Congratulations if you have made it here in your quest to start violin lessons for beginners. You might wonder what to expect during the initial stage of learning the play the violin. You may have psychological fear as you do not know what to expect. This may cause you to delay learning this wonderful sounding musical instrument.
Do not worry. Here, I will go through what you can expect when you start violin classes for beginners.
For young children age three to six, we may plan lessons of thirty minutes each. The reason being young children typically have shorter attention span. Some kids may start fidgeting after a short time period. So an experienced teacher skilled in making lessons interesting, will be important in guiding a young kid to progress smoothly. Tactics used to make lessons lively include singing and clapping exercises for rhythmic training, helping the child relate to music note reading via the use of animal names to identify notes, rewarding the child with stickers on completion of a musical task and so forth.
Adult learners may start off with lessons which are either forty five minutes long, or an hour long. Frequency of lessons are typically once per week, although some adult students prefer to plan lessons two times a week initially, so as to progress faster. An alternative to that is to plan back to back lessons of one and a half hours each, once a week. Each student’s time commitment is different but as a general rule, we recommend minimum frequency of once a week for lessons.
During your first violin lesson, you may feel physically tired. There are a couple of factors which causes this. The violin weighs approximately five hundred grams. A new violin player holding the violin using just the left hand, over an extended period of time, may find the the arm aches. A typical violin bow weighs between fifty seven to sixty five grams. Holding this in your right hand correctly, at the frog of the violin bow, is quite straining for the first time. As such, during the first few lessons, the teacher may pause lessons for a few minutes just to let the student set the violin and the violin bow down. I would encourage the student to stretch you arms and massage your shoulders for a few minutes before resuming violin lessons for beginners.
You will also expect the teacher to work on mind-mapping the student, different bowing patterns during the initial months of lessons. We will pace you through the ABRSM Grade one scales and arpeggio. These comprise of the D major one octave scale, G major one octave scale, E minor one octave scale, C major two octave scale. Over four different bowing patterns. As well as the corresponding arpeggio. Mind-mapping entails having the student repetitively practice certain bowing pattern and techniques until this becomes natural and easy for the student. The acid test, as I tell my students, is to play the technique without having to think about it. Once you have the ability to do this, it means that you have connected your brain neurons to your right and left hand and execute playing the violin flawlessly.
Violin lessons for beginners also entail aural training as well as intonation pitching. If one can sing and pitch correctly, one has a higher probability of playing the violin to perfect pitch. The teacher may use a piano, or an intonation trainer to coach aural singing. My advice to my violin students is not to be shy about sight singing during lessons. Imagine that there is no one in the practice room and just sing. Even if it is initially off pitch, just go ahead and practice. The violin teacher can assist to help the student to pitch properly only if the student sings. The ability to sight sing will aid the student tremendously to sight read and play correctly, faster.
I hope that after you have read through the above points, your will have clarity on what to expect from the initial lessons.
Keen to join our violin classes for beginners? Call +65-98137769 to arrange. We can arrange lessons either at your home, our teacher’s studio or at our music studio at Sultan Plaza.
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