Emma~ Left Hand
I gave Emma a lesson for an hour on Monday. I planned on just going through the practice sheet with her so we started with a scale. I actually had her doing the G-major scale and focused on her bowing the Down Wiggle Up Wiggle. She was doing pretty well, I just needed to have her go through it a couple of times focusing on her quarter notes being shorter. We went through Ferre Jacques and I had to keep reminding her to start slow so she could get the ABAGF#D without slowing the tempo. She knows the song very well so I was able to play through it as a round with her a few times. She seems to get frustrated when I make her do things multiple times but she still does them. Then we tried going through some of the pieces in Essential Elements and I tried to have her say the notes of each measure and she kept asking me if it was right so I decided it was time for FLASH CARDS!!! woo hoo!
We spent a good 10 minutes on flashcards since we had an hour. She was squirming so it took longer than it should have, but I decided after she was stalling the process by doing so that I would speed it up. She started recalling them better and quicker. We did two speed rounds at the end of the ‘flashcard session’ and she got them all and played them all perfectly. I plan on going through flashcards at our next lesson and seeing where she’s at with that. I have a feeling we may have to do flashcards at the beginning of each lesson for a few more weeks.
When we started playing twinkle I was really noticing how her left hand kept creeping up the finger board which, in turn, made her intonation suffer. I put a sticker for where her thumb should stay so that her hand wouldn’t slip. I’ll see how helpful that was when we have our next lesson.
Then I noticed that she was shaking her hand out after playing each song in EE (along with her wrist constantly collapsing!). I decided to steal some technique from Karen Richter’s masterclass from viola day last year! I had her put the neck of the instrument in between her index and middle finger and place her second finger and third finger on the correct tapes, leaving out the first tape. She and I played open, 2, 3, 2, open over and over again together and while she was playing I would stop and check to see how her wrist was doing and staring at it which made her adjust. This exercise helped a LOT with loosening her death grip on the neck and with keeping her wrist relaxed and somewhat straight and natural looking. I made her look in the mirror so she could see what her wrist should look like.
At the end of the lesson I had her do a couple of songs that she knew she could do well out of EE. I like doing this so that the student leaves the lesson feeling like they have something to work on but that they also have a couple of things that they can show me that they’re proud of.
Emma and I keep a notebook for what she’s supposed to do. I’m not sure if she looks at it. I didn’t think to tell her mom to make sure she was looking at it, but I will do that at our next lesson.
isucelloprof said,
March 16, 2008 at 6:58 pm
Sounds like a very productive lesson! Sometimes it’s a great luxury to have an hour. It will be interesting to see how the flashcards are coming along over the next couple of weeks, though with regular 30 minute lessons you probably don’t want to spend too much time on them. Good for you for remembering the technique from last year’s viola day! I know for cello I’ve had kids hold a grape between their thumb and the neck, so that they have to hold it in place but not squish it. wonder if that would work on violin? So far no one has ever squished one (except with their shoe accidentally- they tend to drop them!) Also, one trick a learned with regard to repeating things multiple times is to have some dice handy; let the kids roll and whatever number they get they have to repeat that certain exercise that many times on the spot. of course some times they get lucky and get a 1! but usually it’ll end up being 2-4. I do have dice that go up to 20, but I haven’t used those lately…