In teacher training with Ed Kreitman a few summers ago, I learned about the meaning of “right side up” and “up side down” students. A right side up student, according to Kreitman, would possess technical capabilities far beyond their own working piece. On the other hand, and “upside down student” is working piece far beyond their own technical capabilities.

The other night I witnessed Christian Tetzlaff perform four of the six Bach Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin in one recital! Though Bach’s solo works for violin contain some of the most difficult elements of violin playing, it is abundantly obvious Mr. Tetzlaff’s technical ability is so expansive that he has the bandwidth to perform four in sequence with incredible musical endurance and sensitivity. Tetzlaff has played Bach for decades, has recorded repertoire from Vivaldi to Berg, and regularly performs to filled halls. He is also critically aware of his own capabilities as a concert violinists, and can reliably perform programs without faltering. His presentation of solo Bach the other night was an extreme example of “right-up-ship.”

Imagine, as a contrasting example, a student who isn’t even technically capable of playing Twinkle with good posture, intonation, or tone, attempting to navigate Gossec Gavotte. Not only are their skills underdeveloped, they are exacerbating the issue by playing a piece so technically out of their league. What is usually the most problematic about “upside down students” however is that they think they are successfully on track. They think because they did the work of note learning to get from Twinkle to Gossec Gavotte, that they are as accomplished as any person playing Gossec Gavotte. In other words they have the same mindset as Christian Tetzlaff, but none of the skill.

“Upside down students” dangerously measure success by the boxed number above each Suzuki piece in the repertoire books. The further they are in the book, the better they think they are. [Read more…]

Ed Kreitman broadly thinks about Suzuki Book 1-4 with the following overarching goals.

Book 1: Balanced Posture
Book 2: Tone
Book 3: Musicality
Book 4: Virtuosity

So for in my teaching career, these guideposts have been incredibly helpful.

To think about Book 1 through the lens of posture allows me to stay focused, easily assess my success, and give appropriate feedback to my students. I know when to move on because I’ve assigned (or borrowed Kreitman’s assignment) purpose to the book. If I don’t accomplish balanced posture in Book 1, there is no way I can layer tone, musicality, and virtuosity onto my student’s sets of skills. [Read more…]

One of the group class experiences I enjoyed the most was advanced group with Tim Washecka and Kristi Manno in middle school.

Before their studio later grew in size and age, there were just three of us who would show up on a Saturday afternoon to do wild and crazy violin things. Or at least I thought so at the time.

Tim and Kristi guided us through three octave scales, taught us harmony parts by ear, tested our (non-existent) sight reading abilities, and allowed us to teach each other. (It was in preparing for one of those teaching moments that I think I knew I wanted to be a teacher, but that is a blog post for another day…)

I loved that technique because I felt myself being stretched. With only three people, there was nowhere to hide. My violin playing was under scrutiny at every instant, but that scrutiny illuminated progress week to week to week.

Fast forward ten years, and I find myself teaching an advanced groups class at Ithaca College. As part of my graduate school responsibilities I hold a scales class for all of the freshman and sophomores in my studio. In many ways, this class closely resembles the one I loved so much in middle school. It is young, small (just five people), and designed to stretch. [Read more…]

The following are strategies I used while working with the violinists at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp. My goal was to make them as confident of players as possible in the short amount of time we had.

• Learn names. It is so important to me to learn the name of every one of my students on the first day. Not only is it respectful to them, but it is imperative that I know how to call each student out to check understanding, address bad behavior, and highlight good work. I’ll talk about how I learn names so quickly in a different post, but I make sure that by the end of the day I can say bye to every individual by using their name.
• Discuss posture on day one. Posture is the one aspect of violin playing that will literally affect every other aspect of playing. One cannot play in tune, with beautiful sound quality, with good time, in an artistic way for any length of time without first having good posture. I emphasize the fact we have posture standards because over the violin’s 400 year history we’ve figured out the EASIEST and SAFEST way to play. Me giving them posture guidelines is really just a shortcut to success. And here are some of those guidelines…
• Count off only once all of the bows are set. I wouldn’t begin an exercise until all of the bows were set in the string. This ensured they were started together and everyone was focused.
• Stare at people who are talking/not paying attention. I discussed this in the post in getting attention, but sometimes the most effective way to address talking is to go silent and stare. Students will sense there is something amiss almost immediately.
• Alternate between playing and not playing with the group. Some of the most beneficial moments for the group was when they would just play the part along with me. Having a strong leader to play with was sometimes enough to really improve a section, but doing that alone does not build student independence. It was important for me to take breaks from playing, to invite students to take leadership roles and to give myself enough space to provide effective feedback.
• Assess understanding by having smaller groups play. I think one of our common faults as teachers is that we are scarred to single out students to gauge understanding. I tried to resist this fear in sectionals, and to call on individuals and small groups to play solos for the whole section. For example, if the whole group was working on a chromatic scale I would call a few students out by name (not volunteer) to play the scale together. This runs the chance of becoming a great reinforcing experience for the child who plays well, or an equally powerful learning experience for a child who did not play well.
• Ask everyone in the class something every day. I wanted every student in my section to know they were seen. I tried everyday to ask at least one question to one student. The question could be about the music, their life, or life in general.
• Steal music from the other sections to play along with. Sectionals are great for working out the musical details of a certain part, but an aspect of recontextualizing the details is having student’s play the part while other parts are playing.
• Have students audiate, sing, then play. I was brace and asked 11 year olds to do this with me. Most were on board with taking a break from their violins, and practicing internal pitch making. The resellers after having student’s do this we’re incredivle! The hardest part of this strategy is to remember to do it.
• Simple exercises. It was difficult to try and build skills outside of repertoire in such a short amount of time. I would let issues from the repertoire guide us to doing a handful of short, challenging but fun exercises.
  • Rhythm fingers. Students would start by playing four quarter notes on their A string while I hold up one finger. When I switch to two fingers they play four beats of eighth notes. When I switch to four fingers they play sixteenths, and when I went to three they would play triplets. I would switch up the order, give them less and less time to react, and increase the tempo as they got better at the exercise. It really helped them learn the feeling of switching to different rhythmic units while reading music.
  • String Crossing. I would use the same general concept as Rhythm Fingers, but instead give instructions to change strings. For example I would say, “Play G, D, A, E,” and they would play one quarter note on each string. I’d then switch up the order,  perhaps saying, “E, D, A, G,” and they would play it back to me. This helps them quickly recognize which string is which, practice string crossings, and developing an awareness of the four string levels.
  • Escalators. The is a Mastery For Strings exercise I picked up from Dr. Scott at The University of Texas. I would have students play a whole step and then three half steps starting on either an open string or first finger. For example, the group would play A, B, C, C#, D. This simple exercise requires students to create half steps with either their second or third finger, learn the kinesthetic difference between a whole and half step, as well as develop an aural understanding the whole versus half step. I would require near perfect intonation, and even pull kids out to decide whether the intonation was good enough–students were often harder critics than me.
  • Elevators. Also from Mastery For Strings, I would have students play a consecutive set of fingers on every string. For example, they would start on the G string playing A-B, E-F#, B-C#, F#-G# and then the same sets back down to the G string (G#-F#, C#-B, F#-E, B-A). This requires a swinging elbow, good hand frame, and quick fingers. The faster we move, the less they use block fingers and transition to using independent fingers. It is also a great bow string crossing exercise!
  • Baseball to bow hold. This is my favorite exercise to practice going from arco to pizz. With their violin in rest position.
• Bring the groups back together. A few days into sectionals we would bring the first and second violins back together for a joint rehearsal. The was a crucial step in our process as we were training students to listen to each other and listen across the orchestra. In the last few days before the concert the violin sectional teachers would also borrow music from the violists, cellists, and bassist (or just steal the conductor’s scores) in order to play the lines in sectionals. Rather than just coaching the part in a vacuum, we were able to discuss the way it related to the other string parts. Even more important, we were able to actually play the other parts and develop in our students that visceral connection to the bass line, harmony, and melody that is necessary for any sort of masterful ensemble playing.
• We aren’t looking for “perfect,” we are looking for “progress.” This is a phrase I picked up from the first orchestra conductor at Blue Lake. He said this to the entire orchestra on the first day of rehearsals, and reiterated it again and again throughout the session. The beauty is that it names what we, as teachers, rarely do — that we don’t expect perfection from our students. Our only expectation is that they work along with us to make progress. When progress is happening, we are being successful. And if we were to measure success by our degree of “perfect” then we could never consider ourselves or our students successful. Naming this from the start can assuage some of the emotional concerns that arise in the competitive, anxiety inducing, stressful world of music making.

Another role that I served at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp was teaching the Camp Bernstein violin sectionals.

The students in Camp Bernstein were the youngest on the camp — ranging from incoming 5th graders to 8th graders. Some of them were in their first year with a band or orchestra instrument. Others had been playing violin or cello since they were four years old with the Suzuki method. Most, however, had only been playing in an orchestra for one or two years, and few had ever participated in sectionals.

I had the fortune to teach violin sectionals with two other fantastic violinists. One, Elma Sanabria, is finishing up her graduate degree at the University of Alabama and has started the audition process for a DMA program. She is a fantastic player, but also has a wonderful ability to work almost as a teammate with students. They trust that she is on their side and serving their interests, and will therefore follow her advice. The other teacher was Kaitlyn Fulch, who is completing her violin performance degree at Marshall University in West Virginia. She has less experience teaching violin, but I appreciated how she took on important teaching responsibilities and pushed herself to try teaching techniques and situations that were at first uncomfortable. She really inspired me in the way she grew as a teacher over our two months at Blue Lake.

Each session we had about 30 violin students and just 11 days total to work with them.

The orchestra director would start with folders full of 10-15 pieces, and by the final Sunday they would have narrowed down the selection to 5 or 6 to be performed. Our goal as their section teachers was to make sure each violinist was as confident as possible on the music. That meant correcting posture, developing their sound quality, checking for comprehension of the sheet music itself, introducing common orchestra practices (always have a pencil!), and cultivating ensemble skills.

[Read more…]

One of my favorite things to do is zoom down the highway late at night, driving exactly six miles over the speed limit, and blast the best, most epic classical music of all time. I crank the volume, pump up the bass and sing along as best as I can.

The epics I blast include

• Mozart’s Requiem
• Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto
• Schubert’s Death and the Maiden
• Shostakovich Symphony No. 5
• Beethoven Symphony No. 7 (or 5, 4, 9 etc)
• Glass’ Koyaanisqatsi
• Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony
• Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring
• Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet
• Berlioz’ Symphonie Fantastique
• Mussorgsky’s Pictures at and Exhibition, and the
• Bach B minor Mass.

This list could go on and on and on.

I feel like it is in these moments, when I’m driving too fast and signing too hard, that I am expressing unbridled love for amazing works of art.

Belting by myself in the car feels quite different than the reflective, still silence we expect at classical music concerts. In some ways I feel that my appreciation of these wonderful pieces comes not from the refrained live concerts but from my frenetic, guttural reaction to them as I blast them on the highway. I am able to appreciate them in concert because I’ve allowed myself to respond to them naturally in the car. I let my excitement flow by singing, shouting, exclaiming, and anticipating.

My good friends have seen (tolerated) me doing this on many a car rides, and they know exactly how excited I am by pieces that are in some cases hundreds of years old. But if those friends had been sitting next to me at a classical music concert, they might not know just how wild I am about Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Schubert, et. al.

So, of course, one of my favorite things I did at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp this summer was teach the music appreciation minor. I had the privilege of sharing my unbridled excitement for works that some students had never even heard before. [Read more…]