Music Suggestions for Beginning Viola
My teenage son is a native viola player (late-beginner). He never liked the sound of the violin so we just started him on the instrument he preferred. As an expedient at the time, he started taking lessons with my violin teacher. Our teacher has had a few viola students in the past, but they all started out on violin so they didn't spend much time on the early viola books.
Now in Suzuki book 3, my son is quite bored with the rather one-dimensional repertoire and asked if there were some supplemental pieces he could learn that are less classical. I started him with some Scottish fiddle music, which he likes, but he is more interested in ragtime and jazz, or the stuff he listens to on the radio (pop & metal).
Does anyone have any suggestions for some easy viola music that he could experiment with and relieve some of the tedium of the Suzuki books? He has only been playing two years and I don't want him to give up before he discovers how much fun it can be.
Replies (13)
I like Stefan's loop pedal idea very much. But then you need a pickup too, and an amp, no? Starting to get expensive?
Another suggestion is to check out Musescore. Musescore is music-writing software, but the Musescore website also has a huge library of files that users have produced in native Musescore format. Therefore, anything that has been written for Musescore for the violin can be downloaded -- then you just have to transpose it down a fifth and change the clef -- maybe 20 mouse clicks from beginning to end. My daughter plays the cello and she loves the theme to "Tintin" so I found a piano version and arranged that for cello and piano. The software is super easy to use and it's free (or nearly so).
Also if your son can learn a pentatonic scale (or "blues scale") on the viola (The G blues scale is G Bb C Db D F G) then you can get iRealPro which is a phone/tablet app that will comp for him (headphones!) while he jams. iRealPro (a few bucks) contains a huge collection of jazz tunes, so all you have to do is pick out three or four blues tunes such as "Blue Monk," "Equinox", "Eighty-One" and "All Blues." Change the key on the app to the key in which he learned his scale (very easy to change key), set the tempo to whatever is comfortable, and off you go. It's not going to be high-level jazz improv, and there will be some who turn up their noses at starting to learn jazz with the blues scale, but it's real fun.
Yes, Paul is right, there is extra expense for the loop pedal scenario. My setup consists of a microphone, pedal and headphone amp - total cost about £200 GBP, probably less in the US (since electronics always are). But I have learned so many new things about music and it is so much fun!
I always found Bach with the VanHalen effect alot of fun.
I'm just going to say, being classically trained will probably be better for your son. Suzuki is a bit boring, but everyone begins somewhere. I hated Suzuki, but now I'm out of the books for good.
If you want something just a bit different, but still in the classical vein, Barbara Barber's Solos for Young Violists has some interesting pieces (more Romantic/20th century) and book 1 is right around Suzuki 3 level. I've also found that most of the pop/movie music, etc.. arrangements for viola and piano (or CD) are right around that level of difficulty. I would take him to your local music store (assuming you have one) and let him look around and pick some music.
These are all great suggestions. We have the Barbara Barber book, but he doesn't love the music in it. I may look into the looper pedal set-up to see if that meets his desire to be "cool".
How a transcription of a Bach cello suites, once the string crossings are smooth?
The looper was a very random suggestion, but glad it sounded interesting!
In case useful, my minimal setup is as follows:
JTS-CX500 stringed instrument mic
Ditto mic looper
Behringer Power Play P1 headphone amp
Plus whatever headphones I have lying around.
I have a guitar effects box and use an acoustic pick-up. The down side is that sometimes the suction cup on the pick-up looses suction and falls off (amplified).
I like to try celtic and latin styles.
But if the Suzuki books get "tedious", there is some thing wrong with the teaching?
If you are interested in getting a pickup instead of a mic, I recommend the Fishman V-200. I have one for my violin. You will need a preamp to boost the gain going into a regular amplifier, but it doesn't need to be anything special (i.e., it doesn't need to be a Fishman preamp, but if funds are not a concern then their preamp would work well. Preamps just boost gain and provide a little equalization -- all the other claims are mostly just hype). The nice thing about the V-200 is that it's easy to take on and off. Make sure you get the extended clamping screws if you're going to put it on a viola.
If your son is Suzuki Book 3 than I respectfully suggest that the Bach Cello suites may still be on the difficult side. On the other hand, my experience is that even kids who do not "get" classical music love them.
One thing to explore is whether your son's musical tastes are being guided by what he thinks will impress his friends. One might say, well, in 20 years his friends will not be teenagers -- they'll be doctors and lawyers and engineers with families. True enough, but peer pressure is one of the reasons I migrated from classical piano to jazz piano as a teenager. And in terms of my social life, I have to say it worked pretty well, and even though I'm now over 50, it still does.
On the other hand, jazz requires some minimal classical chops, which fortunately I already had. Jazz on the violin/viola is actually quite hard because of the conflict between the spontaneity of improvisation and the need for most ordinary mortals to practice and polish specific passages for intonation. So even though this might not be what you want to hear, if your son's interests are in ragtime and jazz, do you think he might be better off switching to the piano? What would happen if a decent digital piano such as the Yamaha P-255 and a decent set of headphones were to appear under the Christmas tree? (Or a synthesizer such as the Yamaha MX-61, which comes with Cubase AI software so that he can interface the synthesizer directly to his PC.)
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October 31, 2016 at 04:36 PM · I'm going to make a very tangential suggestion which doesn't really answer your question ;)
Buy him a loop pedal and help him learn how to experiment with improvisation - he might find it very exciting, and it might help his musical skill develop in an interesting direction. Certainly, as a teenage boy, I would have found it to be an interesting and stimulating activity to engage in (and my own love of violin was completely destroyed by dull repertoire, leading me to unnecessarily give up the instrument, which I very much regret).
Christien Lien is one very interesting exponent of viola looping:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQn6QH_-Evs