I’m Nathan Waller, a trumpet player who became an orchestra teacher. Like many band directors asked to teach beginning strings, I found myself with more questions than answers, especially when it came to teaching a good bow hold. I started Arcofrog with one simple mission: to make string teaching more accessible (for students and teachers), particularly in those early days when success matters most.

The idea for Tadpoles came after my first experience teaching at a summer camp where we wrapped red tape around pencils and used them as “pencil bows.” Students brought them home to practice, only for us to re-teach everything when they switched to their real bows. I asked the veteran teachers if this was normal and the response was: “It’s the best we can do with this many kids and this little time.”

I began looking for tools or methods that could help build a legitimate bow hold without creating bad habits or requiring lots of re-teaching. Some things helped a little, but most weren’t intuitive for students and weren’t sustainable in a classroom setting. I knew I wasn’t the only one feeling out of place. For those of us who didn’t come from a string background, teaching bow holds can feel like an exercise in imposter syndrome with little guidance and few tools to bridge the gap.

I knew what a good bow hold looked like. What I couldn’t do was diagnose the hundred small ways it could go wrong.

I studied every bow and bow hold guide I could find, took lessons on every stringed instrument, spoke with professional string players and built dozens of prototypes. I tested them with my own students in real classrooms, and what emerged was Tadpoles: a simple, tactile tool that helps students form a pedagogically sound bow hold from the very beginning.

Tadpoles don’t replace your teaching method. They augment it. Whether you’re a seasoned string specialist or a band director teaching strings who is trying to stay a page ahead of the kids, Tadpoles are designed to meet you where you are. They reinforce your instruction, free up your time, and help your students build a strong foundation from day one.

Now my students learn a correct bow hold on day one. They go home and practice exactly the way we did in class, whether on the couch, in the car, or anywhere else. They return with bow holds that are solid and fundamentally sound, not habits that need to be undone. That means more time spent making music and less time spent fixing hands.

Tadpoles give teachers, regardless of their primary instrument, the confidence to look at a student’s hand and know it’s right.