Progression of Etudes

April 29, 2007 at 03:33 AM · Greetings,

if you search this site for a series of articles I have written over the years (Try typing in Buri) then one of them is called "What should I practice?'

It answers your question and explores it with clarity, depth and a slight smell of gorgonzola.

Cheer,s

Buri

April 30, 2007 at 02:58 AM · Buri, I read your "What should I practice" and I have a question regarding etude practice, and I feel it is kind of a naive question. I agree that etude practice is essential, but my question is, how do you go about practicing etudes, and what do you focus on when practicing them? My problem, I feel, is I can practice a million etudes a day, but if I don't know what I am aiming at, or what I'm trying to accomplish, the etude seems obsolete. It isn't always clear to me what technique the etude is getting you to practice. So what types of things do you focus on, or what clues are there in the etude that tell you the aim of that particular exersize?

April 30, 2007 at 03:31 PM · Ali,

I know you are asking Buri, but you have addressed something that I'm thinking about quite a bit these days. I wonder if your teacher is helping you to figure out the purpose of each etude that you are working on? To me, this is why we hire our teacher, and it is the first thing I do with my teacher whenever we decide on anything for me to practice. I need to know from the very start as to what's the point of doing this study and how to approach it. During subsequent lessons, my teacher and I will figure out whether I have been practicing properly and whether these are the right etudes for the moment for me to keep working on.

I think it's common knowledg that it is the quality not quantity that matters when it comes to practice anything, and practice aimlessly will do one more harm than not praticing at all.

In between lessons, I review a number of books to remind myself about practice and these are the ones have been very helpful:

Simon Fischer's Basic and Practice

Robert Gerle's The ARt of Practinsing the Violin

Margaret Elson's Passionate Practice

Philip Johnston's The Practice Revolotion

There are a lot of threads discussing how to practice and a recent one on repetition has some really good discussions.

Cheers.

May 1, 2007 at 01:23 AM · Greetings,

Ali, it is one of the most importnat questions in the study of the violin. As Yixi points out, the teacher does have a great deal of responsibility in selecting appropriate etudes and ensuring that the student understands the point of them. It really does depend on your needs at a given moment which are best explored with the help of another person.

Playing through etudes without a clear purpose will a) practice in poor technique and b) demotivate since the muscial content may be lower than regular pieces.

There are very few etude books that one could realistically say `play all of them, in order.` Even if the order was completeley logical and the material covered all aspects of playing that would still raise the problem that it would make other etudes redundant. However, I also think this problem tends to diminish as higher level etude collections are reached. For example, it is certainly worth doing every Kreutzer etude with as many differentt teachers as possible and continue working on them over the duration of your playing career. The Rode and Dont Caprices are also worth doing in their entirety although I am not sur e most people have the time....

There also comes a point where one is asking `am I working on this or that etude for maintenance, development of a skill i have yet to possess, development of a skill I possess to some degree?`

For example, consider the infamous Kreutzer no.2. Some people might suggest that this is a study for detache, but that is rather vague for me. Detache is one of the 8 primary bow strokes and should be developed from the beginning and constanlty worked on for improvement. In my opinion this etude is actually rather hard from a left hand point of view (many of the people who have disagree dwith me \have procedded to give a slightly out of tune performance followed by a `See...`)I would not use it for developing detache in a beginner when ther eare so many excellent studies by Wolfart, Kayser and so on where the left hand and the string crossing are not so problematic. For me, this etude is a maintenance study done on a daily basis once one has a very good level of detache.It also provides a good work out played in all the even positions. I tend to use it for martele and colle work as well.

Actually I am rambling now as I havent had enough coffee yet. So to get back on track, I think that ther eare some guidelines that help with selecting and praciticng etudes.

1) You must be playing in tune, with a good sound, with the maximum ease and expressiveness wherever possible. This last is often neglected but the range of expressivness required in Mazas or some of the beautiful slow openings of the Rode caprices is as great as in any other concert work. If you pay attention to these factors then assuming you have chosen a standard book appropriate for your level you will get a greta deal of benifit from the work and you will realize very quickly if it useful for you. In otehr words, if you choose a Fiorillo etude at random and have trouble with string crossing then that -is- a weakness in your technique and you would improve by working on it. Inb this sense there is no reason why you can@t be independent from your teacher. The role of the latte rmight then become of a coach in a later lesson to help you resolve a problem you cannot solve on your own or you wnat some tips on improving.

2) Go through all you pieces and find difficult passages. Find an equivalent etude and practice it to improve the quality of your pieces. An obvious exampple is the position changing Kreutzer in triplets and many rapid passages in Mozart wher one is reuqired to change from ist to third to first to third to first on descending strings, a very typical technique of the time. Szigeti wrote that older players did this automatically whereas youngsters use all manner of crab fingers and even positions and tend to miss the stylistic effect.

3) Research the huge range of material now available that gives ideason etudes. For example, read Flesch, basics and Pracitce and you would have hiundreds of ideas for practicing Kreutzer. Watch the Gingold masterclass video number one and oyou woudl have about ten ideas for pracitcing Dont. Read Bron`s book on etudes and you would have ideas for Dont, Paginini etc. Buy Rostal`s edition of the Dont etudes and you would have dozens of pracitc emethods for those etudes.

4) A useful question to pose is whether you are thinking this is a right or left hand problem. Then whichever initial reaction you have, consider the problem from the opposite perspective. What I mean by this is that veyr often we are assuming the problem is a left hand one when it is actually a right and vice versa. Typical cases are where tone quality is poor iand it turns out the left hand is not depressing the string adequatley or poor intonation which is actually caused by too much bow pressurer rather than left finge r placement.

Cheers,

Buri

May 1, 2007 at 04:48 PM · For a while i used a Russian violin method which gave a selection of studies depending on level.The method was already divided into sections for left hand and right hand technique and then further subdivided into bowings or chromatic or double stop studies.All very logical and students get a taste of a variety of studies as the method incorporated all the Mazas ,Kreutzer.Rode etc.However I dont use this method any more because a) I think historically it is important to know whose volume of studies are being studied.Each of these great violin pedagogues has a distinct style and each study should be played as a solo violin piece.b) Sometimes within a group of studies laid out together the point of the study would be lost as it would become immersed in many similar studies and its impact would fade away.c) It is not neccessary to find a study directly suited to the repetoire you are studying ,if it is completely different you will approach it with a fresh brain and will learn something else.