I’ve been teaching four group classes on Zoom this academic year. Three beginner’s classes and one music appreciation class. I’d like to share a few activities I’ve been leaning on in pre twinkle classes as we continue to make music and educate through online mediums.

The theme here, of course, is that these games are primarily visual and use asynchronous sound. I can monitor and give feedback just by watching the student rather than hearing them.

Focus: bell game.

Adapted from this game. I have a Tibetan singing bowl I use to demonstrate beautiful ringing tone. Everyone is muted, they close their eyes, I ring the bell, when I stop the bell from ringing they open their eyes. I transfer the game to my instrument plucked, then bowed. Occasionally I will ask another student to share their ringing sound on their instrument– turning on their sound and muting myself.

Focus: sing the strings.

I play the first tuning recording from Step-by-step 1A. Students are instructed to sing along with the recording. We also pair this with visual gestures. E string the hands reach up, A string hands on shoulders, D string hands on knees, and G string hands on the ground. For an extension I’ll play the strings out of order and they try to figure out where their hands go.

Musical flashcards.

I write out musical symbols on flashcards. With pre-twinkle students I’m flashing things like up bow, down bow, dynamic markings, fermatas, and string names written in letter form (not notation). We’ll discuss the names of these symbols. Sometimes we’ll act them out with our bows (up and down) or with rhythms (loud and soft dynamics).

Developing dances to Suzuki pieces.

Some pieces I already have dances for. Up Like a Rocket and Allegro I use weekly. To Allegro we sing the following words.
“Head, head, ears, ears, shoulders, shoulders, toes, toes, waste, waste, knees, knees, ankles, ankles, toes.
Head, head, ears, ears, shoulders, shoulders, toes, toes, waste, waste, knees, knees, ankles, ankles, toes.
Eyes and ears and nose and tongue and head and neck and hair that grows…
Head, head, ears, ears, shoulders, shoulders, toes, toes, waste, waste, knees, knees, ankles, ankles, toes.”

Of course we touch the body part that is being sung. Embedded in the piece is watching, listening, understanding body parts, the concept of the retake, how to move quickly without tension, and a natural ritard at the end of the third line. Sometimes to extend the dance, and this could be done with other developed dances, I’ll do the dance silently along to an Allegro recording. Another option is for me to play the piece and have another student lead the dance. If you do this you can vary the speed really requiring careful listening and watching.

A nice activity can be coming up with they dance moves together in class. I use the following lyrics for Lightly Row.
“Lightly row, lightly row, up the river we will go…
Gently flowing, never slowing, in our little red canoe…
See the fishies swimming by, see the clouds up in the sky…
Gently flowing, never slowing, in our little red canoe…”

I went around the virtual room and asked each child to develop a dance move. We didn’t even need to unmute. Gently flowing has an obvious hand gesture. Fishies and clouds are easy to visualize. We end up with a nice collective dance to practice together.

Another advantage of doing this is when the levels in the class start to drift you could still engage everyone. Perhaps one student is still polishing variations of Twinkle, one student just started LR, and one student is working on GTAR. The twinkler could do the dance, the LR student could bow on their shoulder or an open string, and the GTAR student could play the piece along with you or a recording.

Fingerboard geography.

I’m certainly doing more fingerboard geography than I would do in person because it can be represented visually. I’ll share my whiteboard screen and together we will say the names of the musical alphabet. Then I’ll draw or use a pre-illustrated violin fingerboard and quiz students on where fingers go and what the letter names are of those locations.

Afterwards I leave the illustration up and we can play a scale while looking at our map.

This group of students is far exceeded my past groups in note name awareness and fluency.

Violin doctor.

Have students set their instruments down and come close to the screen. You do something ridiculous with your bow or violin posture. You can “zoom in” on this posture by simply holding your bow or violin closer to the screen. Changing the scale for them demarcates a new or different element of the class. Go around the virtual room asking students to unmute themselves and offer a cure for some posture ailment. If they are vague with their language use the latitude to change the posture but not fix it. The game challenges the students to be precise about violin posture and to immediately spot red flags and solutions.

You could play a similar game with sound. Play a few scratchy or crunchy notes and ask the students to help you play with ringing sound. What could be changed? Posture points, bow angle, bow weight, bow speed? Ask them to be specific. Allow them to witness the tremendous change in sound.

You can have students be the patients as well and kindly offer cures to each other. Sometimes doing the ‘wrong’ thing on purpose is more educational than attempting ‘right.’

Simon says.

Use the classic kid’s game to your benefit. Especially great for zoom right now because you only need your own mic turned on. Ask students to do various tricky combinations of things. Get specific about their bow hand versus violin hand, their finger numbers, their bent thumb versus straight thumb, their play position versus rest position, their tall tummy versus their slump tummy, etc.

Of course the extra focus and listening practice always helps!

5 objects on the violin.

An adaptation of this game. I have parents place objects on a few key spots on the violin while the child holds the instrument in play position. One thing on the bow highway, one on the fingerboard where the tapes are, one on the violin shoulder and a few other random places like balanced on the scroll or on the f hole. Then I’ll have students move their eyes between those places as I mention them. The object gives them something to look at, but they need to know the name of the location. After they are used to the switching I’ll ask them to maintain the gaze until I say the next one. Then I’ll have them keep their eyes in one place while I count down from 10.

If the class is ready for it I then have them move their fingers to the fingerboard or place the bow on the string and gaze steadily at that. Then can they keep their gaze there while their fingers or bow are moving? Can they do it while I distract them with an advanced piece? Or their parent distracts them with special hand signals?

Eye focus really takes training! This is a great to work on it virtually.

Musical cues.

Working over zoom requires many more verbal instructions than in person group class did. Where culture and room cues instructed students on where and how to stand, and your own posture instructed theirs, now you need to communicate verbally. But there are some ways to convert oft spoken instructions to musical cues. I’m borrowing Carey Beth Hockett’s method here.

On the first day of class I introduced an octave A to A for stand up and sit down. I also demonstrated the ascending scale was, “Please pick up your violin.” And the fifth A to E can be “Bows up, please.” Descending scale means, “Please set down your violin.” E to A is “Bows down, please.”

At first I always sang along to the plucked cues. But now they are so used to it that I could just pluck or hum the cue and they would recognize it. It serves as great ear training, requires they stay quiet and attentive through transitions, and reduces the amount of speaking I do.

At first this is also a dedicated fun game all on its own. Play the cues back to back in silly ways and they try to figure out what you are communicating. Have them pick up and put down their bow over and over again, and the suddenly ask them to sit down. They love it.

Guess my __.

Rhythm, string, piece, dynamic, etc. So many options here! The key is to give the students a break away from their instrument and have them decode what you are playing. Sometimes I’ll play a whole series and see if they can remember it and report it back to me.

This could be done verbally, but the next step would be my turn your turn playing. You could also have students quiz you or even quiz each other. This is a nice way to individuate the class, actually hear the students speak or play, and reinforce the names of rhythms, dynamics, etc. It can really feel like you are communicating with each other, even if through the screen.

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I hope this gives you some ideas! The creativity required by this pandemic can do nothing but strengthen our teaching long term. For that I am grateful.