Teacher tells me she’s going to bring me a shopping list.  Apparently the list will include supplemental instructional materials to Suzuki Book Two, providing “etudes” and such for me to work with (I learned a while back that etude just means exercise).  Of course I love any excuse to buy violin stuff, so I’m looking forward to seeing what she has in mind.  I know already that the Suzuki School has some of its own, but also of course that there is no lack of options when exploring instructional materials for violin.

Also in Wednesday’s lesson teacher gave me a couple more training exercises for vibrato.  I’ve been working with one exercise already, and now I have three.  She says she’s going to start vibrato early with me.  I won’t argue, nor do I really know what “early” means, but apparently we’re not quite there yet!

I’m realizing that I can practice in many different ways and that they’re all useful.  I do think that when I started playing with accompaniment it was a real game changer, and, as I said to Teacher, my newest song, a Bourree by Handel, is the first that I listened to extensively before learning to play it.  I know that helped me learn it a lot faster, and I’ve already added my next song, a very jaunty, popular (and difficult-sounding) Schumann tune, to my playlist.   I feel like I’m in phase two of learning the violin for sure.  Phase two is still a beginner phase, have no doubts, but I definitely think Suzuki was onto something with this listening bit and the repertoire he chose.

Thanks for reading.

Ryan