String Instruments: Pizzicato While Bowing.

I'm almost positive I've seen/heard people play a single pizzicato note as they simultaneously begin bowing another note. If this really is possible, how the hell do you notate that?

In such cases you use left hand pizzicatos, usually using open strings and putting a plus above the notehead.

It can't be done with normal pizzicato? As in beginning your bow near where your hand is so you can pluck and continue to bow in one motion?

like the beginning of Saint Saens' Dance Macabre for solo violin? :)

It can't be done with normal pizzicato? As in beginning your bow near where your hand is so you can pluck and continue to bow in one motion?

I have never seen or heard that before. The way to hold the bow and make pizzicato with the same hand is probably possible by using a thumb, I guess. :musicwhistle:

Plucking and bowing with the right hand simultaneously is to some extent possible, but is almost never used for several reasons.  Only the first or second fingers (thumb not possible unless a special and unsatisfactory bow grip was devised) could extend far enough from a held bow to make clean contact with the string, and one could only pluck a string higher than (for cello/bass, lower than) another being bowed.  The sound quality of the plucked note would be poor and have rapid decay due to being away from the optimal position for pizzicato, which is over the fingerboard and stopped notes would be particularly bad.  Left-hand pizzicato would be a much more practical and versitile solution to achieve such an effect.  You may be thinking of a type of bowing called martelato ('hammered') where the bow strikes the string with a percussive effect that can sound like it has been plucked.  Alternatively it may simply be that you have seen rapid changes between pizz and arco with the bow held in the hand very close to the string.

May this'll kill your doubt: http://javanese.imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/5/5c/IMSLP09187-Ernst_-_Etudes_-_Cranz.pdf

Ernst - Polyphonic Etudes. Study them well, specially the etude 6 ("The Last Rose of Summer"). There's a lot of examples of pizz + arco, mostly left handed, but a few played with the right hand. And another features as arpeggio + another voice in pizz, three stopping, double harmonics...