Asides

Incentive Program Package #3: Seven Summits and Beyond

(This post contains some affiliate links.)

As my incentive programs have developed over the past 20 years, they’ve expanded and become more graphics-heavy. Each year’s theme now includes a large wall display that tracks individual student progress towards meeting their (minimum) 10 annual MusiQuest Goals. So this third incentive program I’m going to share with you comes with more printables!

“Seven Summits And Beyond” is a mountain-climbing theme that celebrates the indomitable spirit of the world’s greatest mountaineers. Living where I do in the Pacific Northwest, the familiar sight of Mount Rainier dominating the skyline is always breathtaking. Since it’s a training summit for prospective Everest climbers, it was the first “destination” for my students. The theme continues through the highest summits on each continent (the “7 Summits”) leading to Mt. Everest as #10. Students who completed more than 10 goals went on to “climb the 8000’ers” — the Himalayan peaks over 8000 meters high. Continue reading “Incentive Program Package #3: Seven Summits and Beyond” →

Fiddle Folio for Etude Fun

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! My recently released, curated collection of fiddle tunes is currently on sale at Amazon. You can also grab a PDF copy right away via download purchase.

I put together this Fiddle Fundamentals Folio book to answer the question: “Why play etudes when you can play fiddle tunes?” Introducing fiddle tunes into students’ (or your own) etude practice builds finger dexterity, bowing agility, and sight reading skills while also being FUN! I collected 40 toe-tapping traditional fiddle tunes and arranged them by key signature and sequential difficulty, from beginning to advanced levels. First-position-only tunes can be played slow to fast while focusing on the following technical skills:

Finger Dexterity: Fiddle tunes require rapid finger action on one or two strings. Ornamentations increase the speed of finger dropping-and-lifting and can train a light, tension-free touch. Students can learn preparatory double-stop technique through the focus on “quiet fingers” that stay put as long as possible. Guidance for turning tunes into finger exercises will get fingers flying faster and more accurately in no time!

Bowing Agility: Use fiddle tunes to focus on left side/right side coordination. The characteristic rapid string changes and off-beat slurs call for a relaxed, flexible technique and mindset.

Sightreading: Fiddle tunes can be deceptively simple to play at sight. The trick is in maintaining full-speed tempos, bowings, and ornaments while always reading at least one note ahead. The 40 tunes in this book will provide lots of fresh music to play, and resources are included to find even more.

Improvisation: Traditional techniques for adding slurs and ornaments allow the musician to play a tune differently each time. Preparatory scales and arpeggios are provided for each key, with introductory chord theory and chords for every tune, to help bridge players towards harmonic and chordal improvisation.

Here’s the table of contents.

If you can’t wait to get your hands on some tunes to play this weekend, you can purchase a PDF copy below. It doesn’t have a fancy cover like the book you can buy on Amazon, but the inside looks exactly the same! I would love to hear your comments after you’ve used the book! Sláinte!

Download “Fiddle Fundamentals Folio” PDF for $8.50

or    Purchase bound book version on Amazon

(Hey! If your taste tends more towards the classical, you might be interested in my Orchestral Excerpts for Intermediate Violinists book for a different approach to non-traditional etudes!)

Star Teacher #3: Paul Rolland

Over the holiday break from teaching, I finally completed a resolution for 2021: to rent and watch the Paul Rolland video series titled “The Teaching of Action in String Playing.” This influential pedagogue died prematurely in 1978, but we are fortunate that he preserved his teaching approach on video, and now it’s accessible to all on Vimeo.

Paul Rolland’s methods form the basis for Mimi Zweig‘s “Suzuki Synthesis,” taught at her summer workshops at Indiana University and at sister-programs around the country. Having attended her workshop, it was fantastic to watch Paul Rolland’s original teaching videos on the same topics, as demonstrated in 1974. I was about the age of the kids in the video, in my second year of playing the violin too, when these films were produced! (I even think one of the little girls in the back row is wearing a Sears Catalog dress that was one of my favorites.)

When these videos were available only on DVD, it would set you back several hundred dollars to buy the set and watch them. Now for only $49, you can have access to all the videos (3½ hours of content) on Vimeo for an entire year. While I binge-watched them over the holidays, I’m sure I will return to them at my leisure to look for specific exercises that I can use with certain students. The biggest takeaway is how to establish “freedom from tension” in beginning and remedial violin students. The short, easily-digestible videos are almost all under 10 minutes long. Beginner’s topics include Establishing the Violin Hold – Learning to Hold the Bow – Developing Finger Movements – Extending the Bow Stroke. For more advanced players, there are segments on Martelé, Staccato, Spiccato, Shifting and Vibrato.

So for a very affordable price, you can access gold-nuggets of teaching wisdom that you would otherwise spend hundreds of dollars at a workshop to acquire (not to mention the airfare and hotel). If Rolland’s videos whet your appetite, he published a companion book. There is also an annual Paul Rolland String Pedagogy workshop you can attend, and certification you can complete.

Put “Watch these videos” on your list of New Year’s Resolutions, and you will also be a better teacher by the end of this year!

Star Teacher #2: Nathan Cole

Where Mimi Zweig offers invaluable advice for students coming up from the very earliest stages, Nathan Cole has mastered the art of teaching advanced players up to professionals preparing for orchestra auditions. He has offered a premium online Virtuoso Master Course to pros in the past. The second edition of his Violympic Games took place during the summer of 2021, a 12-week course for intermediate to advanced players, with structured video lessons combined with performance challenges. A lively online community of mostly adult students engaged with one another on a private Facebook group, with members from all over the globe.

Nathan is First Associate Concertmaster of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and could clearly spend all his time just performing. But his passion for teaching has turned him into a YouTube pro. While joining his private student cohort is limited and pricey, he has posted many excellent free teaching videos, including a series on the complete Bach Unaccompanied Sonatas and Partitas for Violin. (He calls it Bach on the Road, an indication of his love of the pun!) Technique videos you’ll want to bookmark for your students include Effortless Vibrato, Mastering Spiccato and Pinky Power: Strengthening the 4th Finger. Check out the full menu of videos on his YouTube channel, or see what online courses are available at Natesviolin.com.

I just purchased a copy of his new book and video series on Scales: The Road to Repertoire and am looking forward to freshening up my scale routine — not to mention my students’!

Simplified Piano Accompaniments for Violin Student Repertoire

I am not an advanced-level pianist with excellent sight-reading skills. I get finger-tied trying to play most published piano accompaniments to violin student solo pieces. But there is something so satisfying about supplying the underlying chords and harmonies when a student is learning a new piece. That piano part represents at least half of the music the composer created for us to enjoy. So I’ve come up with substitutes for the full piano score, from simplified or chorded piano parts, to turning the piano score into a violin duo part with as many double-stops as possible.

My copies of the piano accompaniment books for student repertoire are marked up with my own note reductions, chord notations, “Left hand only” warnings and alternate voicings. I use my markups to play along with a student during all stages of their learning a new piece of music. I’ll even play them at a recital in a pinch!

Would you like to be able to prepare your violin students for accompanied performances by playing piano with them on a regular basis? Is a student’s understanding of their piece lacking because they can’t hear the underlying chords when they are learning it? I’ve started transcribing my scribbles into clean, easy-to-read piano sheet music, and am now releasing it for digital download over at SheetMusicPlus. Here are four transcriptions to accompany solo pieces found in Suzuki Violin School Volumes 1, 2, 3 and 6.

Product Cover
look inside		 Brahms – Waltz in G for Violin and Piano – Simplified Piano Accompaniment
Composed by Johannes Brahms (1833-1897). Arranged by Paul Klengel, Jane Melin. Classical Period, Method, Repertoire. Score. 2 pages. Published by Jane Melin (S0.1021265).
Product Cover
look inside		 Corelli – “La Folia” Simplified Piano Accompaniment Variations in D minor
Composed by Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713). Arranged by Jane Melin. Baroque Period, Repertoire. Individual Part. 6 pages. Published by Jane Melin (S0.1039991).
Product Cover
look inside		 Dvorak – Humoresque for Violin and Piano – Simplified Piano Accompaniment in D/Dm
Composed by Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904). Arranged by Jane Melin. Romantic Period, Method, Repertoire. Individual Part, Score. 6 pages. Published by Jane Melin (S0.1020641).
Product Cover
look inside		 Gossec – Gavotte for Violin and Piano – Simplified Piano Accompaniment
Composed by Francois-Joseph Gossec (1734-1829). Arranged by Emil Kross, Jane Melin. Classical Period, Method, Repertoire. Individual Part, Score. 4 pages. Published by Jane Melin (S0.1021377).

I’ll have more links for you soon, including violin duos for more Suzuki selections. Check out my full Sheet Music Plus catalog as it grows!

Incentive Program Package #2: Out Of This World

star trophyMy second incentive program theme is literally Out Of This World! You could also call it Space, The Final Frontier; Into Space; or even Blast Off! I get ideas for my incentive programs from the variety of economy-priced awards I can purchase from Crown Awards. A star trophy like this one is perfect for a space theme. Crown Awards has dozens of insert graphics too, from generic “music” pictures to specific instruments. Some are embellished with glitter and others glow in the dark.

The downloadable Progress Chart has 23 spaces for logging student progress towards a variety of music study goals. See Package #1 for the downloadable/printable list of MusiQUEST Goals and the Practice Tracking Card.

Starting up!

This is my first post on Violin Teaching Resources dot-com! Here’s the Start Here page where I explain my goals for this site and tell a little more about myself. I have a lot of ideas for content and will be adding a variety of items in the next few weeks. I’ll also take reader input for printables ideas and how-tos you might be interested in. Read on!