Monday, April 26, 2010

Violin Musings...

I was thinking earlier today about how this year has been so different for Haley musically. She's spent so much lesson time on orchestra material for two different orchestras, especially in the fall when she was learning to read music almost from scratch and a lot of time on violin technique....time that previously was focused only on solo pieces.

Out of curiousity, I looked at where she was this time last year (thank goodness I blog otherwise that information would be difficult to find LOL) and was surprised that she had just started Book 4 last April. So, she has gone through Books 4 and 5 this year even with a few non-repertoire pieces thrown in though it didn't seem like she'd made as much headway repertoire-wise as she had in previous years. Also, her technique has improved tremendously and she's made remarkable gains in her music reading skills.

We've made a lot of changes logistically in the past year as well. A few months ago she had her regular Suzuki teacher 1-2 times a week, a teacher for helping her learn to read music once a week, her local fiddle teacher once a week, and twice monthly visits to NY for fiddle. A few months ago we stopped the music reading teacher and last month, sadly, had to stop lessons with the local fiddle teacher. All those lessons were spreading her too thin and our resources...time, travel and monetary... are better spent with just one violin teacher twice a week and one fiddle teacher twice a month. It is working out very well and she's able to focus more on the necessary material.

All-in-all it's been a different but good year. Leaves me wondering what the next year will bring.

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