#violin teaching

[blueoctopusstudio]

Two weeks ago I had a parent/teacher talk about practicing effectively. It was a great way for parents to connect and for me to help give specific practicing advice. One of the main points we discussed is how important it is to give specific instruction and feedback. As I strive to do give a one-point lesson, it's less overwhelming to students in the practice room when parents ask them to complete one task at a time or focus on one thing at a time.

The next week, one of my parents sent me this video of a new video coming about about the high stakes professional music video. Give it a watch...I found it interesting, intriguing, and yes a bit scary (can you imagine slapping a student! yikes!). However, it brings up an incredibly important debate in criticism vs. praise for development and teaching. Which is better? I've experienced both in my own training (not as extreme as the above example of course. No one has ever slapped me or belittled me so intensely), but ultimately I don't think either is actually very effective. One (intense criticism) tears you down to supposedly bring you up (never a guarantee of course), while the other (only praise) instills an unrealistic idea of how much work is actually needed to succeed. Ultimately both are false ideas of how you play. They are just judgements.

Then, as I've been pondering this, one of my favourite bloggers (a professor at Julliard), posted on this very topic. He asks, what is more effective -- praise or criticism? Turns out he looked to basketball for his answer and the legendary coach John Wooden. And the answer is the same as mine..neither is effective. However, he takes it a step further and looks at what we have to do instead. What he found was that 75% of John Wooden's teaching time was spent on specific details..giving instruction, making sure athletes understood every aspect of the game.

Because to sum up  "in the practice room, as on the practice court, it’s less about whether we are perfect or imperfect. It’s more about making sure we’re growing and learning from day to day."

[blueoctopusstudio]

Why Practicing Efficiently Makes Progess Faster

I wasted years on inefficient practicing. But often as a teenager, I just wanted to get the job done and thought little about whether or not there was a better way.

Practicing efficiently is something I strive to teach my students. Most of the time, lessons are spent teaching a student how to practice at home. Because, let's face it, that's where the progress happens...not in the half hour or hour I spend with them each week.

There are three pillars of practicing efficiently:

1) Think -- it's amazing how many students I stop in a passage and ask what happened and they look at me with a blank look and shrug. Going on autopilot when we practice is so easy, but incredibly dangerous. Instead, I ask them to think...what am I doing? what do I want this to sound like? is there a better way?

2) Listen - like thinking, listening is often forgotten. We listen in a half-hearted manner, stopping when a note is wrong or rhythm is off, but when asked if we are sharp or flat and by how much, the same blank look returns. Active listening involves so much more brain power, but ultimately students are more successful fixing things in the practice room when they listen.

3) Feel - Becoming aware of your body as you play the violin is just as important. How does the passage feel when you start it? How does the bow arm feel? Do you have tension in your body? Feeling your body, noticing how it responds, is key to remembering how to get that again and again, without as many repetitions.

[blueoctopusstudio]

Dorothy Delay, a renowned violin teacher commented:

"I'm not interested in teaching. I'm interested in learning."

[bluejuniata]

the australian music examinations board just sent out an email which included that einstein quote about being willing to make mistakes and i want to be like "ummm guys?" i am excited you are at least pretending to take this stance but it seems somewhat at odds with your policy/institutional structure/overall mode of being. talking to a friend about the conservatory system the other week and what he said is best--every classical music organization has an entire department devoted to seeming relevant and growing younger audiences, but it never seems to occur to anyone that eliminating sadism and masochism as core values would be a good start.  trying to work out how to be a better teacher in this regard--i try to be v. relaxed & make things fun but the reality is violin is a hard instrument to learn! and it seems to attract a bunch of extremely high-strung, perfectionist, type-A little kids. alternatively, it attracts yuppie parents who are forcing their son to learn an instrument that he truly detests because it gets him out of the house and because ~culture~ when in reality the kid could be v. talented drummer.  i don't want to be an ~inspirational teacher~ or anything, although the day a student told me that i was like miss honey from matilda was basically the best day of my life. i just want kids to feel relaxed & confident & excited about making sound which is exactly what i want for myself, too, and that shouldn't be so hard to come by, right, why is it hard to come by?

[theviolinteacher-blog]

Just read this post at violinist.com on the purpose of studying Sevcik and Schradiek which put forward an interesting way of thinking about the link between exercises, Druses and pieces. The address I found the post was http://www.violinist.com/discussion/response.cfm?ID=19656

"Sevcik is pure technique. It's like taking medicine for your hands. A healthy daily regimen of study includes pure technique (like Sevcik), scales, etudes, and repertoire (like a concerto and sonatas). Scales and Sevcik give you the pure technique, etudes give you a musical context to study that technique in further, and repertoire is how you bake all those ingredients intoa finished product that your audience can appreciate."

[theviolinteacher-blog]

Why are there no violin study books for teenagers?

When a student is starting to learn the violin they need a study book which has pictures of teenagers rather than of children, people who act as role model and encourage them to learn the violin. The abracadbra violin book has drawing of young people in hoodies but apart from this I haven't seen any other books possibly suitable for teenagers. Does anyone else have this problem?

[theviolinteacher-blog]

The importance of being able to count a steady beat.

So much hassle can be prevented on the teachers part by teaching their student how to count a steady beat/pulse in the early stages of learning their instrument. All rhythms are worked out by using the beat/pulse as a reference point and all rhythms are felt in relation to the beat. This skill is near essential to being a complete musiciqn. Simple tasks such as walking, clapping, conducting, even hopping to the beat of a well known piece can start the development of a steady beat/pulse. This can be followed by learning the sub-divisions of the different note values ( 1-and 2-and for quavers; 1-ee-and-ah 2-ee-and-ah for semiquavers) and then putting these into use on different time signatures. Being able to count these sub divisions out loud and write them down creates even more familiarity. More advance exercises involve saying sub divisions out loud while playing at the same time. The earlier all these processes start, the sooner counting becomes a natural task and the less lesson time is required correcting wrong rhythms, counting and tempos