Now You Have to Teach Orchestra
You dreaded the possibility. You’ve been given an orchestra class. Sure you may have taken a string methods class in college, but you’ve slept since then, and the first day of school is rapidly approaching. Fear not, I’m here to give you ten things to pay attention to immediately, that will help set both you and your students up for success.
1) Coordination Issues
All mature musicians recognize that there is no “hardest” instrument, but that all of them have their own issues that make them difficult in different ways. Having said that I will go to my grave saying that string instruments are some of the hardest to start. Teaching beginning band is difficult because of the number of different instruments. Teaching beginning strings gives you four instruments, but they are more difficult to start. This makes sense if you think about the coordination. For all of the wind and brass instruments the hands are working on very similar goals (or only one is really used in the case of some brass instruments). With string instruments the hands are doing completely different things. This causes multiple issues of coordination. Do not say this to your students, simply recognize it. To deal with this we have to break things down in the beginning. This is detailed extensively in “A Pedagogical Model for Beginning String Class Instruction: Revisited” by Michael L. Allen in the second volume of Teaching Music through Performance in Orchestra, that basically says to work the left hand (fingering/instrument setup), right hand (bowing), and music reading skills separately at the beginning. After some time and confidence gained amongst the students, begin putting two and two together (reading plus bowing, reading plus fingering, bowing and fingering). Only after each of these is comfortable – we’re talking a few weeks ideally, do you put all these together at once.
2) Fourth Finger for Upper Strings
If I could change anything about upper string teaching in the world it would be this. Make your students use their fourth finger from the beginning. I don’t care where the method book you’re using introduces it. I don’t care if you think it’s unnecessary because it’s the same pitch as the open string above. I don’t care if your methods teacher told you not to. Make them use it from the beginning and make sure they keep using it. If you don’t you are hobbling them.
Now that I’ve stopped shouting from my soapbox I’ll tell you why.
Yes the fourth finger does play the same pitch as the open string above it, so it might seem redundant, but it isn’t. There are countless times when an ascending run of notes will end with that pitch, and simply putting the finger down requires much less effort than switching the whole bow arm to a different string for the one note. An orchestra I worked with once was playing a Mozart arrangement. The second violins had a passage of rapid eighth notes that fluctuated between F-sharp and A on the D string (Figure 1).
It is difficult to play this effectively without the fourth finger. Attempting to do the string crossing at the allegro tempo the piece indicates requires much more work than simply playing it with the fourth finger.
Many teachers justify leaving the fourth finger out at the beginning by stating that it is the weakest finger – all the more reason to introduce it as soon as possible. We should not focus on setting the hand up for the first and second fingers, which are the strongest, but for the third and fourth. Teach them to use it at the beginning and they will thank you later.
3) Curvy Bow Grip
This is the other thing I would change about all string teaching. The bow grip is crucial to all string instruments and is actually an incredibly intricate thing. The reason that the bowing techniques that all string players come across work comes down to Newton’s Third Law; for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. In an ideal situation the fingers will exert a downward force that the thumb will react to by pushing upward. The problem that often happens is that the thumb is allowed to collapse .
This throws off the Newtonian relationship because the thumb is pushing forward. The students can get away with holding their bow like this for a long time. It’s only when they start working more advanced techniques of staccato and spiccato and such that they will really notice a hindrance. These techniques are difficult enough to master without the added problem of adjusting the bow grip, so enforce a curvy thumb from the beginning.
Some students will collapse the thumb in response to the threat we have to make about not touching the hair of the bow. Emphasize that directly in front of the frog is the exception in these cases.
This is an easy thing for orchestra teachers to miss, because it is literally hidden from our view. Make frequent thumb checks, where your students turn the bow over to show you, or lie on the floor to look at their grips from below. I’m only half joking about that one.
4) Get them out of D Major ASAP
So many method books keep orchestras in D Major for a long time. It makes sense because it is the best key for all four instruments to work together initially. But keeping the students in those patterns for too long can lead to tuning issues. I have come across so many orchestras and string students that have issues tuning F-natural, C-natural, and B-flat, mostly because they stay in D Major for so long, so the upper strings will not be used to lowering the second finger, and the cellos will have a hard time using their second finger instead of their third. I recommend supplementing whatever method you use with exercises and finger patterns from Barbara Barber’s Fingerboard Geography. Use these and scales to help your students get used to playing in different keys as soon as you can.
5) Shifting
Recognize that the differences between the bass, cello and upper strings will really affect how you have to teach. Shifting (moving up and down the fingerboard) is one of the biggest. The upper strings can stay in first position for years and not have a problem. Basses on the other hand, will have to begin shifting immediately. Even that D Major scale that every method starts with requires the basses to shift. The cellos will start soon after. Familiarize yourself with the fingering for each instrument and find resources to help you help them with shifting. The aforementioned Fingerboard Geography is a great resource for this. In addition to whatever method book you use, there are lots of exercises and resources available for free on IMSLP.org.
6) Don’t Ignore the Violas
I have a theory that one reason there are so many jokes about incompetent violists is because they don’t get the attention that the other sections get in their beginning studies. So don’t make that mistake with your orchestras. Luckily I have a certain post on how to teach the viola. Rule number one of that one; learn the clef so you can communicate.
7) The Big Three of Tone Production
Pressure, placement, speed. These are the three things that your students use to influence their sound. Pressure is how much weight they exert on the string. Placement is where they place the bow relevant to the bridge and the fingerboard, and the speed is how fast they move the bow (could also refer to the amount of bow interchangeably in most cases). There are entire books written on the relationship between these three. To sum it up, more pressure requires closer placement to the bridge or more bow. Moving slower requires a placement closer to the fingerboard and/or less weight. The students should experiment with many different combinations to figure out how it all works.
8) Scratching
Get used to scratching sounds. I always encourage them, especially at the beginning. If your beginners are getting a scratchy sound you will get a good tone out of them very soon. It is much easier to use those big three to get the scratching to turn into good tone than it is to use them to turn wimpy sound into good tone. The upper strings might be especially sensitive to the scratching because the sound is right by their left ear. There is at least a little scratching in all of the best violin and viola player’s sounds that is undetectable five feet away. Scratching is arguably crucial to a good tone down the line.
9) Joint Jobs
Each joint in the bow arm has a different job. When more advanced bowing techniques come into play later in study those jobs can bleed together a little bit, but at the beginning you can separate them out more distinctly. The wrist should be nice and flexible to help the bow move straight on the string. The fingers should be nice and curvy to help everything we talked about with the thumb. The shoulder and elbow behave a little differently for the upper and lower strings.
Upper strings are fairly simple. The fingers and wrist behave exactly as described above, the elbow provides the main horizontal motion of down bows and up bows, and the shoulder gets them from string to string. The shoulder is involved in some horizontal motion in the lower half of the bow, but should not be the main engine. Ensure that the elbow is moving or it will be a problem later.
Lower strings are slightly different because the roles of the shoulder and elbow are less defined. Both cello and bass use the shoulder mainly to get from string to string, and the elbow to drive, but both joints also work the opposite job more than the upper strings will at first.
10) Don’t Let Them Write Too Much
I have come across countless students who write the finger number or note name above every single note. While some of this is helpful at the beginning it can easily become a crutch and make them into people who don’t actually know what the notes are. I don’t allow my students to do too much of this. I will run them through a reading sequence with every piece at the beginning to help them absorb what notes on the page match what note on their instruments. The whole thing is designed to connect the written note to the proper letter and finger number as well as what position on the instrument (more info on that here). I also never allow them to write over repeated notes. In the case of the finger exercise in Figure 3, I only allow them to write over the first A, either the finger number or the letter. Since the next notes don’t change this will help reinforce what those notes are.
There you go, ten tips you can put into action on day one. Check out my other posts on the website for more useful string info and links to other resources. And feel free to leave a comment or get in touch under the contact page with any questions you might have. Happy teaching!