Chicago Fiddle Camp has come and gone! Thanks to everyone who attended, and to the Chicago Waldorf School for hosting it. It felt good and we’d like to do it again next year…

This is another tune I got at MacPhail.

This is the newest piece that the 3rd Grade violins and violas are doing. It uses the infamous “Chicken on the Fencepost” rhythm, aka “Mississippi Stop Stop” or Suzuki’s Variation A of Twinkle Twinkle. The reason we do this rhythm so much at the beginning, is you are practicing making a good, controlled sound. It helps practice controlling the bow by playing short staccato notes and using a small ammount of bow…the opposite (i.e. long smooth bows using most of the bow length) is quite difficult, so starting with staccato is much more approachable and teaches good sound.

TREBLE CLEF

ALTO CLEF

BASS CLEF

Here is a simple arrangement we are currently playing in the 4th grade string class at the Chicago Waldorf School. We will be building on this, making it more complex, hence the “simple” designation in the title.

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The 3rd Grade at the Chicago Waldorf School is learning this tune.

I learned this tune when I was teaching classes at MacPhail Center for Music. I found a swing version on iTunes as well as some kid oriented recordings and a one from an album called “Ballads of the War of 1812.” Interesting. I may have to do more research on this tune, but the main point for us right now, is to practice using the first finger on the D string, alternating with no fingers on the D string. See the music below.

DOWNLOAD TREBLE CLEF

DOWNLOAD ALTO CLEF

DOWNLOAD BASS CLEF

You may need to control-click or right-click to download to your hard drive.

I use other rhythms, like Ivan Galamian’s, but this one separates the octaves by repeating the “home note.” It helps you be sure to know where each octave starts and ends, which helps you understand the scale better. Then you can break it up into octaves in your head. I also like how it sounds, because you are emphasizing the tonic so much.

If you don’t know the note names, memorizing the 5ths will help you learn the patterns.

All but one are “even” pairs (a term I made up) that contain no accidentals or all accidentals:

A-E
Ab-Eb

C-G
C#-G#

D-A
D#-A#

Eb-Bb
E-B

F-C
F#-C#

G-D
G#-D#

The “uneven” pair (with one accidental) is B to F.

Bb-F
B-F#

Visualizing where the 5ths are will help you “place” the other notes around them. For example, I’m practicing guitar trying to get a picture of the notes across the whole fingerboard in my head. With an unfamiliar scale, I can orient myself if I find the 1st and 5th notes of the scale.

A scale can be visualized as two sets of 4 notes. Each group of four is the same pattern — 1 2 3 4 with a half step between 3 and 4.