Home » Discussion Forums » Blog Post Discussion » Guest post - From the teaching studio
| Guest post - From the teaching studio [message #24832] |
Wed, 30 December 2009 19:27  |
 b_twin_1
Messages: 2594
Registered: September 2008
Location: Victoria, Australia |
Senior Member
[Moderator] |
|
|
Stories from the teaching studio.
I've got a plan so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel ~ Blackadder
|
|
|
| Re: Guest post - From the teaching studio [message #24833 is a reply to message #24832 ] |
Wed, 30 December 2009 19:41  |
|
Your posts make me smile.
Smooshes!
|
|
| |
| Re: Guest post - From the teaching studio [message #24836 is a reply to message #24832 ] |
Wed, 30 December 2009 22:46 |
skating librarian
Messages: 570
Registered: October 2008
Location: Vermont |
Senior Member |
|
|
Well, you've got skating coaches to a T.
I don't have what is called "turn out" and coach after coach has said "sure you can do it" demonstrating how easy it is for them to do spread eagles, Ina Bauers, and so forth.
Then they finally look at the results when I try to do what in ballet would be first or second position and discover that ... hunh, I can only get my feet to stay in those positions on dry land (with benefit of friction which doesn't exist on ice).
And like playing the violin, I can only expect to get so far, having started skating at age 45. Even folks who begin in their 20s are way ahead of me! Of course being in my sixties means it takes much longer to warm up, so I have less time to work on the really hard things.
Anyway reading about your teaching experiences will make me a better teacher and a better learner! Thanks!
[Updated on: Thu, 31 December 2009 20:20]
"Winning a war is like winning an earthquake" Jeanette Rankin
|
|
| |
| Re: Guest post - From the teaching studio [message #24844 is a reply to message #24836 ] |
Thu, 31 December 2009 07:24 |
|
Skating librarian, have you read CJ Cherryh's journal? She started skating at 61 - had one lesson, and went to buy her own skates. For awhile there her journal seemed to be a good deal more about skating than writing.
For the day they (Cherryh and Jane Fancher) started, scroll around 1/8 down the link, to Jan 25, 04.
This inspired me to get off my backside and start seriously walking, though I admit I've backslid.
edited typo, Jan 25, not Jan 15
[Updated on: Thu, 31 December 2009 18:34]
|
|
| | |
| Re: Guest post - From the teaching studio [message #24866 is a reply to message #24855 ] |
Thu, 31 December 2009 21:29 |
 |
equus_peduus
Messages: 437
Registered: September 2009
Location: France |
Senior Member |
|
|
| mayasings wrote on Thu, 31 December 2009 15:48 |
especially the excersizes my professor's been giving us now, when the clef changes in the middle of a line...
|
For my current solo piece, I got to choose between two choices. After taking them home and working at them a little, I chose the one that didn't change clefs every third measure and time signatures every other measure. Not that I *can't* deal with clef changes and time signature changes... but it's so much easier not to 
My teacher does viola class periodically where a bunch of her students get together, play our solo pieces for each other, and then sight read a bunch of music for varying sizes of groups of violas. The last time, for the first piece, there happened to be an extra copy of the violin transposition for a part, which is the one I ended up with. The rest of the sight reading session was ruined for me... for some reason, my head wouldn't go back into alto clef for the rest of the afternoon, and kept insisting on thinking I was reading treble clef, even though I wasn't (supposed to be)...
I kind of wish my teacher would spend half a lesson on what my bowing elbow is doing. Or whatever - I keep having this feeling that I'm not quite doing things right, but she's much more artistic than technical (mostly) as long as I'm in tune and have decent sound quality... and I feel like I never really learned how to do things right in the first place (jr high and high school orchestra is not the best place to learn perfect technique, and I didn't start taking private lessons til the end of high school). Yes, I've asked for help. I've given up asking for help.
|
|
| | | |
| Re: Guest post - From the teaching studio [message #24889 is a reply to message #24855 ] |
Fri, 01 January 2010 20:06 |
 |
blondviolinist
Messages: 1069
Registered: October 2008
Location: Midwestern United States |
Senior Member |
|
|
| mayasings wrote on Thu, 31 December 2009 18:48 |
your posts make me want to play the violin again  that and my Basic Conducting and Score Reading class.
|
Oh, good!
| Quote: |
that thing with your student reading treble when he's used to alto clef - I've got that in reverse, lol. I'm used to treble, being a singer and former violinist, and some bass clef from playing piano, but now I have to read alto and tenor... it's hella confusing! especially the excersizes my professor's been giving us now, when the clef changes in the middle of a line... oy.
makes me remember what it was like starting to learn how to play...
|
Blerg. I am *not* a violist, so reading viola clef is not second nature. When I'm doing sight-reading duets with my viola students, it's practice for me as well as for them. (These are young violists... beginners and intermediate players. Eventually they'll have to transfer to an actual violist for lessons.)
"Purity of heart is to will one thing." Kirkegaard
|
|
|
| Re: Guest post - From the teaching studio [message #24903 is a reply to message #24832 ] |
Sat, 02 January 2010 08:37 |
|
equus_peduus - I get that about the changes every third measure. the time changes I can definitely deal with, it's the clef changes that are super confusing...
blondviolinist - alto and tenor clefs are only second nature to Violists, Cellists and Trombonists (probably a couple other instruments I'm forgetting, lol). for those of us learning them late, it's like learning a new dialect for a language you've been speaking forever.
I need to go practice, lol.
"they say that absence makes the heart grow fungus".
|
|
|
| Re: Guest post - From the teaching studio [message #24904 is a reply to message #24832 ] |
Sat, 02 January 2010 10:02 |
 |
Black Bear
Messages: 3216
Registered: September 2008
Location: Indianapolis, IN USA |
Senior Member
[Moderator] |
|
|
I've gotta say, I wouldn't have gone for either the rainbow OR the tunnel analogy when I was taking lessons--but I was a cranky teen when I started taking private viola (started when I was 10 or so, but played in orchestra for years before I had lessons.) My fingertips are double-jointed, so keeping them arched at all was a challenge and being nagged about it each week made me crabby. I finally went back to just playing in orchestra without lessons, which was a relief both for me AND my teacher.
Cellos read bass clef, don't they? I'm embarrassed to say I no longer can read alto clef without a struggle--use it or lose it, I guess! But (I think I said this somewhere before) for me the notes were always related to the position of my fingers, so a C on the staff just meant second finger on the A string; I'm kind of curious as to whether, despite my not being able to read off the names of the notes in a piece of viola music anymore, I might still be able to finger through it if I had my viola in hand... Kinesthetic memory, is that what that's called?
"The time is always right to do what's right."--MLK Jr.
|
|
| |
| Re: Guest post - From the teaching studio [message #24907 is a reply to message #24904 ] |
Sat, 02 January 2010 11:15 |
|
blondviolinist
Messages: 1069
Registered: October 2008
Location: Midwestern United States |
Senior Member |
|
|
| Black Bear wrote on Sat, 02 January 2010 10:02 |
I've gotta say, I wouldn't have gone for either the rainbow OR the tunnel analogy when I was taking lessons--but I was a cranky teen when I started taking private viola (started when I was 10 or so, but played in orchestra for years before I had lessons.)
|
True. I don't tend to use those analogies for teen and adult students. With them, I talk about square fingers and the weight-bearing capabilities of Roman arches. (Your description of your double-jointed fingers? I think I know what your arm looked like when you were doing that. Your teacher needed to fix the relationship between your arm and your hand. Then you would have been able to keep the square fingers much easier. It's all about architecture & physics... levers and connections between weight-bearing objects.)
| Quote: |
Cellos read bass clef, don't they? I'm embarrassed to say I no longer can read alto clef without a struggle--use it or lose it, I guess!
|
They start in bass clef, but in the advanced repertoire, a lot of the music is high enough that it's written in tenor clef. (Or even G-clef.)
| Quote: |
But (I think I said this somewhere before) for me the notes were always related to the position of my fingers, so a C on the staff just meant second finger on the A string;
|
I think that's the hardest thing about learning to shift. Learning to move around the instrument isn't' that hard. (Ignoring the fact that *all* the distances between the fingers change in Every. Single. Position. Relearning your brain's connections to the written page is a whole 'nother level of challenging.
"Purity of heart is to will one thing." Kirkegaard
|
|
| | | | | |
| Re: Guest post - From the teaching studio [message #24938 is a reply to message #24907 ] |
Sun, 03 January 2010 09:18 |
|
Black Bear
Messages: 3216
Registered: September 2008
Location: Indianapolis, IN USA |
Senior Member
[Moderator] |
|
|
| blondviolinist wrote on Sat, 02 January 2010 11:15 |
(Your description of your double-jointed fingers? I think I know what your arm looked like when you were doing that. Your teacher needed to fix the relationship between your arm and your hand. Then you would have been able to keep the square fingers much easier. It's all about architecture & physics... levers and connections between weight-bearing objects.)
|
Hmmm. I dunno about that--the issue is/was that when applying pressure to my fingertip, there's a 50/50 chance the last joint will bend either way. This is mostly an issue with my little finger, the others are strong enough to bend the right way most of the time. But even as I'm typing this, little finger on the shift key bends backward. My teacher--an excellent violist, who never completely understood why I was there if I didn't want to be a concert soloist--gave me exercises to strengthen that finger, but I never quite got a handle on it.
| Quote: |
I think that's the hardest thing about learning to shift. Learning to move around the instrument isn't' that hard. (Ignoring the fact that *all* the distances between the fingers change in Every. Single. Position. Relearning your brain's connections to the written page is a whole 'nother level of challenging.
|
Yes indeed! It's one reason I enjoyed learning guitar. I liked viola for the orchestral aspects, as I'm far more interested in playing in a group--I love seeing parts fit together into a whole--but guitar made more sense to me mentally and I was able to get good at it much more quickly. At least in the type of music I was playing, I was reading tab not clef, and note names were almost never mentioned--it's all where you are on the neck and what finger is on what fret. I have to strain to even remember what the strings are tuned to on a standard guitar... E and E, and....hmmm... EADGBE, that's it. But sometimes you tune your guitar up or down to fit your voice or a piece, and so the notes are more relative than absolute.
"The time is always right to do what's right."--MLK Jr.
|
|
| | | |
| |
  |
Goto Forum:
Current Time: Wed May 22 17:18:22 EDT 2013
Total time taken to generate the page: 0.07150 seconds |
Members
Search
Help
Register
Login
Home
Peanut butter and M&Ms get pressed into metaphorical service. Real peaches, eggs, and TicTac breath mints have also been used on occasion.)
[/quote]
