Good luck to the students who are playing exams this year!

For us, the exams will be on the 9th of October.  It’s earlier than in previous years; it is nearly a month less preparation time, but if we practise hard, we can still achieve good results.

All the best, and “break a leg”.

The Violin Studio really only has three rules.  They are so important, I’ll put them on the website.  They are:

1. The student must arrive, on time, fully prepared and equipped, for lessons and for concerts.
2. The student must practice consistently.
3. The fees must be paid in full and on time.

That’s it!  Observe these rules and you’ll learn violin in no time flat.  All the rest of my Studio Rules document deals with times when these rules fail.

Last night we had our Studio Concert for the first semester.  It was different in character from our usual Taurominium events in that it was a house concert, as we weren’t expecting too many performers.

Surprisingly, more than expected arrived.  This was great.

The venue was a private home with a large lounge which we transformed into a temporary concert hall; this gave the affair a cosy, homey effect.

The performances were of a good standard even though some of our most advanced students were not there due to school pressure.  (This is always a pity.  However, many thanks to those who arrived despite of school pressure and still gave their best.)

There was only one case of a young student who thought she could perform without having practised.   In future, a student who has been missing a number of lessons directly before the concert will not be allowed to perform without at least passing a prior audition to ensure he/she has practised.  It is painful for an audience to have to sit through a recital full of stop-starts and embarrassments.

However there were also some extremely well-prepared and beautifully delivered performances, and I can only say one thing to our students:  We’re proud of you.  Well done.

It was a most enjoyable concert, topped off by some surprise numbers by intermediate students, and an amateur ensemble playing Irish jigs.  Long after most of the guests and performers had left, we were still playing impromptu gypsy pieces with one of our performers.

It is interesting, as one of the performers observed too, how long a player remains intermediate.  From beginner to intermediate goes quite fast for those who practice faithfully; but intermediate itself is a long, long path.  This is where concerts and even exams can help shape a young player’s self-perception.  An intermediate performance should always be a pleasure to listen to, even though one wouldn’t expect “wow” effects and a lot of mistakes or technical weaknesses still have to be forgiven by the audience.  One of our intermediate players performed tangos with great pazzazz, so his imperfect intonation will have been forgiven in favour of a performance delivered with great flair.

Plus:  The concert flowed well, with mainly intermediate numbers; it wasn’t overly long; the audience was warm and comfortable and the atmosphere more relaxed than on a formal stage.  The young children (siblings, cousins and young performers) were on the whole well-behaved though they did lose focus for listening halfway through and retired to another room to play games.

To improve:  Next time I’ll have a platter of sandwiches ready for children to eat at seven o’clock.  Children were hungry as the concert lasted longer than planned.  Also, nobody will be allowed onstage without having passed a quality check (either in the lessons or, before time, in a backstage setting).  I’ll also look at improving the lighting to create more of a stage effect.

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We’ve updated the Studio Website. Updates include:

• Clearer, more easy-to-navigate home page 
• Better, faster links to content inside pages
• Studio Calendar was added so that people can look up when the next event is scheduled, amongst other important timeframes
• The “News” page was retired as this blog functions as a studio newsletter and added info.
• We added a links page with useful places and links to inspirational musical performances

Altogether:  The information is more compact, more concise, less fluff.  You’ll like it, go and have a look…  🙂

In “Emily’s Musical Musings”, a blog by a gifted teacher, Emily discusses what she calls “the practising myth”.

It’s the concept of parents backing their children not wanting to practice.  “I don’t want them to lose their love for music so I’m not going to push them.”

Yes, here and there I come across this in my studio, too.  Usually my rules take care of that:  “Students are expected to practise daily to ensure adequate progress.  Failure to do so may result in termination of lessons.”   People know where they stand.  Here and there I get a concerned mom voicing above (illogical, as I’ll prove in a moment) opinion; usually theirs are the children who go at it with such passion that they just fly ahead (ironically).  But occasionally I get a student who really is not going to practice…  and the predictable of course happens.

Let’s look at this whole thing.

It is a total unfairness not to make children used to practising.  Those who practise, progress.  A.k.a those who fail to practise, get stuck and then quit.

Children get used to routines.  They will eventually accept that bedtime is at 8h (or whenever you set it consistently), even in the holidays!  They will get used to that a meal without vegetables is not a meal and that you eat your veggies – or go to bed hungrier.  They even get used to washing up dishes and putting up laundry on the line without grumbling, if you make them do it consistently, repeatedly, and regularly.  These things are part of life (you wouldn’t let them get away without brushing their teeth, now would you?).

So a child who knows that it’s first half an hour’s violin practice, then it’s homework, and only then it’s playtime, every day, will not baulk at it because it’s pointless to resist.  (The prime reason I put violin practice ahead of schoolwork is that it’s a supreme way of waking up the brain, and the homework goes a lot faster after that.)

But if you expect your child to remember by themselves to practice, and you don’t help and encourage them over that initial resistance (which is really just inertia), you’re not being a supportive parent, and it is deeply unfair because your child’s initial impetus and love for the violin will fade with the weeks in which he fails to progress.

There is only so much we teachers can do.  We give the lessons, which could be compared to a road map towards the next milestone; but the student has to do the travelling to that milestone by themselves.  It is not our central nervous system being trained.  And while one can “drill” a theoretical subject, with a practical subject like the violin you’d have to pay us to supervise practising 7 times a week if you wanted to make progress our responsibility.

Having said all this:  Not every beginner on the violin will become the next David Garrett.  Such people are immensely rare, and – take note – self-driven practically without exception.  About half of the students in my studio are self-driven; they know that the name of the game is tenacity and that progress is up to them.  Those are my long-term students.  The others come and go.

Enough already.  I believe the point has been made.

Music Lessons for Children – How Young is Too Young?

By Susan Pascale

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Susan_Pascale

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTRlabuB64s

Mozart was in the habit of writing the most heavenly music.

He was also known not to hold back with comedy and ridicule.  (See “Will der Herr Graf ein Taenzchen mal wagen?” from “Figaro”.)

Some weighty voices (especially of psychologists in the field looking for sensationalism, and movie producers trying to rally publicity for “Amadeus”) have been trying to establish that Mozart had some psychiatric syndrome, i.e. Tourette’s.  This is patent nonsense.

• At age 15 Mozart was the greatest violinist of his time, overshadowing his father Leopold who had been that before him.
• One of the main identifying features of a Tourette syndrome are nervous tics.
• You do not play violin with tics.  Let alone become the greatest violinist of your time.

The theory of Mozart’s “Tourette’s Syndrome” was based on the following:  His exuberant nature (“hyperactive” – but a sufferer of hyperactivity cannot draw a closed circle, let alone compose operas and symphonies), and his “scatological” tendencies.

There is evidence that the language in the circles the young adult Mozart moved in, was quite filthy.  “Reck den Arsch zum Mund” (“stretch your a.. to your mouth”) was apparently a perfectly standard wish for a good night’s sleep – just as we’d say, “don’t let the bugs bite”, which doesn’t imply either that all of us live in infested conditions.

However the above canon proves something far beyond the nonsense theory of any syndrome.  Mozart had a fine, educated sense of humour.  This canon was written, apparently, for a very stuck-up acquaintance who thought himself miles ahead of the crowd.  He was asked to sing the “Latin” words…  and didn’t even realize that to his ridicule, he was saying all sorts of scatological stuff.

I spent too many years of my early adulthood pointing other people to third people’s research.  Go look it up yourselves!  😉