Étude Concentration Game

A young student and I put together a memory concentration game for Étude in Suzuki Violin Volume 1. We followed the format of the free download about peanut butter sandwiches, which can be found at the Practice Shoppe.

We made up a flash card for each snippet or phrase of the song and laid out our cards in the following array:

We put a number for each card on the reverse side so that we would know what order the song pieces came, in case we dropped the pile of cards on the way home from the studio.

My student has worked to pick out the notes that the cards represent,  and she had pretty much figured out by ear what the notes of the song were. There were a few sticky spots. Here is how we found the cards to be useful.

As my student worked through the song, I turned over those cards that I thought she had learned well enough that she would no longer need to refer to the card. What was then left on display were those portions of the song that needed more work, as you see:

My student can now focus on the remaining cards until she is able to turn them over as well.

We also thought of other ways to play with this game. We thought of organizing the array in a different display format, such as top-to-bottom or right-to-left column. The possibilities can be as many as we can invent.

Using a spaced repetition technique, every few days my student can attempt to play the song without reference to the notes side of the card. Any cards she forgets, she can leave up for a review on the n next day.

I generally do not like to encourage note cards like this, but I accept that this song can be elusive for some students to figure out by ear alone. This little game made the task fun!

Until next time,

Happy Practicing!

----- Paula -----

© 2018 by Paula E. Bird

Hidden Scales

Scales are an important part of a musician's diet. We need to do them every day, and we never quite perfect them. When we are familiar with scales and their finger patterns, we read music easier, we perform musical passages more adroitly, and we can memorize structure easier.

I have long puzzled over why students struggle with certain passages in the Bach's book 1 Minuets, or even other pieces in the repertoire, such as Bach's Bourree or Martini's Gavotte in Book 3 or Vivaldi's Concerto in A Minor in book 4. Then one day it hit me that students struggled with learning and memorization in these pieces because they tripped over the hidden scales.

Let me take a classic example in Bach's Bourrée from book 3, the last song in the book. In measures 5 and 6, students take a while to figure out the notes here until I dissect them. Here is the passage:

Bach's Bourrée (Violin Book 3)

 Here is what I teach them. First, I show them how to play these two notes:

Bourrée 2-note snippet

This is not difficult for the students at this point, because we encountered and worked over this spot in the grace notes of Gossec's Gavotte at the end of book 1. We play this little passage of two-note combinations a few times until the student is "easy" with it.

Then I ask the students to play these two notes (during the rests) while I play these other notes in between:

Bourrée's Hidden Scale

When we do the two parts together, we get the original passage. My next step is to teach the student to play the hidden scale passage that I played, and we then switch parts.

After the student is able to play this last step, then the student seems to have no problems putting both snippets together and playing the passage as written. This same hidden scale passage appears later on the A and D strings as well.

There are many instances of hidden scales throughout the Suzuki repertoire, and if the teacher and student were to spend a few moments studying it, these passages would be easier to remember and memorize. Here are a few more examples.

Vivaldi Concerto in A Minor, Movement I (Violin Book 4)

In Vivaldi's Concerto in A Minor, first movement, there is a great example of a hidden scale on the second page:

Vivaldi Concerto in A Minor (Violin Book 4)

When we dissect this passage to find the hidden scale, we find this:

Vivaldi Concerto's Hidden Scale

There are many more hidden scale examples in this concerto, and finding all of them may help a student lock in the notes in the student's memory.

Martini Gavotte (Violin Book 3)

In Martini's Gavotte in the beginning of violin book 3, we find this passage right before the last recapitulation of the theme:

Martini Gavotte (Violin Book 3)

When we dissect this passage to find the hidden scales, we find all of these scales:

1st scale

2nd scale

3rd scale

4th scale

Here is the entire hidden scale passage:

Martini's Hidden Scales

There are many such scale passages throughout the repertoire, and these hidden scales make a great quest for students to find throughout the music. This assignment could also be the subject of specific review requests ("find the hidden scales in this review song").

Happy Practicing!

----- Paula -----

© 2016 by Paula E. Bird

Banana Peels, Jumping Horses, and Lint Picking

As a teacher I enjoy how there are different "seasons" for the skills that we learn and sharpen in our Suzuki repertoire. Today I wanted to write about three of my favorites: banana peels, jumping horses, and lint picking.

Banana Peels

I like the banana peel analogy for several reasons. First, most folks are familiar with what happens when someone steps on a banana peel. I think every child who has seen a cartoon or two has probably run across this phenomenon: step on a banana peel, and whoopsies! Slip and fall! Now I like to talk about Alfred Hitchcock, the master of cinematic suspense, and it is also fun because many of my little students have not yet watched any of Hitchcock's classic films. This will be an adventure for them at a later time, as it was for me when I was younger. For now though, students can understand the difference between a surprise and suspense.

Surprise is quick and sudden. Suspense is longer and involves a lot of anticipation. Surprise is when someone suddenly slips on a banana peel. Suspense, the way that Hitchcock would have shown it, is a man walking quickly down the street, a banana peel shown to the audience as lying in wait, back to the man striding quickly, cutaway to the banana peel, and so forth. The observers know what is going on but the actor does not. The audience leans forward trying to silently convey to the actor what lies ahead in his path, but of course, the actor is oblivious. That is suspense.

We use the banana peel suspense and surprise story to address the fermate in "Allegro" and "Andantino" in Suzuki violin book 1. We create stories and decide whether to portray suspense or surprise, and then we alter our playing accordingly to tell that part of the story. In the case of these two songs, my students usually opt to do a sudden stop ("surprise!") and then a short pause ("suspense!).

My favorite "banana peel" place is in the "Gavotte" from "Mignon" in Suzuki violin volume 2. There is a middle portion of the song that challenges our students to learn how to play correctly and in tune in the key of Bb (measures 35-46). Interspersed throughout these measures are some opportunities for students to imitate banana peel slips and surprises. Because the music continues without any stops or waits, these banana peels are surprises to imitate in the music.

During the rests in measures 35 and 39, the students lift up their bows in a follow through motion to imitate a "slip and fall" because of stepping on a banana peel. In measures 37-38 and 41-42, the bowing is articulated with dots and slurs, and here my students practice putting in lots of banana peel slips and falls:

Measures 35-43

Jumping Horses

The jumping horses place I refer to is in measures 25-26 and 29-30 in "Hunters' Chorus" by C. M. v Weber in Suzuki Violin book 2:

Jumping Horses

Here my students and I try to imitate horses jumping over a fence. We lift our bows after playing each staccato A string. This exercise and the way that my students and I practice it will help us later to execute lifts in the Seitz concertos and in Veracini's "Gigue" in book 5. For now, we have fun jumping our horses "over the fence."

Lint Picking

For the lint picking exercise, I am working to strengthen my students' abilities to play collé. This is a very useful bowing skill and adds a lot of character to the bowing articulation when we use it. We can use this bowing in many different songs, from the pickup notes of Martini's "Gavotte" in book 3 to Bach's unaccompanied Gavotte II and Veracini's "Gigue"  in book 5.

First we work to make sure that the fingers can properly execute "finger motion," which is a drawing into the hand of the pinkie and ring fingers. Many students think of finger motion as some sort of rolling of the bow stick within the thumb and fingers, but I prefer that the thumb be mostly inactive in this exercise (other than bending more). We often start with a pencil, which is lighter, and help to shape and guide the bow hand fingers to draw into the hand with the pencil. Here is a short video to illustrate the finger motion with a pencil:

Later as the student gets more comfortable with this exercise, we will graduate to trying it with the bow itself, holding the bow upright to lessen the pull of gravity and to lighten the feel of the bow within the bow hand. Here I am showing how to use the motion with the bow:

When we transfer this finger motion ability to use on the violin, we pretend that there is some lint stuck to the strings. We use our finger motion to draw the bow toward the lint as if we were trying to brush it off. Here I am showing how to brush lint off the violin with a flick of the finger motion:

I hope you enjoy the Banana Peels, Jumping Horses, and Lint Picking ideas that we use in our studio! Please leave me a comment and let me know your favorite games and ideas for these spots in the Suzuki songs or these bow skills.

Until next time,

Happy Practicing!

----- Paula -----

© 2016 by Paula E. Bird

Help! I Can't Do it All!!!

Everyone gets so busy about this time, and things get out of hand with the slippery, illusory sense of control and being on top of things. So how can we stay on top of it all? How can we stay connected and engaged with the things that really matter in our Suzuki journey? This month I suggest that we turn our focus in the studio and in home practices on scheduling, priorities, and focus. How?

Shrink Down the Focus and Priority

First, let us shrink down the area of focus and priority and tie ourselves to the familiar. What I mean by that is that we "ground ourselves" with something that we know and can do well. For example, we could use the Twinkle Variations for this purpose, which will work quite well for most of us if we already know them. Let us start with that this week and really shore up the skills contained in them. Let these gems of knowledge about skill and ability really perk us up about our standards and help remind us of how far we have come since the beginning of our Suzuki journey. Here is a previous article about some of the teaching points that we can focus on as we review our Twinkles, and I include tips about helping more advanced students as well as inexperienced students:

Twinkles Week

Twinkles Teaching Points (June Practice Challenge)

I have also begun to add a review of Twinkles for my later book 1 students, where I teach them how to play the variations in G major and using the new "low" second finger pattern found in Etude and the 2-octave G major scale. This new way of reviewing Twinkles is another great way to reinforce the new finger pattern as well as introduce the subject of transposing, which we will then revisit in book 2 with Long, Long Ago and the new Bb pattern in Gavotte from "Mignon."

Pre-Twinkle Ideas

For Pre-Twinklers, why not do a grounding exercise related to the setup steps to be ready to play? Or, why not set an assignment of making a certain number of "perfect" bow holds each week? Here is a link to my previous article about setup steps:

Steps to Putting the Violin on the Shoulder

Here is a link to another article I wrote about introducing the bow hold to a beginner. You will find lots of pictures here!

How to Start a Beginner, part 2 (Holding the Bow)

To help you with Pre-Twinkle or beginning students, I made a short (under 4 minutes) recording of how I get ready to play that I am willing to share with you. In this recording I go through the steps from rest position and taking a bow to getting ready to play. The purpose of this recording is to help the parent, practice partner, and student build a practice routine of how to get ready to play. I hope you enjoy:

Let's Get Ready to Play!

If you have any comments, suggestions, or ideas about how you like to practice this routine, please comment below. I am always looking for things to add to my teaching repertoire, and I appreciate all the creative ideas that many other parents, students, and teachers discover. Please share if you are willing.

So until next time,

Happy Practicing!

----- Paula -----

© 2016 by Paula E. Bird

Thanksgiving Game

Here is a short video that I made today of one of my young students, who came up with a great idea to help himself remember various skills in Gossec's Gavotte:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RZ2uspoa1w

Happy Thanksgiving!

Getting Ready for the book 1 Minuets

Written by Paula E. Bird ©2013

Up to this point in our discussion about teaching and learning the Suzuki Violin repertoire in book 1, I have systematically gone through the pieces and analyzed them into four areas:

• left hand
• right hand
• how to preview or teach
• later problems (or just later for advanced students, group class, or review ideas)

At this point, everyone has most likely figured out how to teach students new songs, and students may be approaching the point when they learn to read music as well. So, I will not go into detail about that. Lately I have used very large index cards (the largest that they make) to list the fingering on the cards for the practice parent, and I anticipate that my students will look at the cards to some extent as they learn the new pieces. Since I have worked diligently on developing my students' aural skills and abilities to play by ear, I am not worried that my students will lose any of their aural or listening skills by referring to a card. My students will learn to read shortly, since I usually introduce reading materials that are age-appropriate at the end of book 1.

We have also engaged in reading preparation activities from the very beginning of lessons by referring to the symbols in the book, such as down bow and up bow indications, repeat signs, fermatas, and by discussing other words that we find in the songs, such as ritard, forte, and other dynamic markings. My students may also look at the way a piece looks, and we discuss the form of songs. Students are likely able to compare the way two phrases look and determine whether the notes look the same or dissimilar. Since I expect my students to play the songs without having to refer to music or a card, and as long as the parents play the reference recordings at home on a daily basis, I am confident that my students' aural abilities will remain strong.

So at this point in the learning progression, I focus more on the skills to be developed with each new song in the repertoire. I have several questions that I think about routinely as my students enter into the world of the Bach/Petzold Minuets:

• What skills are to be developed?
• What tricky bits will challenge the students?
• What supplemental exercises or repertoire could I use to shore up the technical challenges that students face?
• How can I reinforce the learning in group classes?
• Was this skill introduced gently in earlier repertoire?
• Will this skill be revisited in later repertoire?

I find that if I approach each song in the Suzuki repertoire with these questions, I will find my answers about how to teach the material to my students. Even now, after so many decades of teaching with the Suzuki Method, I still make new discoveries, often with the help of my students! I am sad to hear so many parents or teachers complain about how tired they are of playing or reviewing the "same old thing." The Suzuki repertoire is a collection of wonderful music, and each child sounds different when playing the songs. I can listen to Twinkles all day long because the students never play the Twinkles in the same way. There is an individuality about each student's playing that will never cease to interest me. Each student presents individual challenges and approaches to music and expressive playing. Each student comes to lessons with a different environment and different family situation than other students. Even students within the same household present unique responses to the learning. No student is the same as another, and that fact is a beautiful thing for teachers and parents to embrace and enjoy.

In the next areas of discussion about the later Suzuki repertoire, I will approach the songs with the philosophical overlay I have discussed above as well as the questions I raised earlier. Between us, we will be able to come up with a plan to address teaching and learning concerns with the later Suzuki repertoire.

Let us start with the first Minuet in Suzuki Violin Volume 1. What challenges have you faced with your students or children? Leave a comment below, and we will tackle these issues in the coming weeks.