THIS POST WAS ORIGINALLY WRITTEN AND PUBLISHED ON APRIL 30, 2015.

Who’s ready for the SUMMER THEORY CHALLENGE??I don’t know about you, but I really struggle to keep my students’ interest in the summer time.  They show up to lesson with their hair wet, faces flushed, straight from swimming lessons, and they are eager for the lesson to end so they can go play with friends, or go to the beach.

And the practicing!

The practicing is abysmal.  We spend the summer months spinning our tires, basically having the same lesson over and over again because there is no practicing happening at home.  And that’s if they are even in town!  Even my most dedicated students fall into this summer slump.

There isn’t much I can do about policing practicing while the kiddos are on vacation, but I can encourage them to use their commute times, or other down times, working on something I often neglect…MUSIC THEORY!!

Announcing the Summer Music Theory Challenge, here’s how it works:

In order to win some super fancy prizes (most of my practice prizes are dollar store delights), each student must complete one or all of these herculean feats.

1.  Memorize the order of the sharps and flats.  (Come on people, it’s not even hard.)

2. Identify (name, play, sing) all first position note cards in three minutes.  (Technically, they should be able to do this anyway, but…man.  Everyone seems to hate flashcards.)

3.  Identify all 24 Major and minor key signatures in two minutes.  (This one is a wee bit of a stretch for some of my students, but I am confident that they can do it!)

As I said before, my prizes are usually a little bit on the lame side, so I decided to pull out the stops this time to see if I could get some extra engagement during the practicing doldrums (ahem, I really don’t like summer.)

If they complete all of these tasks, they get a $10 iTunes gift card.  (I’m going to pretend that they will spend it on recordings of Mr. Heifetz and Oistrakh.)

If they complete two, they get a $5 iTunes gift card. (Yeah, yeah, I know they’re going to get Plants vs. Zombies, or whatever game is cool right now.)

If they complete one, they get a King Size Candy bar.  (I’m not a huge fan of giving candy for prizes, but this is a special occasion!)

The prizes will be awarded at our End of Summer Potluck.

If you would like to have your studio join the Summer Theory Challenge, you can send this invite to your students, or you can design your own theory challenge!  I’d like to thank Jeanne Grover for this fantastic idea.  Jeanne, you are a fabulous muse.

What are your summertime strategies?  What do you guys use for incentives?  I need more prize ideas!  Let me know in the comments.

As always, if you would like more pluck in your studio and in your inbox, subscribe to my email list!
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THIS BLOG POST WAS ORIGINALLY WRITTEN AND PUBLISHED ON APRIL 24, 2015. 

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Free up tension and let the bow sing!

​We all know that the most important ingredient for good tone is beautiful right arm technique, yet so many of our students saw away at the fiddle with locked wrists, elbows and shoulders.


This has something I have struggled with time and time again. How can I get my students to open up and sign with their bows? I’ve drawn these solutions from my own experience, and from a bunch of people that are way smarter than me.
1.  Show them what tension and relaxation feel like. Small children may not even know what these words mean! Have them mimic you as you raise your shoulders to your ears, and then drop them down to their natural relaxed positions. Adapt this to the other tension culprits in the arm. Soft thumb, relaxed wrist, loose elbow, etc.
2.  Sometimes tension comes from efforts to make a strong sound. To remedy this issue, show the student how heavy the arm is, and that the weight of the arm is more than adequate to produce a good strong tone. Have the student support your completely relaxed arm, and then do the same to theirs. It is quite heavy!
3. The tension may be systemic. Tension in the feet, ankles and knees can spread into the arms and hands. Have them sway, bounce their knees, or wiggle their toes to introduce freedom and movement into their base.
4. Quite often tension can come from fear of disappointing the teacher or parent. Students will sometimes hold their breath because they are anxious about this. Try to create an environment where mistakes are not something to fear. Mimi Zweig always says, “Mistakes are merely information.” They aren’t good or bad.
5. Make sure their basic set-up is good. A poorly placed violin can wreak havoc on the bow arm. Check out Violinist in Balance for more information.
6. Remove extraneous tension in the bow hand, particularly in the pinky. Violinists may not realize that the effort expended in holding the bow horizontal in the air is much more than is required when the string is also supporting the bow. All Things Strings has some great tips for this!
7. Move the arm as if painting a fence. On the upward stroke the wrist leads and fingers follow with the brush, and on the downward stroke the hand pronates and the fingers and wrist fall together. It is fun to actually use a paintbrush on the wall for this exercise!
8. Practice a fluid whole arm movement by playing a “flying pizzicato.”
9. Sometimes all it takes for a student to fix awkward tension in the bow arm is to see how strange they actually look! Have them try playing in front of a mirror, or even better, watch a video of themselves performing.
10. Get rid of the violin. Have them practice shoulder bows, or shadow bows with a cardboard tube.  You can also try the penny game! It’s a favorite in my studio!  (I let them keep the penny, or a quarter if I’m feeling extra generous!)
If you would like to go even more in depth on this issue, I highly recommend this article.
How about you guys? How do you teach your students to play with a beautiful, relaxed bow arm? Let me know in the comments!

Our memories can be one of the most frustrating and unreliable of our music-making tools.  Memory lapses in performance, or even memory catastrophes, are incredibly common.  I know we have all heard the dreaded never-ending Martini Gavotte, or worse, Fiocco Allegro!
Our memories can be one of the most frustrating and unreliable of our music-making tools.  Memory lapses in performance, or even memory catastrophes, are incredibly common.  I know we have all heard the dreaded never-ending Martini Gavotte, or worse, Fiocco Allegro!

As a young student, I was blessed with a fairly natural ability to memorize.  Muscle memory was my friend, and I could play through the entire Suzuki repertoire with ease.  I never had to THINK about memorizing.  It just happened for me.
This lack of engagement in my memorization came back to bite me in my college years.  The internalization of the much more complex Bach partitas and sonatas didn’t just happen for me.  I struggled.
The Chaconne from the D Minor was particularly ruthless.  After listening to me loop two of the Chaconne’s variations about three times, my professor told me that something must be done!  I was sent on a journey to discover deliberate memorization.
The key to successful fool-prof memorization is engagement.  My job as the teacher is to encourage my student to focus on exactly what they are doing. Tactile memory is not enough, the thinking mind must be absorbed in the task at hand.  Here are three ways to stimulate this kind of engagement.
1.  Discover the form of the piece and imagine a story or journey to match, the more ridiculous the better!
This is the most effective when the student is involved in the brainstorming process, and is extremely helpful even with older more advanced students.  For example, if the piece begins on an F, on an up bow, the story could start with a frog flying up to the sky, to a slippery road(slurs) made of geese (on the g string.) You can do this for the overall form of the piece, or go into minute details for each phrase depending on what your student needs.  The story doesn’t have to have a logical flow, it just has to be bizarre enough to remember.  For a more in depth explanation of how this works, check out this amazing Ted Talk by Joshua Foer.
2.  Practice mentally without the instrument or while limiting how much it is used.
Have the child visualize playing through the piece.  To encourage engagement, make it a game, each of you alternate playing one phrase, or even one note, at a time.  Have the child play every 2nd and 4th beat making sure they account for the bowing on the skipped notes.  You can make this as simple or as complicated as you want.
3.   Take it to extremes.Play the piece at an outrageously slow tempo, or do a down bow circle for every note.  Be creative, and try all sorts of absurd variations.  The idea is not to be perfect or musical, it is simply to exercise the brain.  Urge your students to come up with their own silly tactics.
Some children may balk at these goofy methods, and at first, it may be helpful for you to volunteer some of the ideas until they are comfortable.  Keep giving them opportunities to engage for themselves, and most children will eventually warm up to it.  We all have different learning styles, so it is a good idea to experiment with lots of different methods for memorizing.   Let your students lead the way to the best course for their own memorization.
 What techniques do you use to memorize music?  Do your students struggle with memorization?