Make a wish

I just wish I was a good teacher! I have to find someone else to teach Lucy, because I just don't have the patience or ability to be a good violin teacher. I grumble and yell, and that's not helpful for anyone.

scootiebee wrote:

I just wish I was a good teacher! I have to find someone else to teach Lucy, because I just don't have the patience or ability to be a good violin teacher. I grumble and yell, and that's not helpful for anyone.

Start by calming down. I know that you can be a good teacher, but you have to understand your child first! Does she realy likes music art or she would prefer only artistic abilities like drawing, painting or even woodcarving? Just ask her what she would prefer! But like I said, stay calm, you cannot chose what your child needs, she knows the exact thing that she would prefer. I'm a father of two kids and I know that sometimes its a bit difficult to understand them but try other things to figure out what she whant for her own expresion!

Your's truly sister Scootiebee!

scootiebee wrote:

I just wish I was a good teacher! I have to find someone else to teach Lucy, because I just don't have the patience or ability to be a good violin teacher. I grumble and yell, and that's not helpful for anyone.

If she's starting out, generally you can just buy a beginner's music book and follow that through, and once she knows the basics, you can buy grade books and work through them. I was able to self-teach myself the flute at the early grades. I didn't really see the point in having a tutor then..She was always too slow for me and I ended up progressing faster than the others she taught (we were taught in groups). You just follow the book really, and because I kept my early books, I'm able to re-use them if I were to teach someone else. I'd just hand it to them.

Though I guess you'd run the risk of gaining bad habits through self-tuition..Like having a bad posture for playing etc. My teacher never corrected my posture when I was starting out with the flute, so it's difficult for me to change now.

Yeah, and Lucy is taking a group class at school right now, and they haven't done anything for her posture. I want her to at least start with a private instructor for one year, get her posture perfect, make sure she understands the basics very well, and then she can go on her own or I can tutor her. But violin is not really an instrument you can teach yourself. I know, because I also played wind instruments, which were very hard to screw up on. Violin is completely different, because where you place the bow, how you place it, how your hand is held on the strings, this all affects the tone. On clarinet, where I had my fingers only mattered if I wasn't completely covering the hole with my finger. Other than that, I could have played it lying on the floor, and it wouldn't have changed the tone one whit. It is very difficult to master all these subtle techniques. And I am not patient.

Lucy wants to play, she wants to learn, she wants to play duets with me (so she says!). But without that foundation of proper technique, you can't progress very far on violin.

Since I learned all that technique when I was about 5, I don't remember how I was taught it, but a professional teacher will know how to phrase things, will know how to correct mistakes, etc. Plus, have you noticed that your kids take instruction better from other people than they do from you? Lucy takes some instruction from us, but she really listens to other adults. I don't know why that is, maybe entering that rebellious period? ugh.

:laugh: Maybe it's just 'confirmation of what mummy says' by listening to other people..I don't know. I don't generally trust my mother unless I look something up, but yet again, she finds it funny to make me believe untrue things.

I was thinking things might be different for the violin..When I play the flute, the angle you hold it at and the technique you use to get air through the whole flute matters because it affects tone, so I can see the issues that a violin player would also have. That, and I've tried my mother's violin and..Well..The only piece I can really play is 'shrieking cat'.

I think it'd be a good idea to get a private tutor for one year first and then teach her yourself. When I think about it, I don't actually need a tutor and I haven't needed one since I learned the basics of the piano..But my parents always insisted he was there. It's really just common sense with the piano..Everything's marked out for you, and especially after grade 6 when you need to pay attention to detail - You can just find a professional recording, listen to it and then think about how you can imitate techniques into your playing. :blink: The only issue without a tutor is that I wouldn't know how to enter myself in for exams.

^.^ Duets with your own child sounds great..In my mind, I dream of something similar with my imaginary future children and my imaginary future grand piano.

Yes, I have a similar fantasy with my imaginary future Amati. But I know that a professional teacher will be able to help her understand the basics, because they are trained to be able to explain things to kids in a way they will understand and respond to. I just, for the life of me, can't remember how I was taught 30 years ago!