Text - Mark Pedus' Violin and Viola practice manual

Merry Christmas everyone!

I wish you all Healthy and Happy Holidays!

Today I am finally introducing my first piece. I promise, more are coming soon, but I am going to take the rest of today to spend time with my family and celebrate.

So this is just a quick note that all the former chapters, tedious as they probably were at times, were leading here. The repertoire, the pieces, the songs. Everything we love about music and the reason we get up in the morning.

RIGHT?!

Anyway, here you go:

First Melody in first position by Charles de Beriot

For VIOLIN and of course I also transposed it for the VIOLA!

For those who prefer to jump past the work straight to the fun, I have added a few essentials you might want to have a look at! Trust me, learning technique through pieces, just makes the pieces feel like work.

Have an awesome end of year, and I’ll add a few more pieces before next year.

Mark

Chapter 3: Scales – finally completed!

Scales are the secret to fast progress. Their relative simplicity allow you to focus on everything that matters:

INTONATION

SOUND QUALITY

RELAXATION

POSTURE

But scales have a bad reputation for being boring and confusing. Every scale is unique and unless you have a basic knowledge of music theory, they seem completely random. Finger patterns change almost every string, seemingly for no good reason what so ever!

In this chapter I have tried to make things accessible for all. The sheet music, which you can download if you like to practice away from the videos, is available with note names and without. Each individual scale comes with a visual representation of all finger patterns in first position.

HOW BEST TO PRACTICE THE SCALES?

That very much depends on what you want to achieve. Ideally you practice scales for the purposes mentioned above, but many people will just practice them because they have to. I did the same until in music college I realised just how helpful they really are.

Best practice is to understand what scales are. If you understand the structure, you can play scales without having to know the individual notes.

However, if you want to learn to read and become independent, I suggest you start each scale with :

NAME A NOTE – PLAY A NOTE

I find that students that really try this for a few weeks have far less problems learning new pieces. Make sure you make the distinctions between for example a G and a G#. They might look the same on paper, but your fingers do have to be somewhere else. The more consistent you are, the easier anyone will learn just how easy scales really are!

Once you know the notes, that is where the real learning can begin. For string instruments, scales are all about cleaning up foundation technique. INTONATION is an obvious one, but experimenting with different DYNAMICS, RHYTHMS & BOWING PATTERNS are very usefull as well. Then RELAXATION becomes the real priority. How to keep your current sound quality, intonation, etc. with less and less tension.

Solving hidden tension is a large part of every day practice and scales are perfect. You can manipulate them any way you like to address anything you want.

These scales by Charles de Beriot, are just a fun starter to the endless possibilities you have. They are simple, but progressive, and the duo parts for the teacher make them all the easier to learn with.

The videos provided will walk you through all 18 scales. First slowly and gradually the tempo will get faster. With each tempo there is also a recording of the accompaniment you can work with. If you pay attention it will help develop your intonation and musician ship without much effort at all. You just need a little patience!

Good luck and please, any feedback and or financial help is very much appreciated!

Violin Chapter 3: Scales

Viola Chapter 3: Scales

Please help

Scales for violin: duets by Charles de Beriot

Last month I started recording Chapter 3: Scales in first position by Charles de Beriot.

As always each exercise comes in different speeds but for the first time I get to use the student/teacher duets! These duets by Charles de Beriot make practicing scales a lot more fun and even more relevant. Improving your intonation and understanding of scales is so much easier when you get to play with an accompaniment. Children tend to adjust their intonation instinctively to the accompaniment, making it all a lot less tedious and academic.

Enjoy and good luck

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Violin Chapter 3: Scales

Vimeography, my experiment of the day.

Today might have been a good day, I don’t know yet. I’ve been trying to streamline as many steps in my publishing process as possible.

Last week I decided to experiment with Vimeo showcases. Their built in SEO and Meta keywords are apparently important. After a lot of confusion, and several epic failures I finally understood that, unless you understand cpanel this is probably not going to work. Turns out I don’t even have direct access to my cpanel so Hey… I gave up on that idea for now.

Yesterday I decided to do some research on plugins and today I bit the bullet and decided to give Vimeography a go. So far so good because I managed to do a few bow rehairs, some violin practice and upload 5 new playlists! Definitely a major improvement!

One niggling issue, the playlists keep looping the same video. Let’s hope I get that sorted out. I will definitly keep you posted

So here are the results. It looks different, but, fingers crossed, it will load faster than the previous chapters and I hope you enjoy the student teacher duets by Charles de Beriot. I think they are awesome tools to improve your intonation and musicianship in a fun and efficiant way!

Violin Chapter 3: Scales

C Major Scale Duets by Charles de Beriot edited for the viola

I finally got there. I just added the first scales to my practice manual! I gave the honour to the viola, because, why not. Starting to learn the viola about 6 years ago taught me more about teaching than you can possibly imagine. I realised that the viola relates to an adult the way a violin is measured to a child, and that the solutions I discovered to deal with the extra weight and size could really help my students solve their issues better. By placing myself, in a way, in their shoes, I understood their struggles a lot better and it allowed me to find efficient solutions.

If you compare what I teach with how you see great virtuosi hold and handle their instrument, you might wonder why I insist so much on posture, relaxation, thumb position, etc. However, once you have a few decades of experience under your belt, an instrument that is proportionally tiny and often with mythical qualities, you will also be able to break some rules.

Until then, be patient and enjoy your scales for now. Things will get easier and more diverse very soon!

[Elite_video_player id=”37″]

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Second chapter: Finger Patterns for Violin and Viola

As I mentioned yesterday, I have plenty of videos waiting to be connected to my website. I didn’t quite realise how far I had fallen behind on actually uploading my videos to this site. To begin with I have filled in some gaps I found in the first chapter, and I have now also completed the Second chapter – Finger Patterns – for both the violin and the viola.

Here are the new playlists:

Violin: Fourth Finger Pattern – Part 2: The high first finger

Viola: Third finger pattern

Viola: Fourth finger pattern – Part 1: The low first finger

Viola: Fourth Finger Pattern – Part 2: The high first finger

I hope you enjoy practicing along with these videos and please, any feedback is very much appreciated.

Over the next few days I will start work on the sheetmusic for the first two chapters. Once they are ready I will make them available for download so you can also practice away from the videos.

Stay relaxed, be patient when you practice and if you can, please support this website so it can keep on growing!

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Defeated by WordPress

I know it has been a while since I last posted anything new here. But don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about you all!

Over the last few months, I struggled with WordPress. I am used to being able to ‘figure things out’ if I try hard enough. However, I have too many gaps in my knowledge of webdesign, or understanding of computers in general, and I wasted weeks ‘experimenting’. I can proudly say that I successfully managed to slow my site down, with no solutions in sight! 🙂

So today I decided to look for some professional help and I hope you will soon be able to have access to a more streamlined and user friendly violin/ viola education.

On a positive ♪, I have continued recording and editing and I am almost halfway ready with chapter 3, the scales. The simplicity and predictability of scales are an ideal and efficient way to put everything you learned in chapters 1 & 2 together. I chose the accompanied scales composed by Charles de Beriot to make the entire experience even more fun and easy going.

Over the next few days I will start connecting my videos to the site and I wish you all a lot of courage and fun!

Third movement of the mystery sonata

A few days ago I managed to learn this third movement. I hope you are all safe and healthy! Take care and hope to post the last movement soon!

Tatsu

So, after days figuring things out and working on improving layout, I finally found the solutions. I managed to embed my videos, managed the layout nicely. Then I pressed save and publish.

And guess what….

Nothing looks the way Tatsu promised. My previews worked, I was quite proud. Now I have pages that are 80% open spaces and I can’t find back anything even tho I know where to look.

If anyone with a more intelligent and wordpress oriented mind than I could help me out, It would be very much appreciated. I find myself worrying more about the site layout than about the actual education I am trying to offer. Please get in touch…

Realisation

I have no idea where this site will go. It isn’t really a blog I guess. Still, it allows me a voice to put my videos into context.

I realised earlier this week that, yes I enjoy teaching and Im pretty good at it, but that I am building a collection of essential truths about violin practice and playing I wish I had never forgotten.

As a kid learning the violin, even though I had commited parents and a tape recorder present at my lessons, I focused on the cool stuff. The pieces that would ‘Wow’ my family and audience. Of course I hardly paid attention to the boring exercises I was given. And my teachers, as I remember, allowed it more often than not.

Decades later I, and many professional musicians I know, look back and realise how our lack of discipline lost us years in the long run. Without a solid foundation, bad habits made relative simple things seem so complicated. But worse, the unlearning of those habits often wasted even more time.

I think these lessons I am posting here are the important basic techniques I wish I had paid more attention to. I wish I had better understood the practical benefits of patience and scales and the odd boring drill. How those little details often make the difference between growth and stagnation.

I just hope I can help you avoid some, in hindsight obvious pitfalls and help you grow more continously, so you waste less time on rectifying bad habits or overcoming injuries during your awesome journey as a musician!