Category: Easy Violin Music

Free Holiday Sheet Music

12/14/2019

Who doesn't love solving a mystery???

I removed the pitches from 3 popular holiday pieces and left the rhythms for my students to solve the mystery of what pieces these are. These are a really fun way to enforce rhythm reading skills, celebrate the holiday season and keep lessons and group classes fresh with new ways to learn. The 3 pieces are Jingle Bells, Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer & Ode to Joy.

Also here on the M4YV FREEBIES page are some complements to the Holiday Joy! collections for Violin and Viola. First is Ding, Dong Merrily on High. I love this piece and forgot to put this melody only version into the newly revised Holiday Joy! sheet music collection. My mistake is your gain because it is now offered here for everyone on the FREEBIES page.

Next is a contemporary arrangement of The First Noel for 3 Violins. When I revised the holiday & Christmas music collection, I wavered about putting this trio arrangement of the First Noel in it. I enjoy the higher range expressed in the top line and a slightly modern interpretation of the harmony, but it does not fit with the rest of the arrangements in the collection. I decided to keep it and offer it here and get your feedback - feel free to let me know how this works for you (here is my email address). A version of just The First Noel melody is available in the Holiday Joy! collection.

Click here to access these holiday FREEBIES.

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Ode to Joy Music

5/3/2019

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Click Here to Get This FREEBIE

Ode to Joy for VIOLA and VIOLIN (D Major) are the newest FREEBIES from Music for Young Violinists.

Spread some "JOY" to others and re-post this, email your studio or pin to Pinterest!

There is some new music here at M4YV and to celebrate the first viola collection (yes you read that correctly - VIOLA) I added this all-time favorite tune here on the FREEBIES page to literally "spread the joy."

Ode to Joy is now featured in 3 different M4YV collections:

Good news if you are clicking on this today (May 3-5, 2019) because I always celebrate new music with flash sales. You can get all three collections together as a bundle (click here) for $20 (normally $30) or the viola collection for $5 (normally $18).

Someone asked me recently what brought me joy. After 2 weeks (seriously, I had to really think about this), I found my answers:

Giving presents
My 2 new baby nephews
This project - M4YV

I thought more deeply about joy, and it's role in our lives last summer when both ends of the joy spectrum weaved thru my life. Read more about that here.

What brings you joy?
Please share in the comments below, thanks!

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Easy Violin Songs

8/29/2017

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Play along to the 10 easiest violin songs here on this youtube video:

I spent the past 20 years teaching the violin and most of that was using a Suzuki Violin curriculum which begins with Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star & rhythmic variations. In my opinion, this is is a difficult piece to begin with since it has 4 sections in A-B-B-A form and uses 6 pitches. I always had to break it down into smaller songs like the Flower Song and Monkey Song in order to teach it to young beginners.

This got me thinking about how I might teach beginners if I were to use a different curriculum so I created the list below and a violin sheet music collection of what I think are the 10 easiest violin songs.

3 Note Songs:

Hot Cross Buns (Folk)
Mary Had a Little Lamb (Folk)

4 Note Song:

Boil Them Cabbage Down (Folk)

5 Note Songs:

Ode to Joy/Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee (L. van Beethoven)
Jingle Bells (J. Pierpont)
When the Saints Go Marching In (Folk)
Lightly Row (Folk)

6 Note Songs:

Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star (Folk)
Shortnin' Bread (J. Riley)
Spring from the "Four Seasons" (A. Vivaldi, arranged for beginning level violin)

Lastly, for clarification, there is a slight error in calling this a list of songs because the definition of a "song" is a piece of music meant to be sung with the human voice versus a "piece" which is composed for an instrument. As you can see from this list above, Spring from the Four Seasons is technically a "piece" and not a "song".

What songs/pieces would you include in this list? Please let us know in the comments below. Thanks!

Purchase this collection at the M4YV store

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WINTER/SPRING 2017 FREE Music Download

2/4/2017

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For the Winter/Spring 2017 free *seasonal download (available here thru June 2017) I decided to do a small collection of folk tunes. After years of being immersed in complex compositions by composers such as J.S. Bach, D. Shostakovich and C. Debussy what captures my attention now is the simplicity of folk music. I don't know why I like these so much - is it because I value simplicity in all areas of my life? I have also speculated that after doing music for so long (37 years) at this point even the most complex sounding compositions always have simple formulas behind them and I like the puzzle of trying to de-code what this simplicity is.

Probably the most unique tunes in this collection are the Icelandic folk songs. I had the opportunity to teach in Iceland one summer and loved that their folk music and children's songs were in mixed meter. This was so different than my early musical exposure and even inspired me to write a piece called Reykjavik Shines for String Quartet in 3 Movements. If mixed meter music thrills you as much as it does me then feel free to view the score of this really quartet by clicking HERE.

WHY ARE THE COUNTRIES SO LIMITED IN THIS PACKET? Maybe you wondered why I did not include more diversity in the pieces in this collection. I really wanted to and even began drafting some other tunes but the limiting logistics of time and energy were a factor. Also, certain traditions of music do not translate easily. For example, my favorite thing to do in my free time is capoeira which is a Brazilian martial art that combines music and movement. I know dozens and dozens of songs from this portion of my life but struggled to find ways of transcribing them for this little collection of folk music - maybe in the future?

WOULD YOU LIKE TO ADD SOMETHING? If you have a PDF of a folk tune that is not copyrighted and would like to post it on the FREEBIES page here at Music for Young Violinists please send me an email. Sharing is fun :)

* This is the 2nd to last free seasonal download I will do. The final one will be published in Spring 2017. I would be so grateful if you passed this good news on to your friends while this opportunity exists - thanks in advance!