Welcome to STRINGSKILLS.COM
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FeedbackI just wanted to write and thank you for all of the work that you've put into your website! I teach three different levels of H.S.. orchestra in a suburb of Chicago. ...Thanks again!! M. C., Palatine IL Came across your web site today. Was thrilled to find such a wealth of aids. I was very pleased with your mission and your attitude towards learning. T. B., Meridian, MS This web site looks really interesting. And you're correct - you should get the word out to teachers about it. M. S., Tempe, AZ Thank you for such a helpful violin site!! The finger charts, and the tetra chord patterns are just perfect. And adding the midi accompaniments gives them a great way to keep it in their ear when they walk out my door. And my boyfriend is teaching himself to play cello, so now he's thrilled to have something help him learn the notes. He's always learned music by ear, and now he thinks he'll be able to read in no time. What a very generous thing you have done to make learning a stringed instrument easier! THANK YOU!! K. M., Santa Barbara CA I also found your website - thank you! I like your concept of finding joy in the "teachable moments". ... Thanks again and take care! J. Z., Pennsylvania Bravo! Thanks for your continued support in educating our string youth. I really found the site useful and insightful. Thank you again. T. D., Lancaster, TX Thank you for publishing stringskills.com. It is an excellent resource! K. P., Greendale WI I teach strings in West Palm Beach, Fl. I just want to thank you for providing your site - it is a great resource! West Palm Beach FL I wanted to thank you for your website. I went to your clinics in February at the WMEA conference in Yakima, WA. I have used your songs and methods since as a supplement to the books that I already use; and the students ability to shift and to understand scale passages has made my life so much easier. Thank you again for sharing your knowledge and expertise on String instruments, "Us" string teachers are always struggling to find new ways and techniques to work orchestras together, and your website has opened new opportunities. M. F., Spokane WA I am a 6th year orchestra director in Enid, OK and i teach 3 6th grade beginning classes, 7th grade, and 8/9th grade at the junior high. I just wanted to thank you for making all of these wonderful materials available on your website- it is awesome!! It is great to find all of those things in one spot rather than several different places. S. F., Enid OK I just found your website and was so excited at all of the information you have made available! I am a fairly new teacher (4 years) and teach strings to beginners in grades 3-5 and also at the high school level. I have found our district's method book to be unsatisfactory for a number of reasons. I plan on using your information in the future for my students. Thank you very much! K. J., Virginia Beach VA I am a public school string teacher in Halifax, NS. I have been doing some professional development finding web resources and just seeing what is out there on the net. I discovered your excellent website today; it is ironic in that my long term project before I retire from teaching strings in a few years was to create something very like what you have done. My motivation was to leave a trail new teachers could pick up on, and I see you and I have followed a similar path. I congratulate you on a very useful teaching resource. S. W., Halifax NS Canada I am a second year string orchestra and band teacher teaching in an English speaking school here in Seoul, South Korea. I just want to tell you how much I appreciate your website. I am using everything from your website. I learned on my own the hard way last year not "to be tied to the curriculum." The string orchestra program is not a part of the Korean elementary/secondary system. But God just put me smack in the middle of starting a string program from elementary to high school and it's getting attention from many Korean parents. Thanks again! All of your wisdom and experience is being put in use over here in South Korea! B. V., Seoul, South Korea This is my first year as Orchestra Director at Bullard High School in Fresno, Ca. Thanks so much for making your materials available. I have been organizing them into books to distribute to my class. J. A., Fresno, CA My mom (another orchestra teacher) actually sent me your website link and I wanted to thank you for putting up some great resources. I've never looked at the MENC board before so I have been spending the day reading the posts and you have a lot of great things to say. M. O., Fort Bend TX I would just like to thank you for your amazing website. I am a string teacher in New York and my main instrument is Double Bass. This information provided on your website will help my students tremendously! Thank you once again. S. T., Long Island NY I have been using your site stringskills.com recently for my string classes. Thank you for sharing your ideas and content with the string world. I am a new string teacher with a growing program and I can use all of the knowledge that is out there. Thank you for your time. T. W., West Linn, OR Once again I found myself exploring your site, having written you before. I enjoyed your examples, and the connections they made... Your resources are 'very' valid and especially well done. What can I do to ... help others... understand your contributions? A. J., War WV Thank you so much for your site. I can see that you must a great performer and teacher. Thank goodness for your site... D. M., Florida I just want to say thank you for such a wonderful website. I have been a Suzuki violin teacher for many years and have recently begun to increase the amount of supplemental reading material that I assign my students. Your website has many excellent teaching materials, is highly navigable, and the exercises are fun and educational. Thank you for sharing your skills with the rest of the teaching community. V. G., Farmington, CT Just wanted to drop you a short note to say Hello and Thank You! It was a pleasant surprise to find your website and the materials available are a blessing. I have been having difficulty in finding useful exercises for my string students. Glad to see that you are doing well! M. B., Honolulu HI Thank you so much - this was all very helpful information. You just made my job a lot easier! M. B., Yakima WA Thank you for your wonderful website and insight into 9-12 strings! I came across your website while searching for various techniques and ways to improve my HS Orchestra. You are quite correct in your assertion that most teachers stop after Book II. That is why I am looking for various technical exercises. E. F., New Providence NJ I was just glancing through an MENC e-mail, noticed the forums, and found my way to your website. I was very impressed with a couple of things. First of all, you clearly have given a whole lot of thought to these methods, and they strike me as very innovative and useful. But the reason I felt compelled to just drop you a quick e-mail, is that I was so struck by your generosity at sharing your fine work. Goodness knows, teaching is hard work, and teaching instrumental music in a classroom is no exception. Fine suggestions like yours are such a valuable contribution to the literature, and whatever else we can find to help us, as we try to creatively move our kids forward. Thanks so much, E. S., Santa Fe NM What a wonderful website you have!! Thank You!! I suggest that all Suzuki Teachers visit your wonderful site! Suzanne, Suzuki teacher Wanted you to know that I've been using your website with my advanced middle school orchestra. We have been working on an orchestra piece, Ridin' the Rails, and in that piece, the song Swing Low, Sweet Chariot is incorporated. Therefore, we've taken the shifting songs from your website and also on the crazy rhythmic tunes and been working on them in sectionals. It's been a great stretch for the kids. I also e-mailed the parents about the website, and several students have already printed off some of the exercises to work on at home. So, just thought you'd like to know. Thanks again, This is a great resource and I'm really enjoying using it! B. G., Oregon I enjoyed your sessions last week so much! I'm a long-time choral director, and this is my 2nd year teaching high school orchestra as well. I've conducted strings for years, but hiring professional players and telling them what I want them to do is vastly different from teaching HS string players to actually do it! It's great fun, and I'm learning a lot, more than the students, I think. The exercises in the notes you sent will be really helpful to me and to my students. I've already been to www.stringskills.com, too, and I know that will provide other helpful things for me to use. Thanks for offering all this material to us! And thanks for your help. W.O., Bealeton VA Thank you for your very practical tips. I plan to share many of them with my conducting students! L.M., Norfolk VA I've been using several of the left hand skills you talked about, kids respond to them well. S.S., Fairfax NJ I remembered your stringskills.com website and it is proving to be an incredible resource. Since we don't have many texts, the scale and song downloads are extremely helpful Thanks so much for putting this together. I hope to have my kids climbing to the stratosphere very soon :) D.P., Honolulu HI I just bumped into you site, which has so much info and represents such an enormous amount of work. Bravo. R.B., New Jersey I greatly appreciate the materials you have posted on your "string skills" website. B.B., Crystal MN Thank you for sharing your knowledge. It has been very useful to me although I don't speak English perfectly, but you explain it so easy that anyone could understand you. Thank you very much! V.T., Mendoza, Argentina Your website and materials are fantastic! Thank you so much for sharing! R.F., Batavia IL First, thank you for making these resources available. I can see already how they will help my students improve on fundamentals of string playing. Thanks again for this excellent resource. A.R., Glendale AZ I'm a private violin teacher in Maryland. I just found your website and I want to tell you how wonderful I think your teaching curriculum is. I've been using Wohlfahrt, Introducing the Positions, Hrimaly, etc. for a while, but many students are turned off because the material is so dry. . . . I'm THRILLED to have found your website and I think your arrangements and exercises are wonderful and exciting way for students to learn these more advanced concepts. Thank you so much for making these products of your life's work as a teacher available publicly. I certainly hope that more teachers will read your website and take all that you have said to heart. I completely agree with your observations, and I'm very excited to be able to share these materials with my students as well. Thank you so much for your dedication, creativity and hard work! J.Z., Maryland Hi, I am a high school orchestra director as well as a Suzuki violin private teacher in San Jose. Thank you for the helpful resources you have provided on your website! I would really like to use the scales for my orchestra. Again, thanks for the resources. I could not find something like what you had ANYWHERE else, with appropriate fingering suggestions for each of the instruments. Of course, there are all kinds of scale books for each individual instrument; but I was looking for something simple and concise (and free!) and something that could work as a warm-up for the entire group. A.J., San Jose CA Submit your comments to the author. |
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