Wednesday, March 16, 2011

There's No Excuse for Not Practicing Ševčík

At least his Opus 1. You can download Opus 1 books 1-4 from Open Source Music onto any electronic device. Opus 1 is also available from the Petrucci Library, along with the school of bowing, and this fantastic tutorial for the Mendelssohn Concerto. There's one for the Brahms Concerto, the Tchaikovsky Concerto, Paganini's 1st Concerto and Wieniawski's 2nd Concerto too.

What? You don't have time for Ševčík? This stuff will save you oodles of disorganized (and often wasted) practice time by allowing you to focus your attention on the matters that are most important--like getting from one note to the next confidently, in tune, comfortably, and with a good sound. It is only once those things are in place that it is possible to aspire to (and sometimes even achieve) higher musical ideals.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow... must be something in the air! Here's the opening of my offline journal entry yesterday:
"So would it kill ya to do some Sevcik every practice session? Hmmm? I mean really! Talk about basic building blocks of violin technique... Sevcik is chock full of ‘em. "
That was prompted by the interview with Gil Shaham on practicing yesterday on Performance Today... or did you hear that too? :
http://performancetoday.publicradio.org/www_publicradio/tools/media_player/popup.php?name=performance_today%2Ffeatures%2F2011%2F03%2F15%2Fshaham_20110315_128

Do you know which exercise he's doing? I looked through op.1 & saw similar things, but not precisely.

I've been enjoying your blog for a few years now!

-Tina

Elaine Fine said...

It was Sevcik Synchronicity, I suppose. I hadn't hear the Shaham interview. I think that what he played was actually Dounis rather than Sevcik, but more possibly it was something written out for him by his teacher who adapted the second exercise from the Dounis Daily Dozen for his own purposes.

You can find the "Daily Dounis" here.

http://www.jsbchorales.net/

RoseAnn said...

SO glad to see this - I've told my students many times that Sevcik strips technical issues down to the bare bones and doesn't waste time. His exercises are the quickest route to get you to where you want to be. Nothing extra; just exactly what you really need. Love them!