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
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