Making a Better Violinist

"I may not be able to make you into a great dancer. I may not even be able to make you a good dancer. But if you keep trying and don't quit, I can make you a better dancer".

-Joe Gideon  All That Jazz

This quote struck me as we watched All That Jazz on T.V. the other night. The film version of Bob Fossey's life and times may or may not be an accurate depiction of the real man behind all the great dancing, but I believe in his desire to push the dancers as far as they could go, or as far as they want to go.

We are coming up to our annual All-District Music Festival this next week, and the preparations have gotten me thinking about how the kids in my elementary string classes have separated themselves into three distinct groups. The music for the elementary string players is especially challenging this year, as we are combining the elementary and middle schools to make one large string orchestra. My middle school string players had no trouble learning the music. The music for the elementary band (which I will be directing!) was chosen to encourage even beginning wind players to participate. So the elementary band kids have had very little difficulty learning the music. But for the elementary string players, the task of getting this music "into their fingers" has proved to be a challenge to which some have felt unequal.

I started noticing it right after we got back from Winter break. Here and there a string player wouldn't show up for class. These classes are "pull-outs", so it is up to the kids to leave their classrooms and come to the music room. We have been striving to see the 5th graders twice a week this year, so if a student missed one day, I would expect to see them the next. But they began dropping away, till there were maybe a third of the original students no longer attending regularly.

The three categories of players separating themselves are like this.  First there are the students who LOVE to practice or whose parents MAKE them practice, and for whom the challenge of this music is fun. They are a small, but enthusiastic group, who are proud of their significant accomplishments. The third of the students who dropped away here are the ones for whom this challenge was just too daunting, and no matter how much we went over it in class, they didn't understand how to work on it at home, so rather than fail, they just quit coming. Then there is the third group. These are kids who have kept on coming, who keep on trying, but have not really learned the music at all. They even tell me they are practicing at home. But as I watch them pushing their bows back and forth over mostly open strings, getting a random finger down here and there, I can see very clearly that they don't know what they are doing. And they sometimes seem truly surprised that I am not going to let them go to the festival.

I feel bad for these kids, and try to make it up to them by telling them I can see that they have been working, and I appreciate the work they have done, but no one is going to help them learn their music during the festival rehearsals, and as of now, they don't know it well enough to get through the first rehearsal. "Can't I have till next Tuesday?", asked one boy desperately, yesterday, as I was hyping the class for this last practice together before the first big rehearsal. After I told him no, that today was the last day for me to decide, and he was clearly not ready, he spent the rest of the class shooting daggers at me from his eyes. I asked another student who had missed a few classes to stay after to audition, because she said she knew the music even though I could see she didn't. I thought maybe if I heard her by herself,  I would be able to see that she knew enough to get through the big rehearsals. But when I sat down next to her to hear her play, she said "Well, I don't know it NOW!",-implying that any minute now, she would.  The students in this group sometimes seem to be completely clueless as to what "playing the music" really means.

I have been known to say "fake it 'til you make it" to encourage struggling students to keep trying. For the first group, this mantra helps them get through the hard parts, and persevere until they can jump in and keep going on the parts they know well. They WILL make it, eventually. It seems the second group, the dropouts, DO know the difference, and recognize their own limitations, and have decided to drop rather than keep on faking. But this third group seems to think that the faking is the same as the real, and some seem surprised that I don't think so too.

I really love our District Festival. It gives us a focus to our teaching, and ALWAYS brings up the level of the playing of the kids who stick with it. Even the third group grows from working on hard music. This year, with my elementary strings, though, I feel I will need to do some real re-recruiting when it's all over. It will be time to dig out some easier music that everyone can succeed at, and get back to the fun of making music together. I want all those students who fell by the wayside to jump back in with us. We will be able to move a little slower then, hopefully keeping them all swimming and not sinking.  They may not ever be great violinists, or even very good violinists, but if they will keep trying and not quit, I might be able to help them become better violinists.