Quick Practicing Tip: Long Bow Day!

I hereby declare today to be "Long Bow Day!" If you are not a string player, do not despair! You can still participate in  Long Bow Day! You may want to change the name to suit your instrument, but the concepts will basically be the same whether you play the violin, the piano, or the trumpet.

A Long Bow Day is a day when we play songs that require long bows more than any other bows. You know which songs I refer to: Twinkle Theme, Lightly Row, Aunt Rhody, O Come Little Children, Long Long Ago, etc. These are songs that require legato bowing. If you are a pianist, these are songs that ask for legato phrasing, and there are many songs like this in Suzuki Piano Volume One. In fact, a good deal of the Suzuki Piano Volume One is teaching the student how to play legato with one hand while the other hand learns to play staccato or use the wrist drop/lift motion. For us string players, that means that the pianists are learning how to use both right and left hands independently, as we do.

Have you figured out what ten places you need to practice your legato or long bows? There are three possible ways to approach a Long Bow Day:

• Tone and Sound Quality
• Good Form
• Musicality

For string players, a good tone and sound quality stem from a good contact point between the bow and the violin string and from the absence of tension in the body. Is the bow articulating the individual notes well? Is the tone scratchy or just right? Is the bow on the highway or drifting near the sidewalk (fingerboard) or bridge? Are there any points of tension in the skeletal joints? Is the student releasing tension from "inside" muscles and directing attention to "outside" muscles?* Most of all, is the bow straight (parallel to the bridge)? Get a mirror and check this, or have your practice partner help you to know when your bow is on the straight highway.

• My students and I use the numbers game to learn when the bow is straight. If the bow is straight and parallel to the bridge, that is the number 5. If the bow goes crooked inward toward the player, that is a series of numbers going down, such as 4 or 3. If the bow goes crooked outward away from the player, then the numbers go up to 6 or 7.
• As the student plays, the practice partner calls out the number, usually 4-6. This helps to guide the student to know when the bow is straight or crooked and in which direction to move the bow to straighten it out.
• A student can also learn how to look in a mirror and gauge whether the bow is moving in the straight groove across the string. Parents, please note that when the bow is "straight" and parallel to the bridge, that it actually looks crooked from the player's perspective. The player must learn how to see the bow when it is straight, and this is not easy.

Tone production for a string player may include how much bow the student uses. As the student advances in technical skills and ability, the repertoire requires that the student use more and more bow without sacrificing the tone quality. As pianists learn faster note passages and use the right and left hands more independently, the tone quality should remain consistent. In some cases, the student will learn how to balance the tone between the hands so that both right and left hand parts sound equal. In other songs, the student will learn how to voice the left hand or the right hand part in a way that will bring more prominence to that part.

For pianists, a good tone and sound quality is how the student executes the note with the finger on the keyboard. Beginning students do not yet have much muscle development in their fingers, hands, or arms, and in many cases, the families do not own pianos but are using electronic keyboards in the home, so that the students do not develop the appropriate musculature to execute a good tone on a real piano keyboard. In the beginning, I use a lot of imitation with students to help them learn how much weight to drop into the piano keys and the notes of the music.

Good form is always crucial to good tone, no matter what instrument a student plays. Always check posture and the form of execution. Good form also includes whether the student is playing the instrument correctly. If a violin student is not bowing parallel to the bridge or does not place the bow to make good contact with the violin string, then we need to focus on good form, because good form goes hand in hand with producing a good tone and sound quality. When I evaluate a student's form and posture, I start from the bottom and work my way to the top. For violinists, we start with balanced feet. I should not be able to push the student over sideways or backwards. (To learn more about how I set up my violin students' posture, click here).



Balance is always crucial when playing an instrument. Violinists shift weight from side to side and have to hold an instrument before them (off to the side), and this instrument carries weight too. Pianists need to be able to shift from side to side to reach keys at the ends of the keyboard; if a student is not balanced, then the student will topple over or play with little strength and tone in the sound.

Musicality refers to the more advanced musical concepts of phrasing, dynamic expression, and how the human body's mechanics create these things. If a student has the physical capability of executing a musical phrase, I introduce how a good musician would end a phrase. Just as humans let their voices trail off at the end of a sentence (or a voice runs out of steam at the end of a long note), we imitate that sound with the instrument. String players learn to let the phrase tail off in a whisper and which bow stroke accomplishes that best. Pianists learn how to lighten up the finger touch on the keyboard in order to create the phrase.

Now, being good teachers and practice partners that we are, we will follow the one-point lesson. We have our list of ten songs or ten places that require legato playing. Now we will decide which one of the three approaches we will use, and it may be that we use different approaches for different things on our list of ten. For example, a newer song or passage might benefit from attention paid to good form. A more familiar piece might require more attention to phrasing and musicality. And a song that falls somewhere in between might fare best with attention paid to tone production and sound quality. As long as we focus on one thing at a time, we can reap the most benefit from our practice efforts. Remember that younger students will need to focus on smaller segments and may need simpler tasks or smaller steps (baby steps) to work on. You should know your child, so be gracious about forming a practice plan that will encourage and nurture your student's learning.

Happy Practicing!

*"Inside" muscles are those muscles that create tension. Think of a body builder's pose down in a weight lifting competition. The body builder leans forward and makes his or her arms tighten the muscles on the inside of the arms. This squeezing causes all the arm muscles, shoulder muscles, chest muscles, and abdomen muscles to appear. "Outside" muscles are the other sides of the muscles. These muscles cause the tension to dissipate. If a body builder were to turn on the "outside" muscles, the arms would lift out to the sides, and the other muscles would not be showing. If I find tension, I help guide the student to turn on outside muscles instead of inside muscles. This one teaching area is probably the issue where I address most of my teaching time and focus because it affects tone and sound quality, good form, and musicality.

O Come Little Children

This song is the fifth song in Suzuki Violin Volume 1 and part of the beginning songs and skills of volume 1. The song is a German Christmas carol and falls on the heels of “Go Tell Aunt Rhody,” the “dessert” song (see my previous post about Aunt Rhody and dessert songs here). The song introduces new concepts and reinforces previously learned skills.

Left Hand Skills

• The song is in A major and follows the previously learned Twinkle finger pattern of close 2-3 fingers.

• The song reinforces the independent use of the 2^nd and 3^rd fingers learned in Lightly Row and Song of the Wind.

• The song “reviews” the spatial relationship between the 1^st and 3^rd fingers learned in Song of the Wind but in a different combination and order of fingers.

• The song introduces a “pocket finger” and another opportunity to build independence between both sides of the student’s body. (see my previous post about pocket fingers here).

Right Hand Skills

• The song contains a lot of string crossings in irregular and complex patterns.

• The song introduces the up bow pickup note.

• The song introduces the repeated up bow in a manner that allows for a thinking pause. The phrase ends with an up bow, and the new phrase begins with an up bow pickup note after a rest).

How I Teach the Song

• I introduce the beginning of the song as part of my continuing ear training work. I have the student turn around and we play the “mystery song” game.

• I play the E string once and ask the student to play it back. Then I play the E string twice and ask for the student to echo me. Then I play E-E-C#.

• I do not worry whether the student starts up  bow or down bow for now because in a minute it will not matter.

• I ask the student to play E-E-C# two times. (See why it does not matter? The student will now have practiced playing it down bow and up bow, just as it is in the song).

• By this point the student is beginning to think they might know the song and have heard it before. So I let them explore it a little. They often figure out the next two or three notes by themselves. I mostly step in to help around the last three notes of the phrase.

• Now that the student is able to play the first phrase of the song. I tell them that the first part happens twice.

• I make sure to mark the student’s book so that the up bows are clearly indicated in the music. Sometimes the markings are unclear for the parents.

• Now I introduce the song as an up bow song. I do not worry about where the student starts the up bow. I will refine this skill later. For now, I just stick to the “larger” skills required to play the song. We will refine things as we go. Many times students figure out a lot of what they need to do just by getting familiar with the song.

• I usually do not need to do much to help a student remember how to play the first two phrases. I find that students will gradually add on a few notes to the song until finally they have figured it all out for themselves. I very seldom have to help students pick out the notes to the song at this point. All of our ear training work in Go Tell Aunt Rhody and in group classes has taken root. I just mark one or two “key” notes with a fingering and tell my student that the parent has my permission to give this fingering “hint” if my student needs it, but ONLY if my student needs it.

• I mark the F# at the end of the 3^rd phrase because students usually miss it and because I want parents to be ultra-vigilant here that my students keep their left hands up in the correct playing position and do not sag beneath the finger board.
• I also mark the C# in the 4^th phrase, because students try to play a D instead. I want to keep students from “practicing” this mistake by repeating it too many times.

Later Problems (or just later)

• Students may tip the left hand over to the E string side when playing the pocket finger F# at the end of the 3^rd phrase rather than holding the left hand upright while the bow dips down to the E string.

• Students forget the up bow pickup note at the beginning of the song or at the beginnings of each phrase.

• We practice this at group classes and involve parents. When we reach the end of the song, we recite, “up again!” to help us remember the up bows.

• We also play a silly game at lessons. When we reach the rest at the end of each phrase, we stop and say, “I think I’ll take another up bow!” in the silliest, goofiest voice we can muster. We have a lot of fun trying to best each other with our crazy voices.

• Students may forget the fingering in the 3rd and 4th phrases because they have double practice of the 1st (and 2nd) part every time they play the song. There are some weeks when I ask my students to play the 3rd and 4th parts 25 times each and fill out an extra incentive chart for an extra point on the studio wall chart.

• bowings and why down bow versus up bow.

• I use the song to reinforce the bow distribution skill. Play whole bows on quarter notes and half bows on eighth notes. My students like to label the frog end of the bow as their “home town.” Then we label the tip end of the bow as the neighboring town. When we play the song, we practice “driving from town to town.” This game seems to make it easier for the students to practice bow distribution.

• Sometimes we play the song backwards and start with a down bow and do double down bows at the end of each phrase. This is more of an intellectual exercise than anything at this early stage of violin learning, but it is interesting.

• Students who have been using the pinkie finger can substitute it for the E string in the song and avoid the string crossings, which could be part of a lesson plan about fingering choices.

• The Suzuki duet part is lovely, and the song is popular in our studio in the fall because it is a Christmas song. We usually include it in any holiday performance we give.

Although O Come Little Children introduces many new skills and concepts, it still resembles a “dessert” song in a way (like Minuet 2). The students genuinely enjoy learning and performing this song. It is a lovely melody and interesting to play. The song may be tricky, but because the students love it so much, I have an easy and fun time teaching this song.