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.
I’ve core purpose of the class is to instill a habitual Daily Rigorous Routine (DRR) in the practicing life of my students. The DRR — in our case a scale sequence and a double stop chord progression — is the playground in which we can make real technical progress. By learning a scale well enough to not think about it we then use it to actually practice violin playing such as shifting or tone. In other words we learn scales to then practice technique, not learn technique by merely playing scales.
Since we established the scale sequence and chord progression last semester, our class flow this semester is as follows…
– unpack, tune
– DRR: perform one scale sequence and progression (key drawn out of hat)
– personal feedback
– I introduce a new technical concept which we layer onto our routine
There are two parts of our classroom flow that I want to dwell on.
First I’ll emphasize the importance of feedback from me and peers in this group setting. The feedback portion of our class is where real change happens.
I invite the collective to comment on one student’s performance of the scale. They identify an aspect of their peer’s violin playing they see room for improvement in. Then we workshop ways to make that improvement happen in front of our own eyes by giving rapid instructions and having the player experimentally practice in front of us.
Tweaks to posture, body balance, muscles engaged, and focus can yield incredible changes in an individual’s playing. Of course I follow up that change with exaggerated enthusiasm to cement in the change.
These ten minutes of class time give students (1) a change to their playing, (2) an opportunity to learn the principles of violin technique and pedagogy, and (3) the evidence, time and time again, that change is possible.
Second, I want to touch on the technical layering.
I have used scales as a gateway to discuss and to practice the following techniques with the class…
– grounded connection to the earth
– intonation
– ringing tones
– smooth bow changes
– hand frame
– slurring
– bow changes
– finger angle
– smooth shifting
– vibrato
– stable violin
– playing on the appropriate side of the string
– sound quality at the frog
– dynamic contrast
– spiccato
– directing attention
I could keep going, but I think you get the point. By having an extremely basic, core technical ‘repertoire,’ we can work on ANY basic violin skill. We can see the need for the skill, see the skill working in action, make changes to the skill, develop the skill, make the skill feel easier, and eventually transfer the skill to actual repertoire.
If my students didn’t know their scales well enough, we wouldn’t yet be able to layer. And if I tried to make class about prescribing ‘shifting exercises’ or ‘smooth bow exercises’ they would be thinking about interpreting those exercises, not the actual action of shifting or changing bow in the way they can with scales.
In this way, scales allow for a a sort of illumination of skill. It can be a as close to a ‘raw’ demonstration of violin playing as possible. Layering technique onto scales is like doing king/pawn practice in chess, or dry firing in riflery. It’s like using Chorus to practice tone, or Twinkle to practice bow circles.
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If you have a Suzuki studio, I encourage you to teach an advanced class as well. Not only will it inspire your students and increase their skills, but it will hone your own understanding of functional violin technique. With an advanced class make sure to offer targeted feedback and to build a core technical ‘repertoire’ on which you can inspect and germinate any violin skill imaginable.
Below, is a syllabus I drafted just for my advanced technique class. Feel free to borrow any or all of the concepts for your class, too!
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