How did you teach your kid violin at home?

[Slache]

With no formal lessons?

Don't lecture me. We have a local violinist that will help and answer questions but will not be giving lessons.

[maize]

Start with the free beginner lessons on violin lab http://violinlab.com/mobile.php

Get a Suzuki book and recording (CD or MP3)

violin lab covers several levels of Suzuki, you need a subscription eventually but their online lessons are quite good and there are enough free ones to get you going (at least, that's how it used to be; I haven't looked at it closely in recent years).

Do you have a violin?

Edited October 21, 2019 by maize

[Slache]

2 hours ago, maize said:

Start with the free beginner lessons on violin lab http://violinlab.com/mobile.php

Get a Suzuki book and recording (CD or MP3)

violin lab covers several levels of Suzuki, you need a subscription eventually but their online lessons are quite good and there are enough free ones to get you going (at least, that's how it used to be; I haven't looked at it closely in recent years).

Do you have a violin?

No. We're going to rent one for now.

[maize]

24 minutes ago, Slache said:

No. We're going to rent one for now.

How much does it cost to rent?

I have a fair bit of experience in locating good deals on used student instruments, let me know if you want me to look for you. It can save money over renting. 

[Slache]

1 minute ago, maize said:

How much does it cost to rent?

I have a fair bit of experience in locating good deals on used student instruments, let me know if you want me to look for you. It can save money over renting. 

$15/mo. Let me go in and see. If it's only 6 months before we go up a size I won't want a smaller one. And he might hate it.

Thank you! I will keep you in mind.

[Roadrunner]

Is there any beginner orchestra around where you live that takes absolute beginners? We have a program like that locally that’s very low cost and they even rent out instruments for free. 

[Ailaena]

I thought I could pick up a violin and fool around until I could play it like I did the guitar and whistle, but I really needed just a couple of lessons to make sure I was holding the things properly.   Like, I know there’s a million videos telling me this, but I just needed somebody to look at me and make corrections. Will your local violinist help with that?

 

[HomeAgain]

PracticeMonkeys.com
It's an online live/recorded-if-you-can't-make-it Suzuki class that is 4 days a week, 20min a day.  $40 or so a month.  It is formal lessons from the comfort of your own home.
Along with that: the apps Flash Note Derby and RhythmSwing.

The instructor from Practice Monkeys is very good at teaching kids in her small group classes.

[Slache]

5 hours ago, Roadrunner said:

Is there any beginner orchestra around where you live that takes absolute beginners? We have a program like that locally that’s very low cost and they even rent out instruments for free. 

We have one driver in the family and he works 80 hours a week, so we can't do anything like that at this time.

5 hours ago, Ailaena said:

Will your local violinist help with that?

Yes. He's why we're moving forward after 2 years of my son begging for violin.

8 minutes ago, HomeAgain said:

PracticeMonkeys.com
It's an online live/recorded-if-you-can't-make-it Suzuki class that is 4 days a week, 20min a day.  $40 or so a month.  It is formal lessons from the comfort of your own home.
Along with that: the apps Flash Note Derby and RhythmSwing.

The instructor from Practice Monkeys is very good at teaching kids in her small group classes.

This is really cool! Thank you!

[Slache]

38 minutes ago, HomeAgain said:

PracticeMonkeys.com
It's an online live/recorded-if-you-can't-make-it Suzuki class that is 4 days a week, 20min a day.  $40 or so a month.  It is formal lessons from the comfort of your own home.
Along with that: the apps Flash Note Derby and RhythmSwing.

The instructor from Practice Monkeys is very good at teaching kids in her small group classes.

It's $49 for the entire family. I was going to do it with him. I would love to get my daughter involved but it says the lessons are 4 hours .

[HomeAgain]

2 minutes ago, Slache said:

It's $49 for the entire family. I was going to do it with him. I would love to get my daughter involved but it says the lessons are 4 hours .

Oh, no!  Definitely not 4 hours! 😮

She does offer either 4x a week, or private lessons 1x a week with 3 hours of practice required on your own time.  The length of class slightly extends (I think the beginner levels are at 15 minutes, actually) as a student progresses because the work is naturally more difficult.

[Slache]

3 minutes ago, HomeAgain said:

Oh, no!  Definitely not 4 hours! 😮

She does offer either 4x a week, or private lessons 1x a week with 3 hours of practice required on your own time.  The length of class slightly extends (I think the beginner levels are at 15 minutes, actually) as a student progresses because the work is naturally more difficult.

Ok. FAQ says 4-7PM EST.

[HomeAgain]

1 minute ago, Slache said:

Ok. FAQ says 4-7PM EST.

Oh!  Those are the hours she teaches. A kid will move up individually, so their class time will always be between 4 and 7pm, unless they're overseas.  I think she does a.m. classes for them
DS has hockey during her hours 3x a week, so we do a lot of recorded, first thing in the morning.  He had a private teacher here but he was taught poor habits by his first teacher and progress stalled.  He got to a point where he could not continue adequately without going back to the basics.  So here we are, where someone other than mom is telling him 4x a week exactly how to position himself and it's working well. We started using PM last year when I caught it on sale and while her manner sometimes grates on his nerves because she talks to the lower classes like they are, in fact, children 😄 ............he does appreciate the work.

[Slache]

2 minutes ago, HomeAgain said:

their class time will always be between 4 and 7pm

I realized that pretty quickly. In my defense it's not even 7 here yet.

I might have to talk to my daughter about this. My son can read music and Greek and Spanish. She struggles with languages and I think she would enjoy the gentleness of the "language" involved with Suzuki. And she's incredibly artistic so this will play to her natural talent.

I think. It's still not 7 so I'm not sure. I'm getting some coffee.

[Roadrunner]

I had a kid learn string instrument without a teacher (through orchestra) and when he finally got a good private teacher, he had to relearn basics from scratch (even things like how to hold a bow). I know you don’t want to go a private teacher route, but maybe use a local violinist just to get started with basics correctly. 

[maize]

6 minutes ago, Roadrunner said:

I had a kid learn string instrument without a teacher (through orchestra) and when he finally got a good private teacher, he had to relearn basics from scratch (even things like how to hold a bow). I know you don’t want to go a private teacher route, but maybe use a local violinist just to get started with basics correctly. 

A live teacher is certainly best, but I'm just going to point out that every teacher tends to have their own preferred method and it isn't at all uncommon for a student who has taken private lessons from a professional teacher for years to switch teachers and have the new teacher insist they completely change their bowhold. 

[Slache]

22 minutes ago, Roadrunner said:

I had a kid learn string instrument without a teacher (through orchestra) and when he finally got a good private teacher, he had to relearn basics from scratch (even things like how to hold a bow). I know you don’t want to go a private teacher route, but maybe use a local violinist just to get started with basics correctly. 

We have someone to get us started and help along the way, just not as regularly as we would with lessons.

12 minutes ago, maize said:

A live teacher is certainly best, but I'm just going to point out that every teacher tends to have their own preferred method and it isn't at all uncommon for a student who has taken private lessons from a professional teacher for years to switch teachers and have the new teacher insist they completely change their bowhold. 

This is unnerving!

[Roadrunner]

7 minutes ago, maize said:

A live teacher is certainly best, but I'm just going to point out that every teacher tends to have their own preferred method and it isn't at all uncommon for a student who has taken private lessons from a professional teacher for years to switch teachers and have the new teacher insist they completely change their bowhold. 

 

I hear you, but there are things that if a parent knows how to correct from the beginning can really help improve the playing, which in turn encourages kids. On piano for example a proper hand position (not collapsing fingers etc) isn’t difficult to do if you know what to look for. 

In our experience my kid went from producing fairly rough sounds on his string instrument for almost 2 years with minimal improvement to playing concertos with beautiful tone and vibrato in less than  two years with a teacher. It has been a liberating experience for him. I can’t say this story is typical, but I wish we somehow gotten the basics right before with at least an online lesson or two when we weren’t in a position to do it weekly. The cost of lessons can be prohibitive for a large family though 😞. 

[Slache]

3 minutes ago, Roadrunner said:

 

I hear you, but there are things that if a parent knows how to correct from the beginning can really help improve the playing, which in turn encourages kids. On piano for example a proper hand position (not collapsing fingers etc) isn’t difficult to do if you know what to look for. 

In our experience my kid went from producing fairly rough sounds on his string instrument for almost 2 years with minimal improvement to playing concertos with beautiful tone and vibrato in less than  two years with a teacher. It has been a liberating experience for him. I can’t say this story is typical, but I wish we somehow gotten the basics right before with at least an online lesson or two when we weren’t in a position to do it weekly. The cost of lessons can be prohibitive for a large family though 😞. 

I've been looking and there's a lot out there now. The digital age has changed things. I could get both of my kids (3yo is feral) and myself in the monkey classes for less than $100/mo after rentals. I am in no way saying that $100 is a small amount of money, but it's quite different from $300/mo per student for a local teacher, especially if one lives in a small town with limited options.

[maize]

3 minutes ago, Slache said:

This is unnerving!

 

It's just that there isn't one and only one proper way to hold a bow. A good bowhold provides some combination of flexibility, stability, and power; different teachers (and ultimately, each musician) develops a preferred form; some are quite different from each other.

As long as you start out by developing one of the decent ones you'll be OK, your local friend should be able to help with that. I've been playing vioiln for almost four decades and I still sometimes play around with different bowholds, and the one I mostly use isn't exactly what any of my teachers taught. To some extent what works best for an individual depends on their specific hand configuration.

[Slache]

1 minute ago, maize said:

It's just that there isn't one and only one proper way to hold a bow. A good bowhold provides some combination of flexibility, stability, and power; different teachers (and ultimately, each musician) develops a preferred form; some are quite different from each other.

As long as you start out by developing one of the decent ones you'll be OK, your local friend should be able to help with that. I've been playing vioiln for almost four decades and I still sometimes play around with different bowholds, and the one I mostly use isn't exactly what any of my teachers taught. To some extent what works best for an individual depends on their specific hand configuration.

This is exactly what he said. 

[Roadrunner]

1 minute ago, Slache said:

I've been looking and there's a lot out there now. The digital age has changed things. I could get both of my kids (3yo is feral) and myself in the monkey classes for less than $100/mo after rentals. I am in no way saying that $100 is a small amount of money, but it's quite different from $300/mo per student for a local teacher, especially if one lives in a small town with limited options.

 

Oh, I know! 

We pay $70 an hour for multiple children. It’s a small fortune for us. I will say most parents that pull up to lessons are driving really expensive cars and generally seem very wealthy. We don’t fit in any studios. But my string player will most likely go on to pursue music, so we feel lucky right now that we have a privilege to fund his lessons. I try not to tally all the checks I have been writing. 😋

[Guest]

Do any of these programs do cello? I have a child in my life who desperately wants to play and is musically gifted, and who needs a "win", but the family situation is such that the parents cannot pay for lessons now.  I teach her piano, but my experience with strings is limited to the one String Teaching Techniques class in college, which was basically focused on "here's how you integrate students who already play strings into your school orchestra, with the assumption being that string students either had private lessons or a Suzuki group program in elementary school. I can't pay for $200+ a month,but $50 a month for multiple online lessons a week would be doable-I could find something she could "help" me with to pay for that. 

[Sammish]

On 10/21/2019 at 1:05 PM, dmmetler said:

Do any of these programs do cello? I have a child in my life who desperately wants to play and is musically gifted, and who needs a "win", but the family situation is such that the parents cannot pay for lessons now.  I teach her piano, but my experience with strings is limited to the one String Teaching Techniques class in college, which was basically focused on "here's how you integrate students who already play strings into your school orchestra, with the assumption being that string students either had private lessons or a Suzuki group program in elementary school. I can't pay for $200+ a month,but $50 a month for multiple online lessons a week would be doable-I could find something she could "help" me with to pay for that. 

Is it possible you could help her work through this book? It's a self-teaching method aimed at adults, but if she had someone to help her with it? (I learned to play cello last year, and used that book in conjunction with a teacher. I really liked the book, and my teacher was impressed with it, too.)

[Slache]

On 10/21/2019 at 12:05 PM, dmmetler said:

Do any of these programs do cello? I have a child in my life who desperately wants to play and is musically gifted, and who needs a "win", but the family situation is such that the parents cannot pay for lessons now.  I teach her piano, but my experience with strings is limited to the one String Teaching Techniques class in college, which was basically focused on "here's how you integrate students who already play strings into your school orchestra, with the assumption being that string students either had private lessons or a Suzuki group program in elementary school. I can't pay for $200+ a month,but $50 a month for multiple online lessons a week would be doable-I could find something she could "help" me with to pay for that. 

Outschool Class

[Brilliantur]

Contact a Local Violonist to get through with the basics.

[Eatysleepy]

Having formal lessons is really the best place to start with any instrument. You can find videos and other things online but you'll pick up some bad/lazy habits you'll just have to correct later. Get the basics down first.

[maize]

On 10/21/2019 at 11:05 AM, dmmetler said:

Do any of these programs do cello? I have a child in my life who desperately wants to play and is musically gifted, and who needs a "win", but the family situation is such that the parents cannot pay for lessons now.  I teach her piano, but my experience with strings is limited to the one String Teaching Techniques class in college, which was basically focused on "here's how you integrate students who already play strings into your school orchestra, with the assumption being that string students either had private lessons or a Suzuki group program in elementary school. I can't pay for $200+ a month,but $50 a month for multiple online lessons a week would be doable-I could find something she could "help" me with to pay for that. 

I found a play along playlist that goes through the Suzuki cello books on youtube. Maybe it could be combined with something else? I'm thinking of trying it with my 14 year old who had some cello lessons in the past.

https://cello-academy.com/