How to determine the right violin size to buy?

Useful websites and applications to improve your music reading skills

Websites

              http://www.datadragon.com/education/reading/

              http://www.musictheory.net/

              http://www.emusictheory.com/

              http://www.teoria.com/

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   Note Teacher v1.0.1

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                Music Tutor (sight-reading) by JSplash

                
                Music Tutor by VirtualCode

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                Music Tutor (sight-reading) by JSplash 

                Note Perfect by MusicTeachers.co.uk

Correct posture can significantly improve your playing, writes Aaron Rosand...

Have you ever stopped to think that if it looks good it will sound better? 

Appearance is an important part of the complete package, and more attention should be given to this integral factor. Whether you play an audition or give a performance, your appearance and deportment has a lot to do with your success. When you look like you know what you are doing, the playing will exude confidence. This may well be the key to succeeding in your endeavor.  

For standing position, a good stance may be achieved by bearing in mind that your body weight rests primarily on your left leg. Remember that the violin rests on your left side and is the reason for the principal weight on that side for balance. Do not spread your legs too far apart. Twelve to fourteen inches is enough to give you proper balance. Keep your knees flexed, do not stiffen, and your right leg must be relaxed. When shifting your weight, your right leg may move forward; always return to the normal position with the right leg and do not start walking. Moving around is not a good habit. Think of Jascha Heifetz whose legs were like a tree trunk. Focus all of your movement on your hands and keep your mind solely focused on the music.  

For sitting position, keep your back straight. Keep your violin in proper playing position with scroll pointed to the music and not to the brass section. Do not slouch or cross your legs or spread your legs too far apart. Make sure that you have enough space to bow properly and get to the tip staying parallel to the bridge.  

How do you hold the violin? 

This is a question that I frequently ask and most young players cannot answer. They point to the shoulder rest which is a sorry excuse for holding the violin. Heifetz’s reply to a young student who said that he could not play without one was ‘Take up the cello!’ Yehudi Menuhin in his book states that it should rest on the collar bone. Most of the great players that I have known are in total agreement with this, and not one ever used the shoulder rest. When the violin is on the collar bone, the left shoulder moves slightly under the violin. Your left elbow should move inward and well under the back of the violin. This will put your left-hand fingers in the ideal position for intonation and controlled vibrato. The violin is sometimes held leaning on the fleshy part of the left thumb and at times with chin down for rapid passage work or descending passages from higher positions. There is a constant interplay of these parts and they must always be relaxed. Do not clutch the neck of the violin with your left hand. The thumb must remain free to glide easily.  

You must remember that the violin is an instrument that must be held. Your shoulders must be bent slightly inward, and in this way the natural weight of your bow will produce a beautiful sound without additional pressure. With a shoulder rest your right arm is more extended. You have to put more pressure on the bow forcing the sound.  

More and more violinists of today are obsessed with a big sound and pressing the bow constantly, devoid of attention to dynamics. The nuances, subtleties, and textures are neglected as a result of the position and angle of the violin when a shoulder rest is used.

  

Always stand straight and keep your head high. 

Avoid crouching and keep your neck relaxed at all times. Tension in your neck will create problems. Breathe naturally while playing, and do not hold your breath as it will cause grunting and unnecessary sounds while you play. 

The best solution to improve playing is to remember to be as comfortable as possible at all times.  If you have pain in your arms, neck, or back, stop what you are doing. Try to analyse what the problem may be and experiment with other positions. Being comfortable will help you achieve more gratification from your work and certainly provide more enjoyment.  

Benefits of Violin for Adult learners

Starting to learn the violin when you are an adult can seem like an impossible challenge. You may feel like you are already juggling so many things that one more might be too much. However, there are quite a few benefits to learning, and you have the added advantage of not having to worry about a grade!

• Physical Benefits for Adults

The first thing you will notice, after you've been practicing regularly for a few weeks, is that you have more upper body strength. This is tends to be especially obvious for women, but some men will notice it as well. Your back will strengthen, meaning your posture will be better. Your arms, especially your biceps and shoulders, will be stronger. Your fingers will be stronger, also, and you may notice some improvements in your typing (if you type, of course). You will notice that you will start to get calluses on your fingertips, as well.

• Mental Benefits for Adults

Edward Taub, a behavioral neuroscientist at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, and Thomas Elbert of the University of Konstanz, Germany, did a study that measured how musicians' brains responded to touch. They measured the response of all ages, from children to adult. While they found that the region of the brain that receives the "touch messages" from the fingers was larger than non-musicians'...even in adult learners! Your brain can learn and change.

.Violin is also good for stress relief, if only because it is enough of a challenge that it obliterates any memory you had of what was stressing you out. You can sit down and focus on something for 30 minutes (at first, anyway, later on you want to shoot for more if possible) that is completely different from the rest of your life. You are free to treat it like a puzzle.

Studies done by the University of Miami found that those who participated in a music class had much less depression, anxiety, and feelings of loneliness. And if that isn't enough, there was also an increase in a hormone that has been linked to increased energy levels, more muscle mass, and fewer aches and pains. That sounds good for any age!

• Social Benefits for Adults

Or imagine yourself being able to share your newfound passion with non-musical friends. Who knows, perhaps one of them will be interested enough to start learning for themselves? 

Like any avocation, playing the violin will give you the opportunity to socialize if you wish.Community orchestras, musical get-togethers, church, Family barbeques, and more, will give you opportunities to show off if you choose.

When should a child start learning a stringed instrument?

The age that a child should start learning a stringed instrument can be a tricky question for parents, and a tough decision for teachers.

It is a common belief that all great musicians began their glittering careers when they were scarcely out of nappies. Child prodigies have always been popular, the biographies of performers often mention a first public appearance when they still had their milk teeth, and sooner or later everyone mentions Mozart, the benchmark for precocious infants everywhere.

But even the most gifted of children have a great deal of early mental and physical development to cope with first. This includes getting to be of a size to hold even the smallest of instruments, let alone gaining a grasp of what to do with it. Opinions among teachers vary on the earliest age a child should start playing: some say three, and others four, five or six. Most teachers agree, however, that before starting on an instrument, children should take part in some kind of preliminary musical activities involving games and movement, or should even just come to watch classes.

Of the various systematic programmes for teaching very young children to play stringed instruments, perhaps the best known is the one developed by Shin’ichi Suzuki in Japan, which has since been taken up in many parts of the world. Jillian Leddra, who studied Suzuki’s approach in the US and has been teaching violin in the UK for 20 years, finds that while some girls might be ready to start at the age of three, boys are generally better starting at four. ‘The violin involves a lot of fine motor movements,’ she says, ‘and young girls often do activities that involve fine movements: they manipulate small things. With boys, fine motor skills take a little bit longer.’

Gerry Howard, a cellist with over 30 years’ teaching experience (he also teaches violin), warns against starting children before they have reached a certain stage of mental development: ‘There are children of three and a half who are ready to go, but they must have the ability to cope with having some sort of instruction.’

Colourstrings is another system for teaching young string players that is becoming increasingly popular. Géza Szilvay, who developed Colourstrings in Finland with his brother Csaba in the early 1970s, has a different, and robust, view on the earliest age for a child to start: ‘I would say to a parent, if you like your child don’t give them an instrument before they’re five. There are some who can do it at four, but very seldom. In general the body is not strong enough before five to take up an instrument. The posture is unnatural – I would say unhealthy. An early age is for the benefit of the parent, not the child. If you start them at three or four, they will learn, but why do it? They have plenty of time.’

Sheila Nelson, whose work as a violin and viola teacher with young UK string players over many years has been inspirational to students and teachers alike, won’t normally take anyone younger than four. ‘I have started them at three, but that is more for fun than development,’ she says.

Six is the ideal age according to Caroline Lumsden, who launched the String Time programme for young beginners at Junior Trinity College of Music in London, and who founded what became the Gloucester Academy of Music. ‘I have started children at three, but it takes a lot of time playing open strings before they really get going. If they start at six at a slow pace I can always get a child to the Associated Board’s Grade 5 standard by the age of eleven. If someone came to me now with a two- or three-year-old, I would probably send them to a Suzuki teacher.’

There is, then, no general agreement on the question of which starting age is best. The answer depends partly on the different demands and approaches of the various teaching systems. But whatever the differences of opinion among teachers, there are good reasons for starting young, not least the fact that there is an awful lot to learn. As Howard says, ‘The earlier you start, the more years you have to develop.’ Szilvay reckons that starting at ten is possible, ‘but after that it may be too late, because the violin is such a virtuosic instrument that you need the years.’

Leddra explains: ‘Because music is a language, it is good to start sooner rather than later. Also, the child will never have known a time when they didn’t play the violin. It’s completely natural for them. And I have seen very young children able to develop sensational bow arms.’ Howard also points to the advantages of starting young from a purely physical point of view: ‘Bones and ligaments mature and set in shape as children get older, but young children are still bendy, like gymnasts.’

For Nelson, ‘There is no ideal age to start, because children develop quite differently in all kinds of ways, but later starters usually find it physically a bit harder, particularly if they are not good at things with their fingers.’ She might, she says, take on a ten-year-old, but would be less likely to accept someone at 14. Lumsden, however, knew two conservatoire students who didn’t start until they were 14, and both went on to do very well. ‘If someone really has the ability perhaps it is never too late,’ she says. ‘But there is such a huge amount of technique to acquire.’

It is worth mentioning that many of these teachers started fairly late themselves, although they had often been introduced to music earlier on. Howard and Leddra didn’t start until they were into double figures, and Nelson only started violin at eleven, after a thorough grounding in music at primary school and experience as a triangle player. So starting early is far from an absolute necessity.

There used to be a good practical reason for not starting too young: the instruments were simply too big. Today it is possible to get violins so small that they could probably be played in a pram. At the other extreme, those interested in playing the double bass used to have to wait until they were older, and would probably learn another instrument first. Cathy Elliott, chair of the European String Teachers Association’s British branch, didn’t start playing bass until she was a teenager. Now, she says, ‘The starting age can mercifully be about ten years younger than it was when I was a child. But there is definitely still a too-small time to start. Around six years old is normally good, unless the child is very little – they should be able to play a tenth-size instrument.’ Elliott did have one very keen five-year-old who was so small that she had to sit him on an upturned waste-paper basket and lean the bass up against him. She told him to eat lots of Weetabix and come back in a year, which he did. But he still counts that as his first lesson.

Howard warns against choosing an instrument based on the size of the child, however: ‘If you choose really big children to play cello, you are really only choosing the ones who got big early. You can only hazard a guess at what size they will be when they’re older. And there are a lot of small cellists in the world.’

Along with the readiness and ability of a young child, and every bit as crucial, is the ability of the teacher. As Howard points out, ‘Too often you have professional players who are amateur teachers. On the whole they’re pretty disastrous, unless they have had some experience in teaching young children. Most of their knowledge of teaching comes from what they experienced at an advanced level, and if they started at a very young age themselves they won’t be able to remember it. Many haven’t a clue where to start.’

For a parent with a keen young child, programmes developed specifically for the very young with trained teachers (such as Suzuki and Colourstrings) or courses at junior conservatoires are obvious options, but only if they are within a realistic travelling distance. Otherwise, finding a teacher experienced in working with very young children can be difficult. Training in this area of music teaching is patchy at best, and often can only be acquired by working with experienced teachers. Where there are training courses available, says Howard, they are often expensive, which means that the young professionals who most need to attend them can’t afford to.

Parents also have to be prepared to put in a lot of their own time, both attending the lessons and working with their children at home, supervising practice. Most teachers insist that the involvement of parents in teaching very young children is essential, or at the very least greatly desirable. ‘Teaching very young children is a team effort,’ says Howard, ‘between the teacher, the pupil and the parent. If there is little parental help it is better to wait until the child is about seven.’

Leddra wouldn’t take on a three- or four-year-old without help from a parent, but she warns that some parents can find the early years hard: ‘They find it extremely difficult to understand that the rate of progress they regard as quite slow in fact represents a huge achievement.’ Lumsden also welcomes parental involvement, but she too has seen parents becoming upset by the progress and commitment of their very young children. ‘I used to get parents who were totally stressed about practice,’ she says. ‘And they can also do harm to a bow hold, for example, if they don’t know what they’re doing.’

‘There are so many things for children to take in that adults don’t really understand,’ says Nelson, who also likes to have parents at lessons. ‘Someone has to take responsibility,’ she says, ‘although they don’t have to present throughout every lesson.’

Ideally, young children will have some preparatory experience, playing musical games, developing their ears and learning about rhythms. At Junior Trinity, Lumsden conducts two years of nursery classes with just singing, games and rhythm. Géza Szilvay encourages kindergarten music, doing movement and singing, so that children’s whole bodies are like instruments. They know what they are doing and their coordination is developed before the instrument is touched.

It’s important that pupils know what they are trying to achieve, says Nelson. ‘Children have to learn how to listen and to be able to hear in their head how a tune will sound. If they start young they must sing right from the beginning, otherwise they have no idea what they are trying to do. It’s the brain that makes the body work. I don’t let a child in the early stages start playing a tune unless they know what it sounds like.’

When pupils have started on an instrument, many teachers like to see them twice a week, normally once individually and once in a group. ‘Individual lessons are very important physically, mentally and technically,’ says Szilvay. ‘But the group is very important socially, perhaps even more than the individual lessons.’

Leddra recalls a young girl who couldn’t come to her group lessons. ‘Even though she came from a musical family she didn’t have the degree of confidence that the other children had. It’s much harder to do something in a group than on your own.’

Once they are a little older, students can prosper more on their own, and parental involvement becomes less crucial. Howard will teach seven-year-olds without having a parent present, and, as Szilvay says, the increased understanding of an older child can compensate for a lateness in starting.

There may be an age when it is too late to achieve full mastery of a stringed instrument, but it is never too late to go a fair distance. Lumsden has started people in their fifties who have gone on to have semi-professional careers, and recalls a cellist who only started when she retired, and went on to take a Grade 8 exam successfully. Elliott took on a 15-year-old pupil who won a scholarship to London’s Royal Academy of Music three years later.

As for younger children, while it may be tempting to want an easy solution, the best age to start learning a stringed instrument depends on a range of factors: the speed of the child’s mental and physical development; the choice of instrument and teaching method; the scope and quality of parental involvement; and the musical life that is envisioned or dreamt of, be it professional soloist or amateur orchestral player. A one-size-fits-all approach does not apply. Nor would any teacher suggest a best age across the board. As Nelson says, ‘That would just be silly.’

The Benefits of Music Education II

Whether your child is the next Paganini or more likely to play just as a hobby, he/she is bound to benefit from some form of music education. Research shows that learning the do-re-mis can help children excel in ways beyond the basic ABCs.

• More Than Just Music

Research has found that learning music facilitates learning other subjects and enhances skills that children inevitably use in other areas. “A music-rich experience for children of singing, listening and moving is really bringing a very serious benefit to children as they progress into more formal learning,” says Mary Luehrisen, executive director of the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) Foundation, a not-for-profit association that promotes the benefits of making music.

Making music involves more than the voice or fingers playing an instrument; a child learning about music has to tap into multiple skill sets, often simultaneously. For instance, people use their ears and eyes, as well as large and small muscles, says Kenneth Guilmartin, cofounder of Music Together, an early childhood music development program for infants through kindergarteners that involves parents or caregivers in the classes.

“Music learning supports all learning. Not that Mozart makes you smarter, but it’s a very integrating, stimulating pastime or activity”, Guilmartin says.

• Language Development

“When you look at children ages two to nine, one of the breakthroughs in that area is music’s benefit for language development, which is so important at that stage,” says Luehrisen. While children come into the world ready to decode sounds and words, music education helps enhance those natural abilities. “Growing up in a musically rich environment is often advantageous for children’s language development”, she says. But Luehrisen adds that those inborn capacities need to be “reinforced, practiced, celebrated” which can be done at home or in a more formal music education setting.

According to the Children’s Music Workshop, the effect of music education on language development can be seen in the brain. “Recent studies have clearly indicated that musical training physically develops the part of the left side of the brain known to be involved with processing language, and can actually wire the brain’s circuits in specific ways. Linking familiar songs to new information can also help imprint information on young minds”, the group claims.

This relationship between music and language development is also socially advantageous to young children. “The development of language over time tends to enhance parts of the brain that help process music,” says Dr. Kyle Pruett, clinical professor of child psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine and a practicing musician. “Language competence is at the root of social competence. Musical experience strengthens the capacity to be verbally competent.”

• Increased IQ

A study by E. Glenn Schellenberg at the University of Toronto at Mississauga, as published in a 2004 issue of Psychological Science, found a small increase in the IQs of six-year-olds who were given weekly voice and piano lessons. Schellenberg provided nine months of piano and voice lessons to a dozen six-year-olds, drama lessons (to see if exposure to arts in general versus just music had an effect) to a second group of six-year-olds, and no lessons to a third group. The children’s IQs were tested before entering the first grade, then again before entering the second grade.

Surprisingly, the children who were given music lessons over the school year tested on average three IQ points higher than the other groups. The drama group didn’t have the same increase in IQ, but did experience increased social behavior benefits not seen in the music-only group.

• The Brain Works Harder

Research indicates the brain of a musician, even a young one, works differently than that of a nonmusician. “There’s some good neuroscience research that children involved in music have larger growth of neural activity than people not in music training. When you’re a musician and you’re playing an instrument, you have to be using more of your brain,” says Dr. Eric Rasmussen, chair of the Early Childhood Music Department at the Peabody Preparatory of The Johns Hopkins University, where he teaches a specialized music curriculum for children aged two months to nine years.

In fact, a study led by Ellen Winner, professor of psychology at Boston College, and Gottfried Schlaug, professor of neurology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, found changes in the brain images of children who underwent 15 months of weekly music instruction and practice. The students in the study who received music instruction had improved sound discrimination and fine motor tasks, and brain imaging showed changes to the networks in the brain associated with those abilities, according to the Dana Foundation, a private philanthropic organization that supports brain research.

• Spatial-Temporal Skills

Research has also found a causal link between music and spatial intelligence, which means that understanding music can help children visualize various elements that should go together, like they would do when solving a math problem.

“We have some pretty good data that music instruction does reliably improve spatial-temporal skills in children over time,” explains Pruett, who helped found the Performing Arts Medicine Association. These skills come into play in solving multistep problems one would encounter in architecture, engineering, math, art, gaming, and especially working with computers.

• Improved Test Scores

A study published in 2007 by Christopher Johnson, professor of music education and music therapy at the University of Kansas, revealed that students in elementary schools with superior music education programs scored around 22 percent higher in English and 20 percent higher in math scores on standardized tests, compared to schools with low-quality music programs, regardless of socioeconomic disparities among the schools or school districts. Johnson compares the concentration that music training requires to the focus needed to perform well on a standardized test.

Aside from test score results, Johnson’s study highlights the positive effects that a quality music education can have on a young child’s success. Luehrisen explains this psychological phenomenon in two sentences: “Schools that have rigorous programs and high-quality music and arts teachers probably have high-quality teachers in other areas. If you have an environment where there are a lot of people doing creative, smart, great things, joyful things, even people who aren’t doing that have a tendency to go up and do better.”

And it doesn’t end there: along with better performance results on concentration-based tasks, music training can help with basic memory recall. “Formal training in music is also associated with other cognitive strengths such as verbal recall proficiency,” Pruett says. “People who have had formal musical training tend to be pretty good at remembering verbal information stored in memory.”

• Being Musical

Music can improve your child’ abilities in learning and other nonmusic tasks, but it’s important to understand that music does not make one smarter. As Pruett explains, the many intrinsic benefits to music education include being disciplined, learning a skill, being part of the music world, managing performance, being part of something you can be proud of, and even struggling with a less than perfect teacher.

“It’s important not to oversell how smart music can make you,” Pruett says. “Music makes your kid interesting and happy, and smart will come later. It enriches his or her appetite for things that bring you pleasure and for the friends you meet.”

While parents may hope that enrolling their child in a music program will make her a better student, the primary reasons to provide your child with a musical education should be to help them become more musical, to appreciate all aspects of music, and to respect the process of learning an instrument or learning to sing, which is valuable on its own merit.

“There is a massive benefit from being musical that we don’t understand, but it’s individual. Music is for music’s sake,” Rasmussen says. “The benefit of music education for me is about being musical. It gives you have a better understanding of yourself. The horizons are higher when you are involved in music,” he adds. “Your understanding of art and the world, and how you can think and express yourself, are enhanced.”

The Benefits of Music Education