Karla

Sorry for the OT post. This message is for Austen who has a full inbox. Please call me ASAP or send me mail with your phone. I need to speak with you.

My scale time is also my "technique" time. Scales are the one thing I do that isn't really musical so I am not tempted to worry about musicality, phrasing and all that other stuff. This leaves my mind relatively free to focus on keeping the bow straight, hand (both of them position), tone quality, etc. The same applies to my scale practice on the guitar. I often hear people complain about scales saying that they are "brain dead" exercises and I look at them and reply, "uh.. That's' the whole point" If, however, you are bored when doing scales, then you are not making use of your time wisely. OT: Austen. If you read this PLEASE call me or contact me ASAP. Your mailbox is full so I can't write you, I can't find your new number and I cannot even go to see you 'cause I don't even know where you live. (GRIN)

Holy cow this is cool. How long have you been playing? You can download the SW called, "The Amazing Slow Downer" and use it to change the tempo of the midi file without changing the pitch.

You're quite welcome. This workshop is the best money I've spent in a long time in musical education. It has really helped push me along in my practice routine. Here is a review from another person who downloaded it.. I just finished watching the Scott Kritzer video, and I did this in two sessions. The whole atmosphere of the video is as if you are there in the audience. Scott comes across as Scott. It is very relaxed and informal, with occasional questions from the participants. The information is changing the way I approach my practice, in a good way. Scott covers how to organize your practice, and how to organize your pieces. He talks a lot about extracting the interesting or difficult bits from the repertoire pieces you're working on, and about putting those bits into different "bins" that fit into the parts of your practice schedule. When you sit down to practice, there should be no question about *what* you're going to practice, because if you've taken the time to organize as he suggests, you will have a firm schedule of what you have to accomplish. There is no "practice scales for 2 hours a day" kinds of advice. He tells you to take *your* repertoire pieces and extract the scalar passages, or arpeggio passages, for example, and make a 1-minute or 2-minute part of your practice out of each one. Then on to the next thing. I don't think it would be possible to get bored or confused with this approach. I think this video is best watched after reading the included text file, and is probably much more valuable the second time through. With all that said, I think this is an excellent value and I intend to go through it again and use it for my practice. Media Quality The video and sound quality are adequate, but with many noticeable digital artifacts and imperfections. This in no way detracts from the usefulness of the presentation. The entire 79MB download only took me about 20 minutes or so, and if there were the option to download a larger, higher quality file, I would probably prefer that.

I recently attended a workshop on practicing that I found to be VERY useful. It detailed the concept of organizing your work into categories or bins and helped make it possible for me to manage more than 20 pieces of repertoire to performance level. This was done by a classical guitarist but the information is useful to all musicians. I found out yesterday that he video taped the workshop and has it available for download on his website. I highly recommend this information to anyone who is interested in learning how to make their practice more efficeint. http://store.miramont.com/merchant.ihtml?pid=86&step=4

I think this is a trickier situation as when the word gets out that all the students are on remedial it could cause bad feelings. I, personally, would not wish to be in this boat but if I was I would stick to my guns and put the students all on remedial work as gently as I could of course. It sucks to be on remedial but it sucks worse to suck as a violinist.

as a beginner the ease of use is more important to me than the tone that is lost (almost negligable btw to me) in using them. I use 4 fine tuners in a built in tailpiece and see me doing that for quite some time.

Quote: True, "Music theory" is to help one's understanding the structure of music (singing, orchestra, harmony, keys, etc...) of general nature. If you are a string player, not a composer or a teacher, I do not think you need to know as much as a composer,or a conductor, or a teacher. Otherwise, you lose your focus.(e.g. a note G is in theory , just a "note". As a player, you should focus on how to play a "beautiful note" G ,execution aspect of the G ). That is what I meant. /yuen/ As a player a G note is NOT just a note to focus on playing beautifully if (for example) it is a 7th in the scheme of a piece. If it is a 7th then you might think of it as a tense note that you know will resolve back to home and as such you might want to also add some dynamics to undercore the tension of that G note as well as just play it beautifully. Every measure in a piece has these types of clues in them if you understand theory. Music theory is ESSENTIAL for a player if that player wants to really play music as opposed to just notes IMHO. I am blessed by wonderful teachers who guide me quite masterfully in this area.

I am currently undergoing jusr such an overhaul. I think that as an student it is critical to have conversations with the teacher about the importance of good posture and technique. Once I (as the student) undertand how this affects my long term health and playability I am more able to swallow the medicine of remediation. I expect my teachers to be upfront with me about what they are doing and why and to communicate it in such a way that I still stay encouraged and motivated. My guitar teachers have remedial programs that we students enter into now and again and it is a common practice so the stigma is not so bad. Personally I think taking and changing things one item at a time would really prolong the process of repair if not make it impossible. I would guess that if the student were inteligent and mature enough at all to understand what remediation is and how things work that I would have a conversation with them about it and let them decide which way to go. All students will choose to play the best that they can and to get there in the most efficient way over struggling with changes and crippling technique for a longer period.

So just an FYI to ad to this since I am the one that began it all (technicall speaking) and since someone ask... I rarely use the tuner during practice and I don't recomend that it is used all the time. I use it during my scale work sometimes to make sure that I am starting correctly and to check up on what I think is right. It's good for fine tuning and it is also good for setting people who are very confused about relative pitch more straight. Other than that I don't use it too much. It would drive me insane.... I have enough to worry about with bow hold and bow movement, etc to constantly also check in with pitch outside of my ear. The other thing to say here is that both Austen and I are using Korg tuners but we also have a device on them that hooks to the violin and measures the pitch via frequency instead of sound. I think the response and accuracy is better than what you experience by using just the tuner alone. It is a really cool device.

Just an FYI, both of my teachers tell me that I am a "natural" violin player. I started just a year ago when I turned 40. I don't believe at all that being a natural has to do with age. It has more to do with physical awareness and intelligence and adults can have this just as kids. I studied Alexander Technique and meditation in my 30s specifically to develop these things in me. All that said, I still s*ck at the violin and am on week 2 of Twinkle with this new teacher!!! Having natural ability in anything is only wasted without lots and lots of work.

I am studying the classical guitar as an ammy and do about 2 hours of practice a night. As such I have developed an amazing routine that allows me to keep about 20 pieces ready for performance. I keep this document next to my music stand and check mark the stuff as I go through it. To me one of the coolest features of this routine is how the repertoire is put into BINS on page 2. These bins give very specific focus to a piece during a pracice and keeps me from just playing without focus. http://www.kfisherx.com/Guitar/HowTo/Guita...%20Schedule.doc I only practice the violin for about 30 minutes but I use the same idea for that. I just started with a new teacher though so I am only doing 1 piece at this time.

I was thinking I would not get these as I can sight sing the things in Volume 1 but am now questioning this. I am an adult beginner. Will the recordings somehow help me? Do all the the recordings have piano to play along with? Much appreciation... -Karla

One of the really important things to remember here is that discomfort is a good thing. In life when we feel discomfort in something it is usually a sign that we are stretching our boundaries and growing. I started music lessons at 39 years of age after having reached a sucesful career as a sw engineer. I cannot tell you how uncomfortable it felt to me to sit in front of a teacher with a strange musical instrument in my hand and know NOTHING. I almost quit several times for the discomfort. Even today, when I go to open mics with my guitar and join other adults, I always have about 9 years LESS experience than anyone else. At first I felt really awkward about this, but I found a happy place in all of this discomfort. I play my simple pieces with respect and love and I eventually have a great deal of fun. The thing that keeps me going and the thing that you too should focus on is the music. I mean at the very core why do we want to learn instruments in the first place? If your motivation is to be a rock star, a super star or to show off then you will never make it through this. If, however, your motivation is the music, then it becomes easier to push past your discomfort and into the next level. It is easy to serve the music and hard to serve our egos. The music will never let you down.

I use the korg chromatic which is very responsive but to get even better results I have purchased also a little device that attaches to the instrument and measures by vibration instead of sound. The response is super quick using that and I can do this in a noisey room if needed. The two pieces together run just under 50 bucks if I am not mistaken.