Take your band program to the next level!
The Essential Elements for Strings series has set the standard for viola instruction for decades. The Essential Elements for Strings - Viola 1 Book/Online Audio provides beginning students with an engaging introduction to viola playing. This comprehensive method book and online audio course offers a balance of technique exercises, theory fundamentals, and familiar songs tailored to the viola. Students and teachers will appreciate the accessible pace and hands-on guidance through every step of learning proper viola technique and reading music.
Interactive Online Resources Enhance Learning
The Essential Elements for Strings - Viola 1 Book is accompanied by the Essential Elements Interactive (EEI) program, which provides an expansive set of online teaching, learning, and assessment tools. EEI enhances traditional viola instruction with digital resources for use in the classroom and at home. Students can access video tutorials, play-along tracks, and interactive assessments to reinforce the lessons in the method book.Builds Strong Foundations Through Familiar Songs and Exercises
The Essential Elements for Strings - Viola 1 Book pairs time-tested technique exercises with well-known songs like "Ode to Joy" and "Jingle Bells". Students learn proper viola fundamentals and reading skills through engaging and familiar tunes. The book's 48 pages contain everything needed to start learning viola, from proper hand position and posture to reading notes and rhythms.Created by Experts, Trusted by Teachers and Students
The Essential Elements for Strings series is created by expert string players and instructors to provide students with a fun, rewarding introduction to playing viola. Embraced by teachers and students across the country, Essential Elements for Strings is the ideal method for starting your musical journey. The Viola 1 Book builds a solid foundation in viola technique and music reading that can be continued with additional Essential Elements for Strings books.Specifications
- ISBN: 9780634038181
- Width: 9"
- Length: 12"
- 48 pages
Features
Each Book Includes My EE Library
- Start-up Video: learn the basics
- Play-along MP3: features professional players on your instrument
- Duets and Trios: print and play parts with friends
- Music Listening Library: hear great pieces for orchestra
- SmartMusic: exercises 1-100
- Book 1 uses a note-to-note sequence with easy-to-read notation. Students begin with the note names written inside the note heads, and then the names are gradually eliminated.
- Contemporary pedagogy starts from the "top" of the hand. Violins and violas start with three fingers down, cellos with four. This technique creates better left-hand shape and helps develop proper playing position from the beginning. Teaching the double bass is accomplished without displacing the octave.
- New material is carefully paced, sequential and immediately reinforced. New notes are approached by step, then gradually played with wider skips and crossing strings. Each new rhythm is introduced as a Rhythm Rap, which can be shadow bowed, then played on an open string, and finally placed in an appropriate melodic setting.
- The right hand is thoroughly and sequentially developed through a series of seven Bow Builders. Each one defines a specific action required to produce an acceptable bow hand.
- Only one new concept is introduced at a time. The pacing encourages student mastery without excessive repetition. You can move from line to line quickly within each class. Students master quarter notes, then move to eighth, half, dotted-half, and whole notes.
- New concepts are presented in familiar keys and rhythms. These skills are integrated in shaded sections called Skill Builders to combine rhythms, pitches and bowings into comprehensive exercises to develop solid technique.
- It's all right in each student book, correlated with the music and concepts they are currently learning. This is by far the most efficient way to meet the National Standards, integrate other subjects into the music curriculum, and still teach the essentials of music performance.
- A variety of rounds, duets and orchestra arrangements (11) are included. These can be used independently throughout the year, or combined for a pre-planned concert.
- Accurate illustrations help develop proper playing position
- Listening Skills for each new note for accurate intonation
- Subdivision introduced from the beginning
- Assessment for immediate evaluation of students' skills
- Large, clear Fingering Charts
- Special page devoted solely to mixing Finger Patterns
- Solo with piano accompaniment for each instrument