Nora's First Violin Lesson

Nora had her first violin lesson today and she really did a fantastic job! She worked with Mr. S and followed directions for nearly the full 30 minutes. There was even an observer who came into the room for most of the session and another one entered about half way through the lesson. The first observer was a young girl (12 years?) who was in book 7 and started with Mr. S at Nora's age. Her lesson was at 11:30 after Nora's, and she said she was early for the lesson - so she watched Nora's lesson in a relaxed manner without making any disturbance, as if it was the most interesting thing she could be doing at that time. She did not look at her music nor did she finger her violin in any way. Nora had eyes only for Mr. S during her lesson and worked well with Mima under the watchful eye of Mr. S too!


Nora loved holding her little green violin case while walking down the outdoor wooden staircases to the back of Mrs. Cole's violin lesson house, and back up the stairs at the end of the lesson. Mima did not love parking on the very steeply sloped driveway and slipping a bit on the leaves in the driveway, as she reversed the car back up the steep incline.

When we got to the back door we entered a foyer with carpets and chairs, took off our shoes, put the umbrella down, and sat in two of the waiting room chairs. Mr. S came to get us at 11:00, and said that next time we can walk right into his room, regardless of how many people might be playing in there. His studio room has an upright piano, a couch and a chair, in addition to his chair, which faces into the room and backs up to a very large corner picture window with views of nearby trees. He asked Nora to come to work directly in front of him, so that she faced Mr. S and the view of the outdoors (and the walkway with students coming and going.) He had to ask her to come closer a few times, especially after he has sent her over to the couch to do a rhythm with Mima. Once she even got too close to him, but he told her to move a bit back at that point. Nora did not seem to be disturbed at all by the pedestrian traffic in front of the window, as students passed by on their way to a group class being held in another room.

The first thing Mr. S did was ask us for our poster board to make Nora's foot chart (we will bring it on Friday). Undaunted he said that he thought that Nora could just work within an area on the rug today. He showed her the feet together “Resting Feet” or “red feet” position and then told her to point her toes outward with heels together and take a small step outward with both feet. This, he told her, would be “Playing Position” or “green feet.” She followed his directions very well for this task.

In this very first violin lesson Nora was not able to always correctly tell Mr. S what all the twinkle rhythms were - so he assigned just 3 of them (“Mississippi Hot Dog,” “Stop Big Bow Stop Big Bow,” “Huckleberry Huckleberry”) for "homework" and gave 3 different ways (channels) to teach them to her. Nora holds my hands to clap the rhythms, Nora moves my right hand in a “handshake” down and up from a starting position just above her own nose to the rhythm, and I brush the rhythm on her arm and ask her “what is this?”. While she is doing these rhythms she is supposed to be singing the twinkle melody in the rhythm pattern starting on an open “A” pitch. This singing was particularly hard for her although she was able to join Mima (who was singing very softly) to sing these most of the time. At home she complained that she thought that Mima and Mommy sang so much better than her, she did not want to try to sing. Mr. S reminded her to sing when she guided Mima's hands for the clapping and the handshake rhythms.

Mr. S. told Nora that she was supposed to WATCH the whole time for the whole rhythm pattern, and he asked her NOT to look away before the rhythm was finished.

Mr. S also (correctly) assumed that I would be able to play the rhythms for her on a violin so that Nora can HEAR them as well. He mentioned that we also should be listening to the recording of Suzuki Volume 1. He said Nora should be hearing the recording “more of the time then not.” He also said that this would be understood to be an ongoing assignment for us and that he will not be telling us this every week. He said that we must to continue the daily listening without a reminder.

Mr. S said that we would need to get a second violin lesson book, a “WHAT” book for him to write down what we should practice. We had the “HOW” book for Mima to write down notes to help us in remembering how Mr. S wanted us to practice something. For this first lesson, I used the same notebook to record the “What” assignment as I did when I took notes on “how” to do the rhythms or the bow hold.

Mr. S sometimes clapped, made a deliberate slicing motion with his hand/forearm held in a neutral position in front of him (between pronation and supination of the forearm/palm), rubbed the rhythm on her arm starting with a downward stroke from the elbow to wrist, or played the rhythm on the open A string. He always asked her what the rhythm was using the same phrase “What is this?” He told her to SING the rhythm to herself when she had trouble identifying a rhythm and she was successful in using this strategy during the lesson on several occasions. At the end of this first day we have not been able to duplicate this success with the singing strategy “your song will tell you what the rhythm is.”

Nora answered his questions nicely and a couple of times gave some extraneous information. Mr. S was not bothered by this, and Nora did not become overly chatty. Mima asked only one question in the lesson, and it concerned the direction of the rubbing stroke on Nora's arm. It seemed that in several of the first trials, Mr. S started upward, but then for the next group of rhythms he definitely started downward. Mr. S said to always start by going downward from the elbow to the wrist.

He measured Nora on the little violin from her cousins Malena and Pablo, checking to see how far her left hand middle finger went around the scroll when he placed the violin under her chin and held her outstretched arm under the violin. He needed to tell her to relax her arm several times while doing this measurement, and then he said that it was a perfect fit, and that it probably was a 16th size instrument. Lisa correctly, I think, said that Nora was probably so very excited to be actually touching the violin after nearly 2 years of waiting, that Nora had a hard time relaxing for this task.

Mr. S tuned the little violin on his lap with the chin rest facing Nora. He used the fine tuners and then the pegs and told her that he only used the pegs when a violin was very out of tune. He played an “A” on the piano and asked her to sing the “A.” She was close to begin with and adjusted her pitch toward the “A” remarkably well. He then told me that we should practice this singing of the “A” daily while doing things around the house. He said this helps to teach a child perfect pitch. I said that I would certainly need a pitch pipe before trying to sing or have Nora match an “A” and he said yes, that would be important. He showed her how he played 2 strings together to tune the violin, so that it did not sound like the string tones were “fighting” with each other, but instead sounded like they were (happy? Sorry, his exact wording on this point escapes me…)

Mr. S let her hold the violin bow, and we also have to practice 3 soft "bow holds" a day (after first hanging her fingers over my outstretched index finger. (This was very difficult for me to show Lisa since her hand and fingers were so much bigger than mine. Mr. S did it with me, and I with him, and both of us have rather small hands.) After Nora gets the bow hold with me helping her (all 4 right hand fingers HANGING over the frog/stick and her bumpy thumb touching one half on the silver and one half on the hair) we turn the bow tip up and Nora must LOOK at her bow tip - then I let go of her hand at the frog and do a quick count 5-4-3-2-1! and take the bow from her hand. The count is very quick now because that is all the time that Nora can manage to hold that tip up bow hold position and LOOK at the tip. Nora mentioned at home in her 3rd practice that in this bow hold she was being allowed to TOUCH the HAIR! of the bow … and this was pretty exciting given that she sang the song (a scale, starting on ???? C?) listing all the parts of the violin and bow and ending with Mr. S's “where is the hair?” and Nora's answer, “Don't touch the hair!” (learned from observing group class for almost 2 years) It was during this exercise, when Mr. S mentioned the PEGS, that Nora repeated back to him the fact that he had told her earlier about using the pegs to tune only if a violin got very out of tune. He briefly commented on her good memory and noted how she had remembered this information from a task many minutes ago.

Nora used her violin to point out the violin parts while she was sitting down in front of Mr. S and his violin (once she accidentally touched the chin rest of his violin instead of hers and he gently redirected her). At the end of the lesson, he let Nora hold the actual violin in perfect proper rest position, feet together, right arm just behind the bridge and the bow held loosely in the right hand at the frog by making a circle with her pointer finger and her thumb and hanging the bow downward. She did this in the lesson, guided by Mr. S, but we do not touch the violin yet in our three 5 minute practices a day.

Nora held the violin properly and bowed at the waist to him nicely at the end of the lesson and said what he told her to say "Thank you for teaching me Mr. S." It is understood that this will become a routine part of the lessons.

One thing that seemed important is that Nora needs to work on LOOKING at Mr. S (or the person who is working with her) and she needs to learn to LOOK at the violin or bow at appropriate times.

The last few minutes of the lesson as Mr. S worked and talked with me Nora was less well behaved. She tried to climb on my back as I knelt on the floor so that Mr. S could show me how to make a proper bow hold. However, when I directed her to sit quietly (two times) while I worked with Mr. S, she eventually complied. He told us to expect observers in the lesson and said that we should come into the end of his Friday lesson, which will be another beginning student…. (Lisa thinks a younger sibling of a more advanced student, but we are not sure.) He said that he might ask an observer to leave if the student having the lesson is unable to handle the distraction. So on Friday, Nora will have to be a VERY QUIET observer of the end of the lesson before hers. I guess we should talk about what that means in terms of quiet sitting and looking behavior.

We had difficulty getting in 3 good 5-minute practice sessions with Nora today (especially the one at night after dinner with Lisa, when Nora was tired). I had trouble keeping her in one spot as she retreated to jump on the couches between rhythm exercises in my second session, and she was distracted by the living room toys in two of our at home sessions. She was really remarkably good at paying attention to Mr. S, so I am thankful that we are seeing him 2 times a week. In the home practice sessions Nora just wanted to hold/use the violin, and she did NOT want to do the rhythm exercises, and she did not want to do the practices. Mr. S, of course, did the rhythm exercises first in the lesson, before he let her touch the violin. After Nora was doing everything BUT cooperate with Lisa and Mima in the after dinner practice session, Lisa said “no violin until we do the rhythms, and Lisa put the violin UP away on the high shelf.” Nora first broke down sobbing, but pulled herself together to do 3 quick rhythm exercises with Lisa, and then Nora did a beautiful job with the “soft hanging right hand” bow holding exercise with me. But we are ALL learning, and Mr. S said to Nora and me that we were practicing to make it EASIER for her! He indicated that we would not move on until these 3 rhythms were EASY for her.

Our assignment to get ready for the Friday lesson is to practice the 3 rhythms in the 3 ways, in 3 five minute practice sessions every day.

Mr. S said to end our practices soon enough so that Nora stays excited to play the violin.

Immediately after the lesson was over, Nora said she would like to have a violin lesson every day, and she said she loved the violin when we got back home. By evening Nora still said that she would like to have a lesson every day with Mr. S, whom she said, reminded her a bit of her own daddy, Keary!

Nora had a good time playing at Clemeyjonti Park after the lesson despite the rainy weather, and we picnicked under the pavilion. She ate well and loved the cut up melons. She ate some of her butterfly cookie chosen from a nearby sandwich/bakery type eatery. All in all, it was a GOOD way to begin violin and we look forward to the Friday lesson!

Nora really did a great job, and enjoyed the violin, but not all the practice details! That's it from Mima!