Observation – report

4. Observe my first violin teacher lesson

august 2018
location: his house
1 hour lesson
individual lesson
level of the student: 8th year playing the violin

I visited today a lesson from my first violin teacher. The student started
to play from sevsik exercises for double stops. After 5 mins of
introduction to double stops the teacher explained how to practice the
double stops at home. After the sevsik book the teacher asked from the
student to play a scale with arpeggios in slow tempo. The whole
duration of sevsik & scale was 20 mins. The teacher after the scale
showed an exercise for the sound by playing a note starts from piano
to frog and goes with cresc to the tip. And this exercise i found it really
interesting. He called it ‘'the exercise of Tartini’’. I liked the fact that
he explained to the student who Tartini was and how important
violinist was.
He spent the rest of the lesson by showing him to the instrument how
to play one etude of kreutzer, talking with the student about the
intonation and rythm and in one moment he asked from him to have a
break.
In general, i liked the lesson. This lesson was more
tecknical(sevsik,scale,kreutser etude). The student didn’t have lesson
for 20 days and the teacher was keep telling him that he missed the
sound from the student and the intonation but that’s because they
didn’t have lesson for long time. And in this point i feel that he wanted
to make the studentto feel guilty and to make him understand that
without the teacher the student cannot do nothing. But this is a
personal opinion because i experienced something like this in the past.
Also i believe that as a teacher he gives a small amount of knowledge
in every lesson. And i am talking because i realised that as a student
who plays for 8 years and has lessons twice per week(1 hour each
lesson)the scale for example could be much better but also the way of
playing and how he prepares for the lesson. What i mean is that he
focuses only in the intonation and nothing more.
Last but not least, the student was not inspired by the teacher.This is
the feeling that i got from the lesson. As a very positive thing i found
the fact that everytime the student was playing good the teacher was
telling to him ‘'well done’’.