Let's Do a Twinkle Challenge!

Most of us had a holiday break recently. Family outings, travel, and social occasions may have tugged us away from our good intentions of regular and consistent practice. I sympathized with any of my students who reported a dismal practice record over the holiday break. I struggled myself to find personal practice time and energy to accomplish anything other than staying on top of my performance commitments.

So, I propose that we find a way to get ourselves on track, and what better way to do that than a Twinkle Challenge! Here are some ways to do a Twinkle Challenge:

• Play through the Twinkle, Twinkle Variations every day. Focus on correct execution of articulation and intonation while maintaining correct posture.
• Play through the Twinkle, Twinkle Variations at the next lesson, or perhaps the first lesson of each month for the next three months.
• As students progress through the Suzuki repertoire, add appropriate challenges for the students' levels. I will make a few suggestions below to whet your creativity.

Here are a few basic ideas for challenging violin students as they improve in skill and ability development.

Book 1:

• Play the variations on different strings.
• Play the variations in G major, as suggested in one of my earlier blog articles (click here to read more).
• Play a new Twinkle variation by using a new bowing style. For example, try playing Variation D with down-up-up, down-up-up bows, as in the bowing style used in the first measure of Minuet 1.
• Use left hand pizzicato to pluck all the open E and A strings and play the other notes with the bow. This is a great pinky strengthener.

Books 2 and 3:

• Play the variations in D or A minor, to mirror the finger patterns found in "The Two Grenadiers" and Lully's "Gavotte."
• Play the variations in Bb, starting on Bb, as in the middle section of Mignon's "Gavotte."
• Play a new variation using a bowing suggested by Paganini's "Theme" from "Witches' Dance." This variation example is actually found in book 2 already.

Books 4 and above:

• Play the variations starting with up bow. The variations should sound as good as they would if played with a starting down bow.
• Play the variations in higher positions or with shifts to stay on one string.

This is certainly not an exhaustive list but one to get you started thinking. I have done Twinkle challenges in the past, and I was amazed at how well the studio students sounded when we revisited the Twinkle Variations on a regular basis.

Happy Practicing!

----- Paula -----

© 2017 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

Monday Morning Check In: The Quarterly Report

Written by Paula E. Bird ©2013

We are entering week nine of the third month of 2013. Take out your 9th penny (what is this?). This is the month that will complete the first quarter of the year 2013. It is time to check in with yourself to see whether you are on track with your annual plan. We have four more weeks before the quarter official ends, so there is still time to do some tweaking here and there to get back on track if you have strayed.

There are reasons why quarterly reports are important in the business world. The SEC requires these unaudited reports from public companies as a matter of law. Quarterly reports provide investors with important information regarding the financial health of a company and its growth and earnings potential. Quarterly reports help business managers keep companies on the course needed to be healthy. Quarterly reports help managers pinpoint areas that need improvement. The business world knows that quarterly reports are valuable tools when it comes to measuring progress toward goals and predicting future problems or success.

Quarterly reports are also useful for individuals. The Best Year Yet folks refer to this concept as quarterly milestones. I set up some quarterly milestones to help me stay focused on my goals as the year progressed. I took the time to set up a few checkpoints along my yearly path, so that I could check in at those points and see how I was doing or alter my course of action to bring myself back to the place that I needed to be.

If you have not set some quarterly milestones, why not take a few moments this week to do so? Give a little thought to where you would like to be at the end of each quarter this year. Then note this information on your calendar so that you see where you wanted to be on those dates.

If you have already set up quarterly milestones, then think about where you are now in terms of this first quarter. Do you need to make some adjustments to get back on track? It is alright if you have drifted off course a bit. It is better that you make that discovery now and recalibrate yourself than to let another month go by while you head off in a direction that you do not want to go. If you have lost sight of where you wanted to be, take this week to consider how you might get yourself back on track.

March is an important month with regard to annual goal plans, because typically many folks have already given up on their New Year's Resolutions by this point. January was a month that was full of new possibilities. February was a month that was full of temptations to break resolutions (it is hard work to start new habits!). Now March is upon us, and many of us in the United States can look forward to a spring or winter break in another week or so. If we have lost some of our momentum by this point, then a break in the routine will derail us for sure.

Knowing that the March break will be here in a short time, let us at least set ourselves up so that we begin the break from the highest point of success. Let us renew our commitment to our annual plans or goals and get started again.

Remember that ninth penny you removed from the penny jar? How many pennies are left?

Remember the old Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie, Swing Time? Here are some of the lyrics from the famous song in that movie, written by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields, which help me remember to stay the course:

Nothing's impossible, I have found 

For when my chin is on the ground, 

I pick myself up, 

Dust myself off, 

And start all over again. 

Don't lose your confidence 

If you slip. 

Be grateful for a pleasant trip. 

And pick yourself up, 

Dust yourself off, 

And start all over again. 

And here's the link to the movie clip:  Fred and Ginger sing the song.

This is the first full week of the month, and we are doing a Twinkle Variations review in my studio to help us prepare for our spring break. Click here to learn more about this.

Twinkles Week

The first lessons of a new month occur next week as we head into October. So I hearby declare that next week is Twinkles Week.

I ask all of my students to review Twinkles with me. I have reminded them that we will do this during their lessons this past week. For some of my young students, that is what we are working on anyway, but for my older students, this will involve a revisit down Twinkle Lane.

I listen for all sorts of things in my students' sound and playing depending on the level of maturity and advancement. For example, I would expect much more sophisticated use of the bow in a book 6 student than a book 1 student.

Here is an article I wrote previously about the types of things that I look for when playing Twinkles: Twinkle Points.

Other possible challenges for more advanced students could include using vibrato, playing in higher positions, transposing the song into different keys, starting up bow, playing spiccato or sautillé.

For younger students who can already play the Twinkle Variations straight through, I look to see that the main teaching points are still in place. If a book 1 student is getting near to book 2, then I watch that the student is beginning to incorporate more bow usage. If the student can play each of the Twinkle Variations individually but not as a whole, then I work to see if we can play through the first two or three variations without a break. Eventually my first mini-goal will be to play through variations A-C without stopping, but this may take a few lessons before the student has built up the stamina necessary to do this. Once the student has passed the variations A-C hurdle, I generally find that the student can then play through all the Twinkle Variations without problems.

Also for my book 1 violin students, I teach them how to play the variations along with the piano accompaniment. This is difficult for some students and takes a few lessons to master.

Let me know about some of your favorite ways to practice, review, or use the Twinkle Variations.