Friday, March 22, 2013

Mastering the Bow is now available!

I'm pleased to announce that years of work on the Wohlfahrt violin studies have been published by Carl Fischer and are now available for purchase.  These are 38 études geared towards beginning and intermediate students and teach the "mother strokes" of  détaché and martelé, and the many combinations - in slurs, crossing strings, different meters, varying degrees of shifting difficulty.  The book works progressively through détaché first, addressing the issues of connected sound, then focuses on martelé and the technical ideas involved in producing that stroke.  My hope is make video demos to support your practice of the études.
 
My graduate studies teacher, Jeffrey Turner, was working out of a smaller version of these études, but we both felt that particular version didn't offer enough practical help, or explain definitions of terms that can often have conflicting uses.  At Jeff's encouragement, I researched some other books' definitions - like the Harvard Dictionary of Music and Musicians and the Grove New Dictionary - to see how they varied.  I included those other definitions in an appendix in this book, but started off the book with a glossary of our terms and the way we use them to avoid confusion.
 
I hope you'll find clear and challenging work to help improve your bow strokes in this book.  If you have any questions or suggestions for further material - hint, hint, I'm starting work on book 2 now, the one that will take us into spiccato and ricochet and would love to know what you like to work with or what you have trouble with in your practice - I'm all ears!
 
Happy practicing!
Gaelen