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In the arena of heated conversations among string teachers, the subject of finger #s (i.e., 1, 2, 3) versus pitches (B, C#, D) is a hot topic. I was surprised to read the comments on the blog post Best Way to Learn Violin Notes? and did not expect the consistency of responses. My favorite part was learning how the different countries approach this. Click HERE to read what others are saying about finger #'s vs. pitches.  The pros of using finger numbers are that they are simple and clear. They also can segue nicely into using finger patterns. I am a proponent of teaching finger patterns even if using pitches over finger #s is the preference since they help train the whole and half steps while strengthening the mind-body circuitry. Since the finger patterns correlate nicely with the tapes on the violin fingerboard, it is easy to integrate them into the curriculum, especially at a beginning level. Another pro of using #'s is to benefit students with special learning needs. These students (i.e., dyslexic, or right-brain dominant learners), have minds that best connect with a # over a letter.
The pros of using the letter name of the note segue into a broader understanding of key signatures. This leads to understanding music theory, and ultimately teaches the universal language of music. I spent most of my teaching career using finger #s and have to wonder: Was my reluctance to embrace using pitch names a reflection of my struggles with music theory? I digress but bring this up since many of us had either very limited or unsuccessful music theory training. It was not until I was age 25 and did teacher training and teaching using the Music Mind Games music theory curriculum that I began to understand music theory. I recently discovered the Fantastic Finger Guides. I think they are fantastic- they offer a quick and economical solution to accurate finger placement and immediately help to code the language of music theory into the beginning level violinist. In 8 seconds, I applied the Fantastic Finger Guide. It went on smoothly and would be doable for students to apply independently. Now, a clear map of pitches appears on my fingerboard as well as easy to see finger numbers identified on the side of the neck (perfect to see from "rest position"). The product comes on a beginning version (with less information as not to overwhelm the beginning student) and an advanced version that includes more pitches and a quick visual guide for how sharps and flats work. Receive 10% off the Fantastic Finger Guides thru July 31, 2020 with coupon code MFYV2020.
Click HERE to learn more and order the Fantastic Finger Guides.
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Through Limitation Comes Innovation At the end of February 2020, I hired someone to help me with my website and they suggested using Zoom as a way to discuss plans. I had never even heard of this thing called Zoom. Fast-forward to June 2020 and I now use Zoom 7x a week to take classes, teach violin and capoeira, and attend meetings. Scroll down to learn the top 5 benefits & 3 downsides of Zoom violin lessons.  Like all of you, I have experienced many changes in the trajectory of my teaching due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I always prefer meeting face-to-face with my students, but, acknowledge that there have been many benefits that have come from this period and using Zoom (or other online video communications) to keep music lessons active. 1- Gaining fluency and skills with new options for teaching and learning. My first Zoom violin lesson was a bit of a disaster. I was late for my student due to not understanding how to properly share and access the link, I did not know how to use the features so there was no audio for the first 5 minutes and the camera angles and lighting were, well... let us just say that this too had room for improvement. It was distracting and clunky for both me and my student. I know now how to set-up a recurring session, place the camera, adjust the lights, and easily adjust the audio and camera in a matter of seconds. I learned a new skill and this will open future options for connecting and has expanded my concept for how I can teach. The options are endless and I now know that if a student or myself ever has a situation where we can not meet in person we can continue our work and fulfill our vision. 2- Insight into a student's environment. Does your student hold their violin too far down? Did you see on the Zoom lesson that their music stand is not properly elevated to facilitate proper posture? Does your student suffer from distractions? Can you recommend a more ideal place in their home for learning based on what you observe in their environment? Did you discover that they have a piano you never knew about and now you can integrate this into their curriculum? The piano keyboard is the best way to solidify music theory concepts, how exciting! We must remember that we only see our students for 30-60 minutes every week and the rest of their learning takes place in their home. Gaining insight into the student's home learning environment can solve mysteries (such as the posture circumstance listed above) and help you make suggestions to better a student's core learning environment. 3- Creativity: Through limitation comes innovation. I work with an older brother and younger sister. The older brother was starting to refine his vibrato and the younger sister was just beginning to learn vibrato. To be honest, this has been very difficult for me to concentrate on through a screen and make any real progress in a positive direction. However, what the screen is fantastic for are all of the visual components of violin playing:
I have always said that the reason it is so easy for me to teach the violin is that I get to see everything so clearly. Video lessons helped to spotlight this factor and I made use of this in my curriculum. This also correlates with the 4th benefit of Zoom lessons listed next. 4- Instant Videos: Zoom has built-in video features. My students video record their Zoom lessons and then review the video to understand their assignments and in the process, observe their performance. Viewing oneself play the violin is one of the best ways to improve. Students should be doing this regularly but as teachers, we get busy and do not always uphold this expectation. Also, this convenience relieves the student (or parent of the student) from taking notes during the lesson. 5- Prioritizing health in our modern society. Foremost, the use of Zoom lessons helps us prevent spreading the COVID-19 virus. There remains much to learn about this virus and it appears one can transmit without having symptoms. If this is accurate, then we have a responsibility as instructors to continue being prudent in our actions so we do not pass this along to our students, many of whom are children and may not have developed a robust immune system yet. Secondly, without spending so much time driving and in activities, most of us (teachers and students) are receiving a well-needed rest. Our bodies need this extra time to repair and stay healthy. I hope that we are all cognizant that health is one of our highest values and this experience will forge in us a commitment to take better care of ourselves in the years to come. Connecting with this value is a blessing that will serve us thruout the rest of our lives and something to be grateful for.  While it can be healthy to seek the positive in any situation, the 5 benefits of Zoom violin listed above do not paint the full picture of Zoom lessons. Below are listed some of the downsides of using this way of teaching. 1- Compromised Tone - Shinichi Suzuki said, "tone is the living soul." The limitations of the microphones and speakers in the computers we use to do Zoom lessons remove this life-infused quality of beautiful violin tone and frankly put, it's painful to listen to at times. On a basic computer, everything above a certain range or volume entirely cuts out and all violin sounds are compressed. Having a microphone or specialized headphones can help but nothing will ever compare to the beauty of live violin tone. 2- Environmental Diversions - It's distracting being in my dining room teaching because our homes have so many triggers, the learning environment does not lend itself to dedicated focus like a teaching studio does. 3- Increased Screen Time - We already are on our screens too much and now Zoom lessons add to this burden. According to the Mayo Clinic, the average time we spend on screens is 7-10 hours a day. This is in sharp contrast to the recommendations of acceptable screen time:
We love the violin because it's slow and it connects us to a time period where things were slow. The instant gratification offered by my screens dulls our dopamine receptors and may affect the way mitochondria operate within cells. Educate yourself further about the negative impacts of too much screen time here.  What have you learned from using video communications for the violin?
Please share in the comments below. Thank you! Win a Set of WonderThumbs!!!Relax your hand and let the music flow...   I recently discovered these neat violin playing aids called the WonderThumbs and really like them. In fact, I am surprised it took so long for someone to create these - thank you Craig! Lucky for us the creator was kind enough to donate a set to one of our lucky members. If you don't happen to be the lucky duck who wins, you can order these from the WonderThumb website or from Shar Music. They cost $24, and if you are thrifty like me, you may be on the fence for making this investment so I invite you to consider this price in comparison of 4 years of remedial violin lessons ($4,000+) if this is a product that could benefit you, your student or your child. Remedial lessons are costly and honestly, can be treachery for all parties involved. Just some food for thought as you consider this product. I played around with several different sizes and as a 5"8 female with slightly larger sized hands am probably an L in the WonderThumb sizing. That being said, I tried all the sizes, and I like the XL for using backward which is a non-traditional use of the product, but it worked for supporting the neck of the violin. I also liked the smallest size for taking up as little space as possible. Just some ideas to consider when looking into these.  OK, now onto the FUN STUFF - enter this giveaway contest by saying "Hello" (or "你好" or "Bonjour" or "Dzień Dobry") in the comments below and a winner will be chosen in 24 hours.
Flip your instrument to the other side (violin on the right and bow on the left) to be a beginner again and truly understand what your students are experiencing. This is the best way I know of to assist in breaking skills down into micro progressions so that you can fully convey a concept to a student. This simple act of changing sides was a revolution to helping me improve how I taught vibrato to young children.   From Pygmalion in the Classroom by R. Rosenthal and L. Jacobsen (2007):Experimenters told teachers that 20% of the children in a certain elementary school showed unusual potential for intellectual growth. The names of the 20% were drawn by random sample. Eight months later these unusual or "magic" children showed significant gains in IQ than did the remaining children, who had not been singled out for the teachers' attention. The changes in the teachers' behavior towards these allegedly "special" children led to changes in their intellectual performance. These children did better not because they were any more intelligent than their classmates but because they were expected to do better by their teachers.
I believe this study is a wonderful reminder for what we already intuitively know. When we vision our children achieving their potential and consistently expect greatness from them, they will be able to reach their highest levels. Link for the book on Amazon. Learn more about this on Wikipedia. Last month Music for Young Violinists hosted a giveaway contest and to enter participants had to share what their favorite shoulder pad is. Here is a list of the submissions from participating violin teachers beginning with the most popular. This is an informal survey but I think it's neat to post since there were so many products that I had never heard of and perhaps may be of interest to you and your students. Click on the product below to be directed to their website to learn more about the specifics of these different shoulder pads. Most Popular Shoulder Pads from M4YV Teachers:
Shoulder Pads with 1 Vote Each:  (in the Keys of A, D & G Major)
I have a young student who plays with a passionate and focused tone and is very devoted in her practicing. She is progressing beautifully but after many years of lessons she still struggles to execute down and up bows correctly. Doing review pieces to fix this issue is counter-productive since she has ingrained incorrect bowing patterns into her old repertoire. Doing the same scale 20x/day would help but does not create a compelling assignment and she would likely zone out and resume playing incorrect bowings.
In an attempt to help her master down and up bows, I created the 7 Bowing Studies for Beginning Level Violin in the Keys of A,D & G Major. Since the focus of these studies is bowing they are kept to one octave and done 3 times in keys with parallel finger patterns (A, D & G Major) for ample repetition of the bow strokes and to keep the left hand as simple as possible. These exercises can be used in two ways: 1- Individually to help with a specific technique needed in repertoire. 2- As a series for students who need more support organizing their down and up bows. Features of this resource include:
When we play the violin, both shoulders tend to tighten up and cause negative issues in our playing. Here are three tips to help your students gain awareness in their shoulders and keep their violin playing healthy.  1- PRACTICE LAYING DOWN This is silly and awkward BUT highly effective. The laws of gravity will help a violinist feel a naturally aligned state in their body when they play laying down. Laying down while playing the violin is an incredible tool for the following three techniques: 1-Teaching the neck to release tension. 2- Supporting the shoulders in finding the base of their sockets. 3- Getting the knees to soften up. Young children love this because it feels like a novelty, however, this practice technique is appropriate for players of all ages and levels. Laying down while playing the violin will create a very unnatural feeling in the bow arm and compromise the sound, but the long-term results of alignment and awareness are more than worth the short-term compromises. 2- TIGHTEN UP: Go to the extreme to build awareness. Tighten up the shoulders as much as possible for 5 seconds and release. I use this verbal cue: "put your shoulders in your ears." After this intense use of muscles, the shoulders will respond with fatigue and rest by staying down in the bottom of their sockets. They may not always stay down for the rest of the lesson or practice session, but this exercise helps develop the necessary awareness to address tight shoulders and fix this problem in violin playing. In addition to creating muscle fatigue and natural inclination to release, this tip will also help a violinist realize the extreme of their range of motion so that they have more control in choosing where their shoulders go when playing.  3- EVALUATE THE CHIN REST AND SHOULDER PAD SET-UP: When was the last time you changed your *chin rest or shoulder pad? Young students with growing bodies have different proportions in their neck-shoulder-arms approximately every six months and, their playing needs are also growing. Chin rests and shoulder pads need to be re-evaluated for younger players on a regular basis because of this continual physical and musical growth. Most of us do not live in a major metropolitan area with a large string supply store to experiment with a variety of gear for our violins. Instead of this, stay up to date and informed of the variety of chin rests and shoulder pads by subscribing to string catalogs (links below). Also, consider the Poly-Pad which I have featured on the “Things I Love” page. This economical shoulder sponge has extra curves than competitors pads and is one of my favorites. When I moved to Oregon 9 years ago I purchased a Poly-Pad in each size and it really helped me individually fit all of my students.  Join the conversation - How do you help your student keep their shoulders relaxed when they play the violin?
I love spreading inspiring ideas to violin teachers that help you bring out the best in your students and thrive in the heartfelt work you do. I created a new page here on the Music for Young Violinists project called "Things I Love" as a resource list to share with you things that I have used in my violin teaching over the years and had success with. Some of the items listed here are things that have stood the test of time and worthy of praise such as my Korg metronome which has been dropped 100 times in 15 years, rarely needs a battery replacement and still works fine. Other resources may be lesser known products worthy of spreading the good word about like the Poly-Pad shoulder sponge. This page will be growing on a regular basis so please check back soon. Featured on “Things I Love” is Helping Parents Practice (Ideas for Making it Easier) Volume 1 by Edmund Sprunger. This is HANDS DOWN my favorite resource to use in supporting parents practicing with their children. I appreciate this book so much that I have practically underlined every sentence in my copy because it is so clarifying and poignant. Sprunger combines decades of experience teaching Suzuki violin with his formal training in psychology to offer wise and compassionate perspectives that will elevate a parents understanding of why their child is responding or behaving in a certain way. He also offers solutions that are effective and healthy for addressing these specific situations. The book is divided into sections by practice topic and then further broken down into 2-5 page solutions for specific scenarios that a parent would encounter while helping their child practice. This concise organization was done with the busy teacher/parent in mind and makes it an especially convenient tool because you can look up your immediate situation without having to read an entire book. Thank you Ed and please let us know when Volume 2 is available. Learn more about Ed Sprunger and his resources HERE. To celebrate this new page we are giving away Ed Sprunger’s new book: Building Violin Skills: A Set of Plans Designed to Help Parents and Children Construct Positive Practices. To enter, just list one “Thing You Love” for your teaching and music making in the comments below. Winner will be chosen at random at the end of the month.
(7%-38%-55% Rule)From the 1-Minute Pedagogy Series1 - Minute Pedagogy is a series of 6 short videos that share my favorite "pearls of wisdom" I have received for violin teaching from colleagues and teacher trainers over the past 2 decades. Think of these little videos as us having a cup of coffee together and sharing advice and perspectives to support the work we do as teachers. Please feel invited to continue the dialogue with your own ideas in the comments on the blog or youtube channel below. I apologize for the silly grin in some of these videos. I could not help but have a gigantic smile on my face when I filmed these because I was remembering so many special people that deeply you touched my life. To view all 6 videos in this series click HERE. If teaching were just a matter of downloading information we could send our students an email and concepts would be understood. However, teaching is the art of communication and words are not our first language. In research studies the communication that happens between the words is referred to as meta-communication, nonverbal communication or paralanguage.
One of the preeminent researchers and authors of nonverbal communication, Albert Mehrabian, asserts that in some cases only 7% of communication is contained in the vocabulary words, 38% in the body language and the remaining 55% expressed in the "liking" or attitude of the sender. The 7%-38%-55% Rule is contextual and DOES NOT apply to every communication scenario but is useful to bring up because it helps us think about communication as being a composite of vocabulary, body/facial motions and our inner attitudes and beliefs imprinted on the message. In the video above I share some of the ways that I communicate non-verbally with my students. I would love to hear about what special non-verbal ways you have developed to communicate and connect with your students. Please share in the comments below. From the 1-Minute Pedagogy Series1 - Minute Pedagogy is a series of 6 short videos that share my favorite "pearls of wisdom" that I have received for violin teaching from colleagues and teacher trainers over the past 2 decades. Think of these little videos as us having a cup of coffee together and sharing advice and perspectives to support the work we do as teachers. Please feel invited to continue the dialogue with your own ideas in the comments on the blog or youtube channel below. I apologize for the silly grin in some of these videos. I could not help but have a gigantic smile on my face when I filmed these because I was remembering so many special people that deeply you touched my life. To view all 6 videos in this series click HERE. Do we talk too much when we teach? I once had a colleague tell me that teachers here in America tend to talk too much when we teach and for the most part, I agree. Words are not our first language and the unique nature of our work as violin teachers invites us to integrate physical sequences with cognitive patterns. We then wrap this all up in the magical expression that is music itself. Such a unique combination is difficult to contain in verbal instructions which is why I suggest we do an inventory of how much talking we do when we teach and assess if this amount of language is as necessary as we may be in the habit of doing and also consider what options we have instead of words to communicate our teaching point.
Words go through our ears and into our brain where they can be interpreted in a multitude of ways which may not even match the intent of the instructor. Touching a body part relevant to the technique being studied, modeling with our own playing and reserving enough space in the lesson time to accomplish enough repetitions so the student can synthesize the information and correctly repeat in their home practice are integral to a successful learning experience. Certainly language is helpful in the process but if we talk too much we are not as effective as if we balance our teaching with training the muscle memory and inflecting meaning into the music. Additionally, we can use the tone of our voice, the spacing between words and facial gestures to communicate a sense of awe and wonder for this incredible process of learning music and stress the priorities of our teaching points. SILENT TEACHING CHALLENGE: If you really want to have some fun with this, take out a timer and have a playful challenge with your student or class to see how long you can go without speaking. You will be amazed at how this captivates your students while preserving your energy and best of all this is very effective for getting focused work accomplished. How do you communicate with your students in your teaching? What are some ideas you have for non-verbal teaching techniques? Please share in the comments below. The Violinist Athlete and Injury Prevention with Dr. Victor Lin Dr. Victor Lin, is physiatrist with the Rehabilitation Medicine Associates of Eugene, gifted educator and parent of a talented young violinist. He created this concise presentation The Violinist Athlete and Injury Prevention specifically for teenage violinists to inform them about the potential injuries violinists are prone to getting and to offer solutions for preventing these injuries. I suggest making these videos a required viewing assignment for any of your teenage students who are practicing more than 1 hour a day to help them have healthy and long violin careers. This 2 part presentation can be viewed by clicking on the video links below along with a summary of the contents. The Violinist Athlete and Injury Prevention, Part 1:
The Violinist Athlete and Injury Prevention, Part 2:
The "chinrest" is really a "jawrest."
This terminology can confuse young violinists and their parents in the beginning. It is useful to point out this discrepancy so that the violin posture is not inadvertently misinterpreted during home practice. 
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AuthorHi! It's me, Heather. I absolutely love working on the Music for Young Violinists project and all the many facets: blogging, website, music, teaching materials, freebies, videos, newsletter and giveaway contests. The best part is connecting with you so feel free to drop me a line. You can learn more about me on the "ABOUT" page. Thanks! |
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