Advice for Vacationers

(Play Scales)

            For those folks who are not taking summer lessons, or those who have a long gap between lessons, here is some advice for keeping up your skills when I'm not around to give you assignments.

            As predictable as it may sound, the best way to maintain your skills is to keep using them. There are certain aspects of our playing that we need to keep up more than others, and most of them can be maintained with scales. Scales are great for different finger patterns, evenness and speed, shifting, tone control, and of course intonation. If you do nothing else over the summer, play scales. Review does wonders, too, because you can concentrate on being musical rather than learning the notes. Your old pieces are the songs that you can really sound good on.

            Listening to music is also great because it’ll keep up your sense of pitch and rhythm, and it may also rekindle your interest at times. There are a lot of recordings on the Naxos label that are very inexpensive, usually because they use performers who aren’t famous but are still very good. The best performers are the best to listen to, although they may cost you a few extra dollars. Itzhak Perlman, Joshua Bell, Jascha Heifetz, Zino Francescatti, Hilary Hahn, Gil Shaham—all of these violinists will make your day better.

            Keep up your skills, and have fun.

Idea List:

Intonation:

          Scales, Arpeggios

          Double Stops

          Find difficult notes on piano

          Listening

Rhythm:

          Scales with metronome

          Playing pieces with metronome

          Listening

Shifting:

          Scales (old finger slides for unfamiliar distances)

          Shifts in pieces

Finger speed:

          Scales with metronome

          Difficult passages with metronome, speed rhythms

Finger strength, flexibility:

          Double Stops

          Awkward intervals

Bow – range of motion:

          Scales with whole bows, frog to tip

          Scales in only upper half, only lower half

          Scales at extreme tip, even on G string

          Scales at extreme frog, even on E string

Tone:

          Scales with whole bows, even sound

          Scales with wide vibrato

          Slow movements with deep sound

          Listen to great performers!

Trills - keep up any exercises we've done in the past. You have to keep using your trill for it to stay automatic.

Vibrato exercises - again, keep doing the exercises that got you there.

Review old pieces!

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