I don't quite understand this term, could someone please explain.

-Ashley W.

I found the information below and will put the link at the bottom. Hope it helps.

A few conductors of yore, mainly Leopold Stokowski, did advocate “free bowing” to produce a lush, less focused sound. But most circumstances today call for a more uniform sound, and that means uniform bowing: everyone in the section being consistent in terms of bow direction, bow distribution (which portion of the bow is being used), and articulation.

All Things Strings: Bowing with Style, page 1

Thanks a lot!

Are you asking the question because perhaps a teacher during a lesson uses the term? Or, is this because whoever is directing the orchestra is using it when speaking to the players in the orchestra? Or, is there some other reason that you are asking the question?

There is more than one definition as to what uniform bowing is. One would be how all the players in a particular string section of the orchestra move there bows in the same direction at the same time. The other definition of uniform bowing would have to do with an individual player's technique in using the bow.

And, if you might be interested in carrying your question to the next level, in a professional orchestra, it's almost always the leader of each section of strings who determines and then dictates the directions in which the bows need to go. Occasionally, it might be the conductor, if he or she is wanting a certain sound on some notes in certain passages of music.

Sometimes, there might also be a few markings for bowings on individual notes in a score and then subsequently in individual player's parts that have been placed there by the composer. It is not necessary to mark all of the notes in a part, because the players then use common sense based upon experience as to how the rest of the notes need to be bowed because of how the few notes have been marked.

As I indicated in the first paragraph, the other definition of uniform bowing has to do with an individual player's technique in using the bow. Uniform bowing in that sense means how an individual player bows so that all the forces in movement as applied to the bow are in equilibrium. This would be concerned with just how the individual plays and not related to playing as a group at all in the definition of uniform bowing as it relates to a group of players.