Teaching different styles

Adventures

in style

String tutors can inject new life into their teaching by exploring a wider range of genres. We asked top performer–teachers in four non-classical areas for their essential advice on how to get students started

Bluegrass

Darol Anger explains how the string music of the American South can enhance and complement your classical teaching

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luegrass is a virtuosic string-band

darol anger

musical style invented by a small group of musicians in the American South of the 1940s, led by mandolinist Bill Monroe, and featuring a style of banjo playing created by Earl Scruggs. It combines elements drawn from American and Celtic fiddling, the blues,

‘Bluegrass is harmonically subtle, though not simple’: Darol Anger

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Appalachian folk and gospel singing and honky-tonk country music. Its approach to ensemble performance shares many qualities with American jazz: breakneck speed, rhythmic drive, improvisational virtuosity and advanced ensemble skills. Bluegrass is attractive and useful to string players and teachers alike because of the advanced techniques it requires: good intonation and powerful tone production  the ability to play in various positions and keys  highly rhythmic playing at high speeds ensemble and improvisational skills, including basic harmonic theory, complex dynamic awareness, and on-thespot composition of solos and accompaniments Unlike jazz, Bluegrass is harmonically subtle (but not simple) and uses acoustic instruments but no drums or other percussion – the stringed instruments generate all the rhythm themselves. The style puts equal emphasis on both vocal and instrumental pieces. As with any musical genre, a key first stage for students taking their initial steps in Bluegrass is listening. As a teacher, you should find exciting examples of Bluegrass recordings with prominent soloists on the instrument that your student plays. www.thestrad.com

Teaching different styles

Lisa Eklund

In Anger’s view, classical teaching can often overlook rhythmic awareness

Look for CDs, or recordings on YouTube or web services such as Spotify and Pandora, and investigate local concerts and fiddle contests. There are also numerous fiddle resources online.

Once your student’s interest is established, let them

help you with this research, but offer them guidance in selecting material to match their level. The fundamental Bluegrass techniques that you should teach are: rhythmic exercises on and off the instrument ear training through call and response melody transcription and memorisation familiarity with older scales, such as the Mixolydian and Dorian modes www.thestrad.com

fine pitch skills through the manipulation of ‘blue’ notes,

which require subtle slides on the 3rd and 5th degrees of the Mixolydian scale Developing these techniques will give your student a better understanding of how to execute double-stops, more fluency in scales and modes, and a greater awareness of musical form. There are many connections between the classical techniques that your student will already be learning and Bluegrass styles. Classical string teaching focuses on developing intonation, position work, tone, double-stops and song-like phrasing, and these abilities are also crucial in Bluegrass fiddling. However, there is often a huge gap in rhythmic awareness in standard classical teaching. Bluegrass fiddling teaches rhythmic integrity and the ability to recognise and reproduce all kinds of grooves. It also develops a strong ear, a good working knowledge of basic harmony and chord progressions, and memory skills. What a student has learnt about classical harmony can also be applied within an improvising context to the simpler progressions of Bluegrass. The study of Bluegrass fiddling often ignores music reading, song-style phrasing and correct set-up, though, so these issues are best taught through the classical tradition. Learning two or more styles will enable your student (and you as well) to make useful, qualitative observations about issues of style and content, in areas such as vibrato, phrasing and note choice. This will allow you and your student to have conversations and make judgements at a more general musical level, and encourage your student’s ability to make distinctions about taste and artistic depth that transcend specific musical cultures. july 2012 THE STRAD

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Teaching different styles

Jazz Don’t get hung up on copying the style, advises Christian Howes. Try out the harmony first, and let yourself go in improvisation

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here are three distinct challenges

Classical students often try to take on all three of these issues at the same time, which is usually unmanageable. I’d suggest that as a teacher, you should encourage them to look at each area separately. Although many students are eager to jump into jazz style right from the start, it’s important to work on a thorough understanding of harmony first, as well as non-tonal improvisation. In any case, style is the hardest thing to teach, and the best way to learn it is through immersion, simply by listening. To assimilate harmony and learn voice-led relationships between chords and scales, you should ask your student to begin with arpeggios, practising them in three ways: root position extended range: playing all three notes of a given triad everywhere that they occur on the instrument in first position. (For example, on the violin, to play a D minor triad in extended range, your student should start on the note A on the G string,

Students at a jazz violin workshop run by the UK’s London Music Masters

christian howes

that confront every classical student who wants to venture into jazz improvisation (and other alternative styles): improvisation: for many reasons, a lot of classical musicians can’t bring themselves to improvise, or just don’t know how to get started a sound understanding of harmony: a comprehensive knowledge of voice-led relationships between common chords and scales style and vocabulary: familiarity with the language of a specific style, such as early jazz, modern jazz, Latin jazz, and so on ‘Playing jazz isn’t all about style‘: Christian Howes (left)

Style is the hardest thing to teach, and the best way to learn it is through immersion end on the note A on the E string, and play every occurrence of the notes D, F and A in between) every inversion of the arpeggio in first position, extended range Next, students should move on to expressing the triads as double- and triple-stops: play the dyads of their chord in double-stops expressed in 3rds and 4ths play the dyads as 5ths and 6ths play the triads as triple-stops in all inversions as 3rds and 4ths play the triads as triple-stops in all inversions as 5ths and 6ths

courtesy London Music Masters

Because the most difficult part of playing chord progressions is the transition from one chord to another, you should encourage students to practise these changes and memorise the voice-led relationships between all chords in the progression. But since a progression may have many chords that pass by quickly, I’d suggest that students should practise chord pairs – a repeated progression of just two chords. You should ask them to practise these two-chord progressions in all inversions, and in doubleand triple-stops, the same way they learnt the individual arpeggios.

To practise improvisation, I recommend that students

remove the issue of harmony, since this is unfamiliar information that they must first spend time assimilating, in the same way that we all had to learn the alphabet in order to read and write.

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Teaching different styles

Instead, you should create specific structures for your student that do not involve harmony, and simply ask them to improvise whatever comes to mind. For example, you can use rhythmic structures – repeated quavers (f ) maybe, or specific rhythmic patterns – or technical devices such as double-stops. You can also use simple emotions as a guide, for instance asking your student to play whatever comes to mind if they think about happiness, sadness or anger. You can even use abstract concepts such as world peace, a bad memory, architecture or dance to inspire your student’s improvisation. I also like to employ technology as a structure or framework for improvisation, maybe using an electric violin through a processor with an effect such as delay, distortion or chorus. These two kinds of practice – assimilating harmonic information, and improvising creatively without harmony – are what I consider to be the most important areas for a classical student entering the world of improvisation. However, there are some style elements that you can also explore with your student. In terms of common bowing patterns for jazz, I prefer to improvise as much as possible. You should ask students to avoid bowing in any particular set patterns, and encourage them to use very little bow and few bow changes, and to conserve physical energy associated with the bow whenever possible. Many students practise improvising in duple time and tend to neglect triplets. Medium swing is based on triplets, so it’s important that you ask them to practise phrases created using triplet quavers. In my opinion, playing jazz isn’t all about style, but instead involves an honest exploration of your own voice through interactive improvisation. The more your student works at it, the better they’ll be.

courtesy Jacob Szekely

J acob Szekely encourages teachers not to be afraid of rock cello

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Rock cello Ignore over-simplified arrangements of pop tunes, says Jacob Szekely, but make sure your students get into the groove

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f you are a cello teacher who works with

younger students, at least one of them has probably approached you wanting to learn a rock, metal or hip-hop song on their instrument. This can be a great teaching opportunity: whenever a student comes to us with a passion for learning or expressing something on their instrument, it should excite and inspire us as educators. Even if you have not been exposed to playing this kind of music, do not be afraid of these styles. The process of learning to perform in popular genres is not inherently different from playing in any others you regularly teach. These contemporary styles are just another area of performance practice, and developing stylistic awareness of them offers the same benefits to the student string player as studying classical pieces. That said, exploring contemporary styles can present some unique challenges for young cellists, and although each one of these popular genres is a musical world no less expansive than Classical or Romantic music, they do share some common issues, which you can tackle using these three general approaches.

Give your students the right skills As teachers, we should promote a musical literacy appropriate to each style we teach, so that our students can explore the genre’s relevant source materials. The main proponents of popular styles such as rock and hip-hop are guitarists and keyboard players who read and write using the treble clef, chord symbols, or a combination of the two – none of which cello students normally learn. Therefore one of the most important ways for you to help cello students understand the wealth of sheet music, lead sheets and pedagogical material available to them in these styles is to ensure that they have these skills. Even if a student reads the treble clef well and has studied thumb position, it is critical for them to master transposing the treble clef an octave down, in order to make the parts more idiomatic on the cello. Mastering this octave transposition will open up a world of music by making it practical for students to play their favourite melodies without having to go up into the stratosphere on their instrument. Learning to realise chord symbols gives students instant access to playing popular music. It is also a useful way to strengthen and reinforce the arpeggios and chord shapes that they have already been studying in classical repertoire. Learning about chord shapes can also open the door to music theory, arranging, improvisation and other essential elements in overall musicianship. july 2012 THE STRAD

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Teaching different styles

courtesy string project los angeles

Students at String Project Los Angeles can learn popular cello styles from rock to reggae

Go to the source Even though there are increasing numbers of orchestral and even string quartet and solo arrangements of rock and pop tunes, you should encourage your students to study the original material itself. There are many very accurate transcriptions and lessons available covering different styles, complete with the appropriate ornaments (for example, slides, bends or fades) that give the music its particular accent. As in any musical genre, learning to perform stylistically appropriate ornaments is one of the most important elements in any form of contemporary music. Many string arrangements simplify or simply omit ornaments in an attempt to make the music more approachable for string players, but if your student goes down this route, the result can be a performance that sounds like a classical musician trying to play rock. Furthermore, you should always ask your students to study any sheet music in conjunction with slow and careful listening to the source material.

Think groove

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a drummer can provide many of the same benefits as practising chamber music with other string players. Encourage your students to use the cello as a percussion instrument. Percussion techniques such as ‘chopping’ (playing a note with a down bow, then rapidly bringing the bow back up to ‘crunch’ on the string), borrowed from the fiddling world, are great ways to start internalising the essential grooves used  in  different contemporary styles. Many rhythms can be adapted from percussion scores: I use scores from different contemporary styles borrowed from drumming books to create string rhythm ensembles.

Rocket Music Management

The biggest difference between the repertoire string players traditionally study and contemporary styles is that the latter are built around rhythm. An emphasis on groove and rhythmic sensibility is one of the most important things for your students to consider when approaching contemporary styles, and you should make every effort to inject rhythm into their practice. Even students who use a metronome rarely use it effectively: the droning beep or click is usually turned on, but then ignored. Instead, students can now use software such as Garage Band, which allows them to practise with drum loops in different styles. They can also download drum loops online and use transcription software to adjust the tempo. Ask students to focus on the different parts of the drum pattern (particularly the backbeat of the snare drum) and emphasise that they need to match the loop’s articulation and feel. Grooving with

Learning to realise chord symbols gives students instant access to playing popular music

The duo 2Cellos has brought rock cello into the mainstream

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Teaching different styles

Scottish fiddling There is much that folk fiddling can teach classical students, says Patsy Reid, but beware inaccurate notations

Students at the Valley of the Moon Scottish Fiddling School in California

The danger comes when musical notation is used, as many Scottish rhythms are misrepresented when notated. For example, strathspeys are invariably written in 4/4 simple time, with dotted rhythms and, most characteristically, the scotch snap: a semiquaver ( d ) followed by a dotted quaver ( f ). But if you listen to strathspeys from the West Coast and Highlands, they are actually played in compound time. If you were to notate them correctly, they would be in 12/8 and feature a crotchet and quaver instead of the typical dotted quaver and semiquaver. Similarly, jigs are often played with a skipping, dotted feel but generally notated as three equal quavers. Even if they are written with dots, sometimes the dotted notes should sound a bit shorter or longer than notated. My advice is to listen to a recording in order to decipher the most accurate way of playing a particular tune. Classical players may relate most closely to the north-east fiddle style. It has been influenced by European violin music since the 18th century. The  repertoire of the Patsy Reid teaches classical and folk north-east is beautiful, students the same rich, diverse and, in my technical principles experience as a teacher, the most complex in terms of sheer detail and the way it is taught and practised. courtesy patsy reid

It is worth noting that traditionally, and still much of the time today, Scottish fiddle tunes are passed on aurally. This is arguably the most successful method of teaching, and will enable your student to retain a tune’s melody, rhythm, ornaments and bowing in the long term. Success in this method depends on many factors, including age, experience of learning by ear, and, of course, underlying musicality. As a teacher, if you have the luxury and ability to learn your chosen tune by ear yourself, either from another player or from a CD, when you pass on that tune some of its stylistic features will subconsciously still be in there somewhere.

courtesy alasdair fraser

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s with any musical genre, when you

lift the lid on Scottish fiddling you get a lot more than you bargained for. There are many distinct Scottish fiddle styles: from the rhythmic and mainly dance-based playing of the West Coast, Western Isles, Highlands and Cape Breton, to the driving, ringing strings of Shetland, via the lilting style of the Borders and the flamboyant, more performance-based styles of the north-east. Each is unique, beautiful and Scottish in its own way, and you can teach stylistic features common to all of them to your students in order to achieve an authentically Scottish sound. In terms of technique, I teach all my pupils the same principles, whether they are learning the Scottish fiddle or classical violin. I firmly believe in the promotion of good tone, articulation, flexibility and intonation, irrespective of style. One of the most obvious and perhaps daunting features of Scottish fiddling is ornamentation, not necessarily because of the physical difficulty of the finger movements, but because there are so many possibilities yet so few directions as to what to put where and why. Ornaments are generally used to accentuate the beat. When a tune pauses on a crotchet ( g ), for example, you would almost certainly add some sort of embellishment. Whether you choose a twiddle, a wobble or simply vibrato, though, can depend on which finger is on the note, personal taste or stylistic tendencies. As for vibrato, the general rule is to use it sparingly. In slow airs and waltzes, vibrato can be used effectively to warm up a longer note, perhaps at the end of a phrase. In addition, it can add panache to a prominent note in a strathspey, march or reel. Try to discourage students from using a general wash of vibrato, though, since this will always sound classical. Bowing also plays a major role in my lessons. When a student is starting out on Scottish fiddling, I find the most important rule is for them to maintain the beat on a down bow. I call this ‘common-sense bowing’, and it forms the basis upon which more stylistic bowing can be built.

Download music examples, as well as book and CD recommendations, at www.thestrad.com

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