Violin Lessons at our New Studio

East Cooper Music is conveniently located right off of Coleman Blvd in Mount Pleasant, near Shem Creek. The music school is a newly constructed music facility with state-of-the-art sound control, comfortable waiting area and wi-fi. Soon we will also offer an online music store,which will contain just about everything the students will need, from small accessories like metronomes, strings, to music stands, instruments, and music books.

We now have a classroom set up for Lauren’s Suzuki Group Class.

Pictures of the studio coming soon!

Good areas to review before learning to use fourth finger:

- Keep left fingers curved and knuckles flat. Fingers should be bent at all joints.

- Left pinkie should be relaxed and hovered over the fingerboard like the other fingers. Never keep it curled inward toward your palm when playing. If the pinkie tightens and curls, there are some good exercises to help keep it relaxed to keep it over the fingerboard.  This will also help keep you entire hand from being tense, and will not feel tired after a short amount of time.

- The left arm should be under the violin and palm should face you. You will hear me say over again “come around!” which means to get your elbow more in front. This will help reach the fourth finger more easily.

*When you play with the fourth finger, it will at first may seem like a stretch. Just remember to keep the pinkie curved and it will eventually feel less weak with practice.

The Suzuki Book I has a good 4th finger exercise with the Perpetual Motion which I always like to use with my students. It lets you play first with open E and then try to match the note with fourth finger.

Here is a fun way to learn how to hold the bow. We are going to learn how to make a bunny with our right hand. You can try it on a pencil first.

Let’s pretend the pencil is a carrot the bunny will eat.

First open up your hand and bend your thumb.

Take your middle and ring finger and place on the thumbnail. These will be the bunny’s teeth. They will be the fingers that will be “holding the bow” along with the thumb.

The 'Bunny Bow Hold' in 4 Steps (click to enlarge)

Let’s take the Variation A of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star a.k.a. “Pepperoni Pizza”.

When you memorize a piece, you always need to take it in sections. You cannot expect to play through the whole piece several times and memorize it. The brain likes doing things in layers and sections.

With Pepperoni Pizza Twinkle, you have your larger A section, two small B sections , then the A section again to finish. I always describe the Pepperoni Pizza Twinkle like a sandwich. The A sections are your breads and your B sections are the meats.

First thing, LISTEN to the recording along with practicing. Listening to the songs is just as important as practicing the songs.

You first want to play through the “bread” section – use the music in the beginning. This is the opportunity to work on intonation and tone. When you’re playing on the open strings, you want to have a brilliant and clear sound coming out or “ringtones”.

Try playing the bread section without the music. If there are any missed notes, go right to that spot and correct, don’t start from the beginning.

Once you have mastered the bread section, begin learning the “meat” section. Take the same approach like we did in the bread section. Be sure you have two sets of meats in your Twinkle sandwich!

After memorizing the meat section, play the meat sections and add in your bread section at the end.

After that start from the top with your bread and you should be on your way to building your Twinkle sandwich!

Lauren and I had the privilege of rehearsing with the 6th grade violins at Cario Middle School for the Mark Wood Experience Electrify Your Strings school concert. They were playing “Born to be Wild” which gives variety to what the students can learn and play along with the classical orchestra pieces. Great group of kids!