Category: Resources

One of the reasons I encourage my students to memorize recital pieces is that the ability to memorize is one of life’s most important skills.

Memory is a bit like a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it gets. To build your musical memory, try memorizing at least one passage every day. This works for memory in any other subject, as well.

The memorization process requires

1) Attention
2) Understanding the underlying pattern
3) Recall
4) Repetition

The first point, attention, is often overlooked. If you can’t focus completely on the piece of music that you want to memorize, then none of the rest of the process will work.

Looking for an underlying pattern helps organize your memory for easier recall. For a musical passage, make a mental note of the key, the starting and ending notes. Examine all of the intervals. Note any difficult fingerings or string-crossings. If there are any accidentals, try to figure out what key the composer has temporarily shifted to. For longer passages, you can break the patterns into groups and construct a larger pattern from those groups.

Recall is like giving yourself a mini-quiz. It reinforces the memory. You should do this “mini-quiz” immediately after you have identified whatever patterns there are in the passage. At this step, you simply try to play as much of the passage from memory as you can, then go back and examine any errors you made. This will begin the process of transferring the new information you have just learned from your short-term memory to your long-term memory.

You will have to repeat the process several times, especially when you are just starting on a piece. There is an optimization trick available for this. Your first repetition should be immediately after you have given yourself your first “mini-quiz” (recall). Go back through the first three steps of the process right away. The next repetition should be after a pause.

For the most efficient memorization, the length of that pause will get longer as the process is repeated. This is called the Spacing Effect, and there has been some very interesting research into just how to most efficiently space out this research. The general principle is to review the material you are trying to learn just before you forget it. This pause may initially be only a few minutes, but by the 3rd or 4th repetition, may be several days. With practice, you will discover that you can fairly accurately predict about how long each pause should be. You will also be able to accurately predict how long it will take you to memorize a longer piece just by knowing its length and complexity.

If you make the effort to memorize something every day, you will find that it gets easier and faster to memorize almost anything.

If you are interested in maximizing the efficiency of the spaced repetition process more than is possible by just guessing how long the next pause should be, check out The Mnemosyne Project (an open source software project) at

http://www.mnemosyne-proj.org/

Violin Bow

One of the prizes I plan to include in my upcoming sweepstakes is a carbon fiber bow, worth about $125. Yes, I know I’m running kinda long with this sweepstakes, but I’ve had some other events pre-empt my efforts on this. I’ll try to get something together by the end of January.

Meanwhile, in my various searches for comparable deals in bows, I ran across a couple on Amazon which appear to be pretty good. One is a Full-size 4/4 Pernambuco Nickel/silver Mounted Violin Bow sold by Vio Strings for $27. It has some good reviews, and Pernambuco is definitely better than the typical “Brazil-wood” bow. “Brazil-wood” doesn’t actually identify the type of wood at all, but includes several different very cheap varieties of wood, some of which aren’t even from Brazil. Considering that a good re-hairing job costs about $40 plus tax here in Plano, this looks like a super deal.

A similar deal is listed as Violin Bow Pernambuco Wood Full Size 4/4, Ebony Frog, by D Z Strad for $28. Even though the list price is a bit higher, D Z Strad has lower shipping charges, so the total delivered price is a little less.

Both of these bows are advertised with an inflated MSRP, which I think you should pretty much ignore, but I think that either of these bows would out-perform the “Brazil-wood” bows that come with the typical beginner violin kit (including mine). I really don’t think you can go wrong with either of them. You might want to jump on one of these deals before they go away!

Update 1/8/2012: The price on the first one has jumped up about $10 since the last time I checked, which would probably make the 2nd one a better deal. If I was personally shopping for a “spare” bow, I’d probably pass on either of these if the price went over about $55, or maybe wait for another sale.

Update 1/17/2012: I see that the price seems to be fluctuating quite a bit. If you are thinking about getting a bow that cost more than about $40, I think that most student violinists would be happier with a carbon fiber bow for about $70.

I’ve already written about the Don’t Fret, which is one of the accessories for violin and viola that I keep in stock. I was notified last week by the manufacturer that there is a new version of the Don’t Fret available, called the First Fret. These are shorter decals that only indicate the finger positions in the first position. Since the typical beginner will remove the fingerboard decal fairly soon after learning 3rd position anyway, I expect these to sell quite well. They are less expensive than the original Don’t Fret, and I expect them to be easier to install. The price for the violin First Fret will be $2.95 plus $1 shipping. I have made my initial order, and I expect to get them in sometime next week.