Violin Beginners – A New Series

Violin Beginners, a new button on the TSV Gold Dashboard directs members to a collection of posts and resources relevant for everyone in the teaching triangle – teachers, students and parents. It’s about the most important stage of teaching and learning the violin: The Beginning.

violin beginner

Why the beginning is so important.

We’ve created so many posts and resources directly related to violin beginners and getting started because this exciting phase is so crucial to the growth and progress of new musicians. Laden with the hope and promise of realizing the dream of playing music, the early stages require more expertise and careful guidance than any other time.

Good musical beginnings lead to happy, fulfilled and cultured lives, and the ability to play music is a life skill like no other.

During these early months, beginner musicians and their families gain vital new knowledge and skills about learning, the real nature of talent, how to acquire ability, the power of good habits and the role of parents in educating children. This exhilarating period is the launching pad for their successful future in music and education.

We currently have a great variety of information relating to beginners on the website. To help you find it all, we have organised it onto the TSV Gold dashboard with a button for the Beginner topics. At the same time, as we reviewed these posts and resources, it became clear that something more is needed.

Coming Next: A New Series: Violin Beginners – 10 Weeks to Twinkles

Next up on Teach Suzuki Violin, we are creating a new series, Violin Beginners – 10 Weeks to Twinkles, setting out the sequence of lessons and learning steps for beginners in a clear and systematic way. The new series will lay out in detail the first 10 weeks in this pivotal stage of the violin journey.

Why are Suzuki teachers so good with beginners?

Shinichi Suzuki’s philosophy and insights about the development of ability, plus the practical approach he pioneered, led to a very successful way of working with beginners of all ages. And just like good science, the ideas he realized are able to be endlessly improved, expanded, refined and deepened. (It’s interesting to note that Dr S never personally described his work as a fixed method or a standardized system of learning to play music.)

Suzuki music programs particularly excel with beginners, producing healthy numbers of emerging musicians.

To work successfully with beginners, especially very young ones, Suzuki violin teachers undergo specialized training and experience not always offered by more traditional music teacher training institutions. In fact I’ve met well qualified, excellent violin teachers who rarely or never take on beginners. I believe a key reason is the note reading conundrum. An emphasis on notation at the start precludes most very young beginners.

Music – a language

As Suzuki and others have shown, treating music as a language has big benefits for beginning students, particularly very young ones. It means working directly and immediately with the sound of music rather than through the page, as we all do when learning our mother tongue.

Good teachers of beginners play a vital role in the future of music. Every musician was once a beginner, needing the careful direction of an expert teacher who is skilled and knowledgeable about the big picture, able to guide students through the shoals of practice and persistence, and keeping up their enthusiasm and love for music.

More than teaching skills

Suzuki teachers work in two essential areas in the early stages. The sequence of practical steps and skills needs to be mastered to build the foundation abilities correctly and accurately for unlimited musical growth and refinement. At the same time students and parents learn to become part of the enriched education environment of the group, the talent producing musical biosphere.

Up Next: Week 1 for Beginners

Cheers,

John

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Zigeunerweisen – Pablo Sarasate

Pablo Sarasate’s Zigeunerweisen is one of those quintessential showpieces every violin virtuoso performs at some stage in their career. This famous piece has everything a violinist loves: drama and excitement, dazzling speed and bowing wizardry, flamboyance and flair, genuine pathos and a moment or two of yearning – with appealing Gypsy-like melodies.

Has it become a cliche? Only a very jaded listener would think so. Part of the virtuoso’s rite of passage, a musical mountain that all yearn to climb and conquer, it remains an irresistible glittering treasure of desire for every aspiring violinist. Not all may reach the summit, but the climb is a whole lot of fun!

Zigeunerweisen (Gypsy Airs) is in one movement with four identifiable sections, three in C minor and the final one in A minor.

Moderato, the first movement, is a kind of slow introduction, written in an improvisational style common to Gypsy (Romani) inspired music, with frequent pauses and interspersed with long rapid runs and flourishes.

Lento follows, continuing the sense of spontaneous ad libbing in a passionate display of bowing fireworks and gymnastics – including flying spiccato and richochet.

Un poco piu lento comes next with a poignant melody by Hungarian composer Elemér Szentirmay called csak egy szép lány van a világon (in English, There’s Only One Lovely Maid in the World), often played with a mute.

Allegro molto vivace provides the scintillating finale, a dazzling display of wondrous violin pyrotechnics – long runs of spiccato, artificial harmonics, double stops and left hand pizzicato.

Below we’ve assembled a collection of videos and links for the brave at heart to study.

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Allamanda in D minor by JS Bach – Violin Solo

Transfixed at hearing Bach’s solo violin partitas and sonatas, a student asked me which one to learn first. At the time she was playing Bach’s Concerto in A minor from volume 7, the first big concert piece in the Suzuki violin repertoire.

Hilary Hahn plays Bach

From the point of view of ease of playing, two of the more obvious choices were the Allemanda and the Giga from Partita No. 2 in D minor, the same suite that contains the sublime Chacconne. My personal preference perhaps would have been the dancing delightful Giga. She chose the Allemanda in D minor, that lively earnest first dance in the suite, with its resonant opening D and free flowing melodies.

The Allemanda in D minor (or Allemande) provides students with a happy doorway in to Bach’s immortal solo violin works. It has all the richness and power of his unstopping musical logic and his seamless modulations and harmonic sense, richly compressed and concentrated into a single page of surprising beauty. Technically, the Allemanda is accessible by students at Suzuki volume 6 or so, who can then look forward to years of discovering the exquisite musical treasures within Bach’s solo violin works.

Where to start and how to learn it.

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How to Get Paid – Running a Successful Violin Studio

A job, a career, a profession or a calling? Violin teaching is all of these and to be sustainable it is also a livelihood, with the requirements of a business. Yet we teach for deeper reasons and rewards than riches, mostly for Love. Love of music, of playing the violin, love of teaching, learning and working with people, especially children, parents and all those who love music. Welcome to the latest post about running a successful Violin Studio.

Music and the Arts are the foundation and flowering of human culture and civilization, far more valuable to the soul and the spirit than politics or economics. Musicians and artists are more likely and able to create beauty and save our precious planet than mining magnates and arms manufacturers, so why aren’t they rewarded accordingly?

The truth is, it’s up to us to get organised and to make sure our wonderful profession is viable and renewable with a great future, which means getting paid – fairly and adequately.

Let’s talk about Money.

How to Get Paid (without the hassles)

  1. How to design the teaching schedule and determine the fee structure;
  2. How to set up the payment system and receive fees without the hassles (includes a sample application form).
  3. What to do about missed lessons, using a clear, simple and friendly policy;
  4. How to arrange your schedule and enjoy adequate holidays.

Full access requires TSV Gold subscription

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How to Select Students for your Violin Studio

Starting out as a violin teacher is a very exciting time! After the years spent studying, the countless hours practising and playing the music you love and will teach, greeting the first nervously smiling students and their parents feels like a dream come true.

You’re all so eager to begin, it’s tempting to accept every potential student, just because they ask you. For a time, I did take everyone, and the interesting consequences taught me some important lessons. As we refined our new student induction process, the positive repercussions for our violin programme and students were dramatic.

As you’ll see later in the post, we realised that how you choose students and who you select is critical to the overall success of your violin studio. Why? (Hint: it’s not only the student you are choosing.)

How to Select Students for your Violin Studio

Building from your Vision

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Ave Maria by Bach-Gounod – Violin Solo

Solemn, spiritual, moving, profound, beautiful! Ave Maria by J.S. Bach and Charles Gounod is music from two deeply religious composers. Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in C Major, BWV 846 from the legendary Well-Tempered Clavier Well-Tempered Clavier collection is the original melody for Gounod’s Ave Maria.

Charles Gounod

This deceptively simple and enchantingly lovely arrangement immediately took on a life of its own, spreading out into versions for a multitude of instruments and settings. Ave Maria continues to be recorded by operatic singers from Melba to Pavarotti and beyond.

Charles-François Gounod’s life story makes interesting reading, particularly his connection with the Mendelssohns, how he came to write Ave Maria, his deep religious impulse to become a priest and the time he spent in England.

Apart from Ave Maria, his opera Faust and a few others, Gounod’s illustrious body of compositions is relatively unknown to string players.

Study Points

Like Schubert’s Ave Maria, the Bach-Gounod song introduces few technical challenges for players at about Suzuki Book 4 or 5 level. Once again the primary area to focus on while studying this solo is interpretation – phrasing, expression, dynamics and tone quality.

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How to Find New Students for Your Violin Studio

When you’ve organised a good studio space and put together the scores and equipment needed to start teaching, it’s time to find new students. Actually, attracting them isn’t so difficult. As you and I know, learning to play violin is a very desirable activity, and as a school principal once told me, a rather prestigious one. Selecting the right students from those who apply is another matter, the subject of a later post. Today we outline some of the more successful ways to build up class numbers until the time when word of mouth becomes the trusted primary source.

Advertising

A short advert in a weekly local newspaper for a few months will usually produce a trickle of inquiries, which I’d have to rate a limited success in our case. It has the advantages of being inexpensive and likely to draw people from the surrounding areas. We specified beginners in an age range from 3 to a maximum of 6 years old.

What to put in the ad – and what not

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Ave Maria by Schubert – Violin Solo

Franz Schubert composed Ellens dritter Gesang (Ellen’s Song), eventually becoming known as Ave Maria, in 1825 at the age of 28, to the lyrics of The Lady of the Lake, a famous poem by Sir Walter Scott. The melody is commonly sung with the words of the traditional Catholic prayer, Ave Maria (Hail Mary).

Ave Maria has been performed by some of the world’s great classical singers, such as Andrea Bocelli, Maria Callas and Luciano Pavarotti, and continues to be popular with audiences all over the world. Unlike many of Schubert’s compositions, it was acclaimed and published in his lifetime.

(Note: TSV Gold membership is required for further reading and access to score library.)

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Setting up for a Successful Violin Teaching Practice

Two or three choices become clear when you decide to become a violin teacher: take a job, set up your own studio, or have a mix of both.

Photo courtesy of Reuben Hustler

Each choice has its own advantages, benefits and challenges. A teaching job in a school or institution has the security of a regular salary and usually a prescribed curriculum, although you may sometimes feel that you follow someone else’s agenda and conditions.

Setting up for yourself and becoming successfully self employed entails more work and has less financial certainty in the beginning, yet you gain complete control over your time and energy and have the opportunity to create a flourishing violin programme founded on your ideals and vision.

Founding your own studio practice is an attractive and exciting adventure that will take you on an enjoyable and fulfilling lifetime journey.

Take into account the time needed to assemble enough students to make it viable. During this period a part time teaching job can be a good option, allowing time to build up numbers for your own studio.

Whatever you decide, setting up for future success means putting in place the right structure and systems.

Gearing up for a Successful Teaching Practice 

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How to Set Up and Run a Successful Violin Studio – Introduction

“I’m so lucky. I have a fantastic profession, which I love. My work life is fulfilling and rewarding, and I’m excited by the opportunities and creative challenges it brings me.”

How often do you hear expressions of happiness and contentment like these – about work?

They are the words of a successful violin teacher running a flourishing studio of enthusiastic students who are all making great progress.

That’s the golden goal. How do you make it become a reality?

How to Set Up and Run a Successful Violin Studio

In the new series on TSV Gold, How to Set Up and Run a Successful Violin Studio, we’ll show you how to do it. You’ll learn from our greatest successes – and from our worst mistakes.

You’ll find out the important things to set in place to make your teaching life happy and productive, providing you with a healthy income and proper holiday periods to sustain a balanced life – while your students enjoy exceptional progress.

Here’s a brief list of some of the topics we’ll cover:

  • Gearing up for a successful studio teaching practice;
  • How to set your fee structure and get paid fairly and appropriately;
  • How to develop and organise the Teaching Schedule;
  • How to attract and select new students to make your programme accelerate;
  • The initial phone call and qualifying newcomers;
  • The interview, the offer and how the process of choosing of students is critical to the success of your programme;
  • Important issues about accepting students who have been studying elsewhere;
  • Where to find and how to use the right venues for group classes and concerts;
  • How to keep up with the boring stuff like accounting, taxation, insurance and record keeping;
  • Accreditation – for you and your students.

If there’s a topic or question on setting up and running a teaching studio you’d like to ask about, let us know! Go to TSV Gold Support on the Gold Dashboard.

Cheers,

John

 

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