A Student Hit Me

by Paula E. Bird

Recently during a lesson I asked a student to hit me with her bow. She did. Ouch!

I have tried to get this student to stop playing with a floppy bow hand for a long time. I have tried all sorts of pictures, analogies, and suggestions to get her to understand that her sound was soggy and floppy because her bow hand was soggy and floppy. No energy.

I tried to get the teaching point across to her by shaking her hand using a “limp fish” handshake. Then I shook hands with her using a good, firm business-like grip. The model example did not “take.” Her bow continued to flop and sag, and then she began to lean the bow stick backwards, as if she was pushing her sound away from her. Instead of connecting her musical energy through her body to the bow and ultimately onto the violin, my student was letting the energy seep out of her bow hand knuckles and dissipate into the air. How to change this?

I have been working with my student to alter this energy use for about a year now with no success. I finally became desperate, and out of the land of desperation, many wonderful ideas are born.

At her last lesson, I became desperate to try anything to bring awareness. I explained the problem: her hand was bleeding energy out into the air rather than directing it to her bow hand and the violin. I talked about the 4 types of energy flows and used the descriptions from Ed Kreitman’s book, Teaching with an Open Heart (2010):

Push

Pull

Stop/Block

Allow

My lesson about energy was an easy one with this particular student because her mother’s business is about working with other people’s animals. Since my student is home-schooled, she is able to join her mother often and learn how to work with the animals. We discussed the different types of energy and its effect on dogs, because that is the most familiar experience for this particular student. Pomeranians have more energy; old Labradors have less. That sort of thing.

Ed Kreitman’s book is an excellent resource book for teachers. It is worth every penny. The book contains a beautiful description of energy and the role that energy plays in our approach to the musical instrument and to the creation of our musical expression. The illustrations are very clear, and often once I have shown the pictures to my students, they seem to grasp so much more quickly the teaching point that I am trying to make. I highly recommend that teachers read this book to aid the teaching of musicality and playing with musical expression. For more information about the book, you can order the book through Ed Kreitman's website shop here: http://www.wsste.com/. The book is also available through the Suzuki association website, suzukiassociation.org.

So here is how I got the teaching point across to my student.

"Hit me with your bow," I told her.

She looked at me blankly.

"Hit me with your bow," I insisted.

Whack!

Ouch!

Success!

Her bow hold altered! Her grip or hold had more substance. She directed energy to the bow and ultimately to the side of my head where she hit me. That was what I intended. I wanted her to form an intention to direct her energy to a certain point -- me. From there I showed her what she had done and how the bow hold energy changed, and how it looked.

Light bulb moment! For the first time I think my student "got it." She immediately changed her approach to the bow. She did not squeeze anything tighter; she merely garnered her body's energy to one focal point on her bow and then from her bow to the violin. Instead of letting the intentional energy leak out of her hand into the air, my student focused it into the instrument.

And her sound was fabulous! Gorgeous, focused, and clear! Lovely bow hold posture.

Although I would not advocate a student hitting a teacher (or vice versa), in this case the lesson was perfect!

Happy Practicing!

----- Paula ----- 

© 2016 by Paula E. Bird

Making Music with a Twinkle Circle

As a teacher, I struggle with how to teach my students about making music. What does it mean to be musical? How do I teach them about making phrases and connecting the performer's heart and soul with the listener? It seems that however I approach the subject, I lack a connection of insight and understanding with my students. They do not seem to "get it." I explain. I demonstrate. I play examples of fine performances from famous artists. Still, I do not get the response that I desire from everyone. Occasionally I will see a student play "from the heart," but as a whole, I do not get the results that I seek. And then one day, I found the answer!

I showed my students how musicality feels. I let my students feel the experience of making music and feeling others make music. We created the Twinkle Circle.

Let me digress for a moment to attribute this idea to the various sources and roots of my thinking. I have been thinking a long time now about the use of energy. I raise nine miniature dachshunds in my home, and I have a horse, several donkeys, 13 alpacas, and ten chickens. These different creatures respond to different energy approaches, as do different human personalities. I draw my ideas about musical energy from Cesar Milan (The Dog Whisperer), Pat Parelli (The Horse Whisperer), and Edward Kreitman's book, Teaching with an Open Heart. Of course, there are so many possible sources of an idea, but these are the big three that influenced much of my thought in this area.

Music is vibration in the air. Vibration in the air is an expression of energy. We can feel this as well as hear it. We can see the vibrations when we look at our violin strings while we play. When we go to a rock concert, we can feel the rhythmic pulsations. As a seasoned professional musician, I know that we connect our performance of musical energy with our listener. A good performer knows how to do this. How many times have we listened to a "flat" performance from a concert artist? We know that the performance was good; after all, the performer dazzled us with pyrotechnical technique. However, something did not quite "sing" or resonate with our inner being.

I have thought a long time about these questions. As I worked with my animals, I noticed how easily they responded to my use of energy. In this case, when I refer to "energy," I am referring to a definiteness of purposeful motion of some kind. I can stand my ground and block a dog's food bowl just by "claiming" the bowl as my own in my head. I can create a musical phrase by connecting the musical line with my listener. I can feel the zing of my listeners' heart strings when they connect with my musical vibration, and I can weave a musical, magical moment between us.

As I explored these ideas with my students in group classes and lessons, I finally tried out a simple exercise to help my students to begin to feel the energy of musical purpose in the air. We often form a circle in group class just because it eliminates a sense of hierarchy (youngest to oldest) and brings everyone into the same plane in a way. And here is how I used my Twinkle Circle to help my students feel the music:

• I played a "flat" Twinkle theme that was devoid of expression. Then I played a more musical rendition, where I increased the intensity/volume slightly to mirror the direction that the notes went (ascending notes increased in intensity and descending notes decreased). My students heard the difference! They preferred the more beautiful version.
• We played the theme together. As we increased our intensity and volume, we slowly walked toward the center of the circle. We could feel the increasing energy of the other members of the circle as we crept toward each other, and we felt the ebb of energy as we backed away from each other as a phrase ended.
• We played Lightly Row and Aunt Rhody using the same technique. If we thought we should include an "echo" place, then we quickly stepped back to our starting position to indicate the diminished volume.
• When we got to Long, Long Ago, a curious thing happened. We played the first two measures with a growing intensity, then we began to ebb our energy in measure three as the musical line descended in pitch. However, in measure four, there is another "beginning" to the phrase. My students recognized that little "bump in the road" by stepping forward again toward the center of the circle and then creeping backward. I was amazed that they recognized this musical device. In fact, at this point, I was amazed again and again as my students eagerly looked for ways to step into or away from the circle to represent the musical lines.
• Then we played Twinkle theme again but stood in our initial position. Instead of walking away from and toward each other, we played in a way that made each other feel the same energetic ebb and flow that we had created earlier through collapsing and expanding our circle.
• At this point, since my group classes currently include students of all levels from book 1 through the more advanced books, I took the exercise through several other book levels. We played Two Grenadiers and Gavotte in G Minor. We considered how we would do the exercise in the Vivaldi Concerto in A Minor.
• I used this same exercise in my university studio seminar class. We began with Twinkle theme, and then I performed the same exercise with each student individually on one of the student's repertoire pieces: Mozart's Concerto No. 5 (2nd movement), Bach's D Minor Allemande, Handel's Sonata No. 4 in D Major (1st movement), and so on.

This Twinkle Circle exercise produced amazing results for me. My university students play with more musicality now than I have previously heard from them. My private students sound lovely in lessons, and a group ensemble piece is exquisite to hear.

My favorite reaction from the experience was to watch the mothers' faces in the waiting area during that first group class experiment. The mothers' mouths hung wide open as they heard the most beautiful Twinkle Theme that we have ever played.