afternoon wrapping thin strips of red tape around pencils, which the students used during the first week of the camp to train their hands for holding a bow. They brought those pencils home and practiced their “bow holds.” When it was time to give students their bows, we had to re-teach them all how to hold it anyway. I asked the experienced teachers if this was normal, and they said that it was the best system for the number of students we were teaching and the amount of time we were given to do it. I remember being told in college that pencil bows and modified holds are like training wheels on a bike; the kids just aren’t ready for a legitimate bow hold yet. The only thought I had was there must be a better way.

I sought out methods and products to help with bow holds. Some gave decent results but still required lots of one-on-one attention, others became a crutch that was hard to remove without the student’s hand collapsing, and some were just creating bad habits. My goal was to utilize our limited time as orchestra teachers to work on the fun stuff: making music, stories, expression, rhythm, notes, musical character, and more. It’s so important for students to have early success- in any venture- so they feel empowered to continue their pursuit of learning. However, if that early success is vapid and causes future failures, it is an order of magnitude more demoralizing to un-learn and then re-learn a skill.

One day- after another frustrating class period spent on bow hold rehab with my 7th graders- it finally clicked for me: teaching students modified bow holds right away is not similar to the function of training wheels on a bike. It is more like giving a fork to someone trying to learn how to use chopsticks. Yes, it is easier to use and hold, but it will have to be abandoned so correct positioning can be re-taught anyway. I had an idea.

Over the next few years I had dozens of consults with professional string players. I dissected, measured, and studied every brand of bow I could get my hands on, watched hours of interviews and videos of string teachers performing their beginner methods, and became obsessed with what makes and keeps a good bow hold.  After 50 prototypes (and counting!), 2 years of testing on my own students, and a filed patent application (with more products and patents on the way), I’m proud to offer Tadpoles into the world.

I hope you have a chance to try Tadpoles or hear from someone you know about how effective they are. The entire time that I was designing Tadpoles, I was centered on keeping it intuitive so that students will be encouraged and inspired by ‘practicing’ their bow hold in the car, on the couch, on the beach, in the library; anywhere! After one lesson with Tadpoles, my students go home and can practice exactly as we did in class. They come back with bow holds that I can only describe as a perfect starting point, which is such a great feeling as a teacher to know that I’m going to get an extra half dozen class periods back this year that I would have spent as a bow hold drill sergeant.

I wish that I’d had access to Tadpoles as a college student studying string pedagogy and music education. I feel that they could make a big difference- especially for those of us in the profession who are strong on one primary instrument and not yet comfortable with all of the nuances of every string instrument bow hold. My hope is that Tadpoles will give early success to the kids who usually never find it so that one day they will feel the power of playing in an orchestra at their high school and beyond.