Hello St. Patrick School Students! Click on the bold words
to listen to your daily practice material.
Tuning
First, we tune! Here are the four tones to
help you tune your strings (starting with the smallest
string)
E String
A String
D String
G String
Warm-up
Now we have our warmup
practice, which sounds like this:
Warm-up
It
is good to play this warm-up at least 3 times every day.
This helps us remember how to play with a beautiful tone
and use our whole bow. It also reminds us that each string
needs a different arm level to play. How is your bowhold?
Does your right hand feel calm or tense? Our bow hold
should look like our hand does when it is resting by our
side.
Then we can add our first finger to the warm-up:
Warm-up 1
This warm-up
helps us practice putting our first finger on the tape - if
you do this at least 3 times every day, your finger will
remember where to go automatically, without you having to
think about it! It's amazing: you can teach your first
finger to be accurate just by practicing every day.
We can also add our second finger:
Warm-up 2
The
second finger should be close to the first finger (maybe
touching - depending on your hand size) but it shouldn't be
squeezing the first finger. In fact, we never need to
squeeze the fingers together or squeeze down the strings.
Every time we put down our finger, it should press down
lightly - just enough to touch the string to the
fingerboard.
Then use our third finger like this:
Warm-up 3
Remember: be
sure to practice all warm-ups at least 3 times every day to
make sure your fingers learn where to go on their
own.
St. Patrick School Song -
"Let's Play It Again"
Finally, you can listen to the song I wrote for you at St.
Patrick School:
Let's Play It Again
And now here is what each group will play:
Group A
Group B
Group C
Remember your group so that you can practice the right
part. Here are some reminders:
(1) Play with a steady beat
(2) Keep the short notes short and the long notes long
(3) Retake (circle) the bow during each rest
(4) We start Forte, but can you remember when to play
Piano?
(5) Have fun!