The pedagogy of Stringtatic beginners.
The idea behind Stringtastic was to provide a book of great tunes which also builds technique one step at a time. We felt that there wasn’t a book available that satisfactorily achieved this aim: there are books with great tunes and there are books with rigorous structure, but the combination of both was harder to find. We also wanted to write a book where all of the bowed string instruments could learn together, yet which would be ideal for individual tuition.
Here were our priorities:
Start with open strings.
Use real musical notation right from the start
Cover all of the rhythms found in the book in the first nine tunes.
Only introduce one new concept at a time.
Provide plenty of examples before introducing something new.
Build towards a full D major finger pattern.
Start the majority of fingered pieces with a finger down, rather than an open string, to increase security of left-hand position and intonation.
We conceived the book in two halves. In our teaching, once the students have reached the 10th tune, we the introduce left-hand work with tune no. 21, Finger Food. We then teach fingered tunes while continuing to work through the open string tunes. This allows us to develop left-hand technique while consolidating the bowing arm. We’ve achieved this concept by insuring that the tunes which introduce the fingers are kept as rhythmically simple as possible.
The ability to play a full, one octave, D major scale and arpeggio seemed a sensible end point to us. By keeping to this pattern throughout the book, the finger placement should become very secure, leading to true intonation and confident tone production.
We didn’t use Italian terms and dynamics so as to avoid making the page look too confusing. At this stage in the learning process it’s all about correct posture, good intonation and, very importantly, a strong, confident sound. However, many of the tunes have lyrics and these often suggest a certain atmosphere. The creative teacher can use these to encourage the student to try to produce appropriate tone colours and so start to learn dynamics.
The first twenty tunes have open string parts and fingered parts. These, more advanced, parts can be returned to on completing the 43rd tune in the book. They provide extra fourth finger practice for violinists and violists, as well as introducing slurs for all of the instruments. Some of the later open string tunes are quite challenging and can be kept for bowing practice when the student is about to learn the fingered part.
Please let us know in the comments below, your own experience of using Stringtastic. If you have shared any performances of our music on social media, we’d love to feature it on our Stringtastic Facebook page. We hope that you and your students get as much pleasure from using the book as we got from writing it.
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