Pia Liptak, Instructor
NOTE Date Change: 6 Wednesdays, October 7 - November 11, 2020
6:00-7:00 pm
ages 10+, students should be able to play beyond first position

Please note that this short-term class is canceled for Fall 2020. To inquire about individual violin lessons or Hochstein ensembles like HochStrings Adult Chamber Orchestra, please contact the front office at 585.454.4596.

Join Pia Liptak, Hochstein’s Co-Chair of Strings, in this important series of discussions on topics relevant to performance and practice of the violin. 

The weekly sessions will be held via Zoom. A Zoom-compatible device is required for participation, as well as a device such as a smartphone, laptop, or tablet that has a basic video recording capability and a microphone.

Week I: How We Read (Pitch)
The first workshop will discuss how we read music and how we can improve our reading. The class will cover how we connect image to sound, how we relate what we see in musical notation with the sounds we hear. In order to read with more overview, the class also touches on basic musical patterns including scales, intervals, arpeggios, and how to connect this knowledge to the fingerboard. This workshop sets up the fundamentals for the following classes.

Week II: Harmonics, Part 1
The workshop on harmonics consists of two parts. In part 1, we will listen to examples of violin music that uses harmonics, cover how the acoustics of the string work, and where harmonics can be found on the violin.

Week III: Harmonics, Part 2
The second part of the workshop on harmonics will cover suggestions for how to develop a spatial sense on the fingerboard and provide exercises on how to play harmonics well. The session will also demonstrate how to read standard notations of different kinds of harmonics.

Week IV: Shifting, Part 1
The workshop on shifting consists of two parts. In part 1, we will look at three different types of shifting between positions, show how to analyze any shift, and cover which type of shift to choose when considering context and style.

Week V: Shifting, Part 2
The second part of the workshop on shifting offers exercises and examples on how to practice shifts. There will be a small amount of homework and recommendations for exercises and books on the topic will be provided.

Week VI: What does music mean to you?
This last workshop will be a forum to talk about the importance music can have in our lives. The discussion may also touch on topics such as how music began, the function and roles of music and sounds, learning processes in music, how learning music can be used in other situations, the skills we need to express music freely, how music connects, etc.

FEE: $10 registration fee; $102 tuition*; $78 if enrolled in individual lessons at Hochstein. (Fees are as of Fall 2020.)

* Click here for information about our Tuition Assistance.