Ahhh, thank you Daniel. That’s a shame…
I think, if you prefer to stick to Italian, just write arco or con l’arco. Cogli archi literally means “with the bows”, as if you’ve referred to them before, or as if they’re a standard part of a vibraphone. Besides that, the contraction cogli for con gli sounds archaic, it reminds me of 18th-century facsimiles… In the very special case that you want your percussionist to use two bows at a time, you could write con due archi.
Gould (p.300) is a bit too concise: “[Bowed notes] should be indicated with a written instruction beside the relevant notes”, which isn’t very helpful TBH. Kurt Stone (p. 211 in my edition) suggests a (vertical) bow pictogram, or a textual indication. He doesn’t give a precise answer either, but I guess he’d use Bow or Bowed.
But as I’m just a humble cellist dabbling in orchestration, maybe there are knowledgable percussionists/orchestrators around who can shed more light on these notation practices?
EDIT for afterthought:
Would arco on a percussion instrument really also inevitably be mapped to a ‘natural’ playing technique? Don’t expression maps etc. provide for different mappings for different instruments? This is unknown territory for me, so I don’t have an answer to that.
Thank you for your effort, Pjotr! I will see if I can find Italian percussionists…
There is a way around it. If you mark “vibrato” technique on the vibraphone it acts as though the motor is on. Just remember to reset it if you want to go back to the default.
Using Note Performer 3.3.2
Thank very much for that work around! As long as you don’t use bows it plays back quite like a motor on.