Monthly Archives: March 2011

In order to teach O Come Little Children in Suzuki volume 1, I believe that students need a number of prerequisites:

1. Knowledge of the songs that precede it.
2. Ability to make a tunnel with fingers over the E string.
3. Ability to use two most of the bow with good tone. If students are unable to use the lower half of the bow, double up bows become more difficult.
4. Ability to do some “Open, Close, Float, Sink” Exercises. (Wrist, elbow, and shoulder float to use lower half of bow)
5. Ability to start in the middle of the bow to do an up bow.

Steps to teaching:

1. Teach the words to the song:
   
   O come, little children, O come one and all,
   To Bethlehem haste, to the manger so small,
   God’s son for a gift has been sent you this night
   To be your redeemer, your joy and delight.
2. Sing and motion: Up down up down up down up down up down up, up down up down up down up down up down up, etc.
3. Start in the middle of the bow and float up bow.
4. Play the rhythm of the song on open E while singing the words of the first line. (Make sure to start up bow in the middle of the bow.) Help the student stop the bow in the middle so they have room to go up. Do this several times in a row.
5. Play the rhythm of the first seven notes on open strings: E E A E E A E (Make sure to start up bow in the middle of the bow.)
6. Make a C# tunnel over the E string. Then do play: E E C# E E C# E (Make sure to start up bow in the middle of the bow.)
7. Play D B B A starting down bow.
8. Put the previous two steps together.
9. In the next lesson, teach the next two sections of the song by rote. They may need help with the large skip to High A on the last line.

I believe the hard part of the song is the double up bow. Some students may start adding double up bow to other parts of the song or other songs. Take care of this quickly before it becomes a bad habit for them.

Ševčík’s works for the violin include several volumes of bowing and violin technique. Opus 1 is in two parts, the first of which is in first position. Opus 2 deals with bowing technique. Opus 8 had shifting exercises.

His most interesting works are probably the study guides he created for concerti and other violin repertoire.

Recently, I have been studying the volume about the Mendelssohn violin concerto. It should be mentioned that you may need to revise some of the material to fit your own fingerings and bowings. Practicing the work as written will not help unless that is exactly how you play or intend to play the piece.

Sevcik completely breaks apart practically every part of the concerto. The section numbers do not correspond with measure numbers, but as you work sequentially through, you see many permutation of the material as you move through the concerto.

In working with the bow, there should be four sets of joints that have flexibility. They are developed in a particular order and the movement is refined over time.

• Opening and closing of the elbow joint. This is developed first in Suzuki method of teaching. Students play at the square of the bow so they may open the elbow (and go down bow) and close the elbow and go upbow.
• Wrist movement should come naturally with the elbow motion. If it does not, you may need to help students develop the wrist motion that goes allows the bow hand to stay in the same position while the elbow opens and closes.
• Floating of the shoulder ball joint. This is not to be confused with a shrugging motion. The floating allows you to fluidly move the forearm up and down. Shrugging should be avoided.
• Finger movement. I use the teeter totter exercises to teach students about finger movement. The student places the bow on the low string at the frog and pushes across with the pinky and thumb. When extended, the frog and the pinky are in “tip” position. When bent, they are at the frog position.

All of these movement work together to create good tone and strokes of the bow that move parallel to the bridge with great facility.

In the 1990s, an edition of Lucien Capet’s La Technique Superieure de l’Archet was translated by Margaret Schmidt and published. It covers every aspect of the art of bowing from the very basics of the bow hold to more advanced techniques. Capet was admired by Gingold and Galamian, both of whom studied with Capet in the 1920s in Paris.

The volume discusses:

1. Preliminary Explanations
2. Quality of Sound
3. The Slur
4. The Detache Inflections and Accents
5. The Martele
6. The Staccato
7. The Light Bow Strokes

Capet had great discussions about the origin of different strokes including ones that are considered to be off the string strokes. Many of these strokes are thought (by Capet) to originate from strokes on the string. For instance, sautille begins as an on the string stroke. When it is executed in the proper part of the bow and higher speeds it becomes an off the string stroke.