Masterclasses for String Players at www.violinmasterclass.com

How many young musicians have had the opportunity to take a masterclass with a world-class violinist?  Of the thousands of students who learn to play string instruments, the number is undoubtably quite small.  Thanks to a great website, www.violinmasterclass.com, anyone with a computer and internet access can take advantage of the expert instruction of Kurt Sassmannshaus.  Sassmannshaus is the chair of the string department at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.  In addition to teaching college students, Professor Sassmannshaus founded the Starling Preparatory String Project, a pre-college level program for young string students.  He mentioned his website during a masterclass I attended at Juilliard.

This website offers many masterclass videos divided into several topics: Stance & Violin Position; Right Hand; Left Hand; Scales, Arpeggios, & Double Stops; Intonation, and Putting It All Together.  Each topic is divided into a number of subtopics.  For example, if you click on Right Hand, you will find masterclasses on the following topics: Bow Grip; Bow Speed, Pressure and Sounding Point; Detache; Legato; Bow Changes; Colle; Martele; Staccato; Spiccato; Sautille; Ricochet; Chords.  Then, each subtopic is divided into video masterclasses demonstrating Definition of the technique; Exercises at various levels; Master Classes; and Performances.  Each video is concise and specific, showing Sassmannshaus working with a student who demonstrates the technique clearly and proficiently.  Recommended practice strategies are offered in each video so viewers can come away with valuable tips.

Sassmannshaus' affable, fatherly manner is endearing, as is his classic bowtie which is worn in each video.  The videos are brief and instruction is limited to one topic at a time.  Since the demonstrations show close-ups of students working on each technique, viewers can take what they see and apply it readily to their own playing.  The masterclasses go from very basic beginner techniques to advanced artistic nuances and skills.  The website includes performance files of numerous pieces in the violin repertoire, performed beautifully by Sassmannshaus' students of various ages.  Some of the performances are accompanied by piano, and some by chamber or full orchestra.

The site provides advice for practicing, including worksheets that may be useful to students and teachers, as well as graded repertoire lists, which include violin methods and etudes, repertoire for violin and orchestra, violin and piano, and violin solos.  A section on the site called Masterclass Kids! is geared especially toward beginning string players.

Violinmasterclass.com is funded through the non-profit Dorothy Richard Starling Foundation, which hosts the site free of charge.  The site is available in English, Chinese, and German.  If you are a string player, parent, or enthusiast, you will find plenty of useful information at www.violinmasterclass.com.  I recommend this site to my students as a reference, and have gained some helpful teaching tips through viewing Kurt Sassmannshaus working with his students.  Take a look for yourself!

http://www.violinmasterclass.com

Texting vs. Research-Sometimes It's Okay to Break the Rules

Teenagers love to text message their friends and it's common for high schools to have rules related to cell phone use during class.  The other day, one of my guitar students was holding his phone down low (in the manner in which students hold their phones when they are trying to do some clandestine texting).  I peered over his shoulder, and to my surprise, Mark had found guitar tabs on the internet using his iPhone.  He was trying to decipher a song he wanted to learn, since he had already completed the assigned traditional notation and chord work that period.  I had Mark place his iPhone on his music stand so he could see it better and we went over some of the tablature together.  The internet has been a great resource for years, in terms of having all kinds of information available to anyone who has a computer and an internet connection.  Since computer devices continue becoming smaller in size, people have the option of carrying access to resources and information in their pockets.  Having a palm-sized computer increases the spontaneity of the moment for checking information and for doing research quickly.  Mark has been using his iPhone regularly in class and he is making excellent progress on several songs he is trying to learn.  He is not limited to the books and music that is available in the classroom, and his motivation and interest are bringing his skills to a whole new level of musicianship.

When I was in elementary school, I remember going to visit my dad's office at Bell Labs, especially around holiday time.  My dad was a computer programmer and Bell Labs had the newest, most modern technology of the time.  I recall being thrilled to be handed a stack of binary code punch cards and thinking how amazing it was that a machine could read them and complete a calculation.  The computers themselves were immense, taking up the space of entire rooms from wall to wall.  No one owned a home computer in the '70's (or a digital cordless telephone for that matter!)  By the time I was in the fourth grade, Bell Labs had a new device - a special pad that one could "write" on with a pen-shaped object connected by a cord to a computer.  It was like magic!  Whatever was drawn on the pad appeared on the monitor.  Now, people are accustomed to using touch screens on tiny computers that they carry in their pockets (and phones they wear on their ear).

Today's students have been surrounded by technology from the day they were born.  They have a wealth of information at their fingertips.  Kids are naturally curious; they like technology and teachers can nurture their students' interest by using current technology for spontaneous research ... as long as their students are not losing focus by texting during class!

Technology, Music, and Flow

What is it about technology that makes it so obsessive?

I've worked on several different kinds of projects recently that have become almost addictive.  In working on these projects, getting to the point of having a finished product has been the result of hours of thinking, rethinking, and "tinkering". 

Two of the most recent projects have been using iMovie to make a movie about Nova Scotia and making a Music Concrete project using Audacity.  In each project, at first there is a learning period where time is spent trying to navigate the program and to see how it works.  There is plenty of trial and error during this period.  It is a time of experimentation and intent thought where frustration is eventually replaced with excitement over small successes.  Frustration makes me even more determined to figure out how to get the results I want.  Fortunately, in the programs I've been using it has been easy to go back and restore my work if the results are not what I intended (which happens a lot!)  And, with the Music Concrete project it has been very helpful to save the project under different names if I'm not sure which version of my project I like the best.  I can always open a former version and modify it.  There are plenty of surprises during the experimentation period, some of which are very useful.

As I get more familiar with how the program works, I feel more competent and that is when the project becomes most addictive.  Viewing and listening to the project over and over and making changes, sometimes very slight ones, become a seemingly endless pursuit.  I find myself enjoying the feeling of being engrossed in the process.  It seems as if only ten or fifteen minutes have elapsed, but when I look at the clock several hours have flown by.  It is as if time has been suspended.  I often realize, when I have reached this stage of competence, that there is an easy and efficient way to do something that I spent a lot of time on.  (For example, when I was adding music to my movie, I realized that I could have used the manual fade in/fade out for each track I included instead of working on trimming the clips to start and end in exact places. After trimming the clips for timing, I used the fade in/out features and got the results I wanted.)  

I am conscious of the fact that my projects will be viewed by others once I have uploaded them to my website.

I'd like to make an analogy between the addictive nature of using technology and the life of a musician.  When I start working on a new piece of music, especially one in a style that is less familiar, there is a learning period during which I'm navigating through the music and experimenting.  Deciding on the mood, character, and sound I want to project take time and mental focus.  Fingerings and bowings change, I revise, sometimes revisiting former versions.  Once a level of competence has been reached, the practice becomes more sophisticated with even more experimentation as the piece is shaped and brought to a place where it is ready to perform.  I lose myself in the music and time is suspended.

I am conscious of the audience that will eventually view and hear my performance.

Csikszentmihalyi [1991] describes the state of being engrossed in one's activity as "flow".  A state of flow is attainable when a balance exists between the challenge of a task and one's skill level.  If the task is too easy for the individual, boredom results.  If the task is too difficult, then a person becomes anxious and frustrated.  Obsession with a technology project and making music are activities in which one can lose the feeling of time elapsing.  In both pursuits, one can enter the state of flow that Csikszentmihalyi describes when competence and the challenge are in balance - that is when the addiction of the process is at it's height.

See the following source for more information on flow:

Cszikszentmihaly, M.  1991.  Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.  New York: Harper & Row.