Tips for Busking and Outdoor Gigs with Stringed Instruments
Playing outdoors can present some specific challenges for string players. Here are some tips on how to make the most of your outdoor gigs and avoid potential pitfalls.
How To
Technique, advice, and tips.
3 Ways to Build a Successful Teaching Studio and Keep Students Engaged
Once a student is in the door and lessons are rolling, you want to keep the student and parents engaged, so they stick with you.
Audiences Can Be Noisy—Learn How Professionals Handle Performance Distractions
Nothing beats the energy of a top-notch performance before a live audience. But how does a performer handle the unpredictable nature of a live audience?
4 Ways to Attract Students to Your Private Teaching Studio
If you’re seeking to build a private teaching studio, you’ll need to recruit students and, just as importantly, hang onto them once they sign up with you.
Vulnerability Can Be a Key Teaching Tool—If You’re Willing to Go There
Showing students the stages leading up to competence lets them know that their experience is not an aberration; that they are on the same road we, too, are on.
Pandemic Pedagogy: How Creative Limitation May Sow Benefits in the Long Term
As performers and teachers, we may use the pandemic's forced limitations to create new and possibly even more productive solutions moving forward.
The String Teacher’s Guide to Remote Studio Teaching
If you’ve only ever taught face-to-face, making the switch teaching remotely can be daunting. But it can be both easy and cost-effective.
Tenths! Not Tense! How Practicing Scales in Tenths can be Useful and Pain-Free
While tenths show up in virtuoso repertoire (like Paganini, Wieniawski, etc.), they are more fundamentally important as a way to improve left-hand technique.
Be Kind to Your Tendons: 6 Low-Tension Exercises for Beleaguered Cellists
If tension is affecting your cello playing and you can’t seem to relax, try these troubleshooting exercises to evaluate your grip and help you loosen up.
Snow Day: 6 Things Cross-Country Skiing Has Taught Me About Bowing Technique
Having skied almost daily now for nearly two months straight, I’ve discovered some things in the frozen wilderness that have direct string-playing parallels. It turns out violists can learn a lot about bowing from a set of ski poles.