My students sounded better today then ever and I attribute that to my lesson plan. I introduced the theme of the lesson using this video:
Students voted with the audience during the video using a thumbs up or thumbs down. After the video, I explained to students that I could tell if their playing would be 'epic' or 'fail' even before they start playing.
It is so important to set up the bow hand, bow placement, and left hand properly before playing anything. It determines whether we will have strong tone, straight bows, and good intonation. For an example, I asked my bass players to set their bows on the D string and freeze in place. I asked the class to decide if their bows were going to be straight or crooked when they started playing. (We kept the vote to ourselves...I like to keep the atmosphere positive and don't call people out unless it's praise). The basses then played open D 4 times and it was very apparent that the straightness of the bow was determined by how it was set on the string.
The lesson flowed as follows:
I had students 'spy' on their stand partner and decide if they bow would be straight or crooked based on bow placement or if their tone would be clear or squeaky. (Again, we did not reveal our guesses...this was more about students feeling like their technique was being 'checked' by someone...and also it made students very aware of what they were doing in their own playing). To keep things positive, I walked around the class and called out names of students who I could tell were going to be successful. Students LOVE to hear their names...especially when it's followed with someone they are doing well. For example, "I can tell Sue is going to have a really straight bow stroke because of how she's places her bow."
Next I had students place left hands and I told them I could tell who was about to play in tune based on how their left hands were placed. "I can tell Tom is going to play in tune because of the way his fingers hovers directly over the tapes."
We checked left hand placement again for this warm-up. Students just learned this warm-up and it's great for helping tune improve intonation for G in the D string. "I can tell Bobby is going to play in tune because he already lined up his fingers above the tape."
Next we quickly practiced rhythms. I inserted them into my slides from rhythmrandomizer.com. I told students that I could tell who was going to play rhythms correctly because I could see them moving/counting to the beat. My students did extra well with rhythms today because they ALL wanted to be noticed being 'epic' and counting the rhythms.
Students who are 'epic' at reading notes stand out by setting up great left hand placement so they don't have to watch their fingers. They keep their eyes on the notes. My students cruised through note reading...and I'd never heard them so well in tune while note reading. It was like everything clicked into place. They wanted to be 'epic' by setting up play position with accuracy and focusing on the notes.
We worked on concert music for the rest of rehearsal. My students are working on Country Gardens, Pepperoni Pizza Rock, Hall of Heroes, We Will Rock You, and I just passed out Ninja. They were totally EPIC!
This lesson plan works well for ANY level. I used the same plan for my 2nd year players, altering the warm-ups, adding shifting exercises (how can you tell if someone will play the shift in tune?), practicing extensions (epic players start to reach for extensions BEFORE the note).
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