Free Video Violin Lesson 5
Posted by Thom on Feb 18, 2008 in All, Lessons • 2 commentsBefore you begin!
Review Questions
1. Can you place your finger on and name each note on the D and A strings?
2. Are you playing all of your notes with the correct finger, or are you getting lazy and moving your fingers around? Pay attention to where you fingers go!
3. Are you practicing your bow hold/exercises?
4. What is an Octave?
Lesson 5
Hello and welcome to Stringsavvy.com Violin Lesson #5! In the last lesson we introduced notes on the A string, some bow hand exercises, and asked you to figure out a few songs on your own. Today we will review one of those songs and begin learning some familiar tunes!
Part 1
Part 2
An easy way to figure out these songs when first starting out is to go through one by one and name the note names on beat. Whenever you hit a rest, you say rest.
| D D E E | F# D r F# | A A G F# | E r r r |
| E E F# F# | G E r E | A G F# E | F# r r r |
|A F# A F# | A F# r F# | A A G F# | E r r r |
|G E G E | G E r E | A G F# E | D r r r |
Next we do the same thing, but this time name the finger names:
| 0 0 1 1 | 2 0 r 2 | 0 0 3 2 | 1 r r r |
| 1 1 2 2 | 3 1 r 1 | 0 3 2 1 | 2 r r r |
| 0 2 0 2 | 0 2 r 2 | 0 0 3 2 | 1 r r r |
| 3 1 3 1 | 3 1 r 1 | 0 3 2 1 | 0 r r r |
Now we go ahead and play this. Remember to keep a finger down when you see a bracket! If you have been taking this on a week-by-week basis, you should be able to hold down a note and pluck it, allowing it to ring fully as an open string. If you cannot, this is something that needs to be worked on!
Do you remember when I told you that you need to learn your notes because they would soon hit a point where they are no longer written in? Well we have hit that point, so hopefully you have in fact been taking this week-by-week and learning your notes instead of just blazing through the lessons. I have here a quick little self-test you can fill out to see how well you know your notes.
Self-Test Answers (Check your self!)
If you do well then you can continue on. If you are having a lot of trouble, I suggest going back and reviewing lesson 3 and lesson 4. Make sure are you are playing through these that you are in fact watching the music and not your fingers! Make the mental connection from what you see on the page to what you do with your fingers.
Assignment
- Review Pages 4-13
- Do you know your note names?
- Are you watching the music or staring at your fingers?
- Teach yourself #44, 45
- Complete Self-Test
- Review bow hold
- Practice bow hold practice techniques:
- Finger taps
- Thumb flex
- Rosin rap
- Up Bow
- Down Bow
Thank you so much for making these lessons available, they have helped me very much. I am learning on my own and coming along nicely, but I am having some trouble and would like to ask if you have any recommendations that could help me.
I am having a great deal of trouble playing open strings when I have to leave my fingers on the string ( for example, leaving my fingers on the D string, while playing an open A, such as in the song “Dreidel” in the Essential Elements book). The A never plays the note the first time I pluck it, because my fingers on the D string are touching the A string. I get it play, but it slows me down a great deal when I move my hand over towards the G string, also it never sounds as nice as when my fingers aren’t touching the strings at all. I’m sure practise would make this a faster process, and maybe this is a problem all violin students face, however I was hoping you may be able to give me a tip or technique to do this more efficiently. At any rate, your lessons are very helpful and much appreciated.
[reply to this comment]
Hi Lyndsey!
Keep working at it, it will take some time. You can revolve your arm and hand around the neck of by swinging your elbow to give yourself more of an angle over the strings. Also check that your fingers are rounded/curled and not flat on the string as demonstrated on Lesson 3.
In the later lessons I will be talking more about moving with the left elbow to help your hand change between strings while playing.
Thanks for the great question! Don’t be afraid to ask any more if you need to- the more questions asked on the site, the better it gets!
[reply to this comment]