Gavotte | Violin Suzuki Book 3 No. 1 | Demo & Teaching Guide

Hi everyone, today let's learn the Vaught from Suzuki Book 3. Now let's talk about the teaching points for this piece that we want to make sure to cover with students. The first one is stop pose, also known as martyred. It is what we have in the beginning. Okay, so we have two stops and then we have this pattern throughout the piece. To go over with students, I will start with A string, two stops per bow. Practice this with students. Make sure that they are catching the strings before they play. So catch and then pull the string. Catch and pull. Catch, pull. Catch and pull. So go over this slowly with students and then put into a rhythm. Make sure that they are catching the string between each note. Okay, and after that we can try that on different strings, on the E string for example. Still the same principle, catching the string before you play. Or on the B string. And then go to the G string. Wonderful. So after going through all the strings, what you can do is to put that into a little improvisation. So you can start with a pattern. So the pattern can be on the A string that looks something like this. Okay, so the pattern is down, down, up, up. And for the second half of the pattern, you can have the students play on any strings. So it can sound like that. So we start with a basic pattern. And then we can play something else for the second pattern. One pattern, improv, pattern, improv. Once students get the hang of it, you can start looping this sequence and play with the students. So one, two, three, four. One more time. Great. So this is an example where you can put a little pattern into improvisation. And because there involves string crossing, so make sure you are reminding students to change the arm level for string crossing and break that down if necessary. Okay, now after practicing on the open strings, we can do that on the G major scale, which is the scale of this piece. So we can do two stop bows, and starting with the low G. One, two, three, four. And then coming down. Very nice. So this is our first bowing pattern, the stop bows we want the students to know. The second one goes like this. Right? So long, short, short, long, short, short. So to go over that with the students, we can start with the air bowing. So we start with, okay, you can stay with me. One, two, three, four. Long, short, short, long, short, short. Or you can do one, two, three, four. Pull, half, half, pull, half, half, pull, half, half, pull, half, half. Or you can do, say, the bowing directions. One, two, three, four. Down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up. Okay, let's connect that with the actual playing. So let's start with the open string on A string. One, two, three, four. That's wonderful. Now, we can also do a scale with this pattern. So one, two, start with G. Or you can just repeat it once. And so forth, depending on how students are familiar with this scale. Okay, so connecting with the actual music, we can see from measure two to three, for example, with this pattern, we have a little bit of an accent at the beginning of the quarter notes. So still, we can start with the most basic open A string. And then for the accent, we will just catch and then fast bow. So one, two, three, four. Just this much. Have students really do the accent. One, two, three, four. Okay, and then now let's try up for the accent. One, two, three, four. And then one more time. So catching the strings and then fast bow. One, two, three, four. Okay, very nice. And then we can put that back into the original pattern with the accent on the quarter notes. One, two, three, four. So make sure that you can hear students doing the accent very clearly. And distinguish that from the other A films. Okay, wonderful. And of course, you can also put that into the context of the scale and then add accent for the first note of each pattern. Okay. All right. And the next step that we can see, there's another bowing pattern, which is the slur bow. Okay. So in the piece, we see two-note slurs, like in measure one and somewhere in the middle of the piece. And also four-note slurs with the eighth notes. And this, you can use the scales to practice that. So it will sound like this. Let's start with two-note slurs. One, two, three, and. The four-note slur. So all great bowing variations for students to learn when they're learning this piece. For the slurring pattern, there are just a few checkpoints for you to consider. One is the even division of bow, even sound, smooth bow changes. And make sure to go over that with your students when they play. Now let's move on to the left-hand pattern. There are a few difficult parts for the left-hand in this piece, with the high or low two, low one, and high three. So we can isolate a few notes with the accidentals. So those are the most obvious ones, the most obvious notes that students may not have a lot of experience with in the past. Okay. So one of them is the B-flat on the second line. So okay, so this B-flat, low one, it might be a new note for the students. And to practice that, we can look back one note, which is the C. So and now we can start create some patterns with these two notes just to get more comfortable changing in between them. But first, let's play the B-flat. Okay, and then let's add the C. And then let's try a few different patterns and do chord response with your students. Back to you, or we can try back to you. Or the next step can be the student create a pattern and then you repeat that. That can be a fun interaction as well. So, but connecting back to the piece, we need to make sure that students know how to change the fingers in this point. So just this much. And after students are more comfortable, we can add more notes. The same principle and the same method applies to all the accidentals here that you see in the music. Some other examples I can see are the low one with the F natural. So you can do a little improvisation with the G and F natural. And also we have a raised third in the fourth line, fourth last line. Okay, so this D sharp. So we can also introduce that with a little bit of improvisation. And also the low D sharp. So those are the main technical points for the right hand and left hand. And of course, to make this piece more interesting, we can talk about the dynamics, which is a whole new different topic. But when working with students, you can kind of direct their attention to where they are in between the fingerboard and the bridge to create different dynamics. So try that with the open strings first, and then adding the notes, and then make sure that they can hear the dynamic changes.