I am designing a finger guide for the violin for my daughter who just turned four and is just starting formal lessons. She has been using Little Musician with great success since the Beta version came out. I am trying to use the colors and solfege that little musician program is using so that she does not get confused. I am going to cut out the finger guide, laminate it, and use tape to keep it on the violin. I am attaching two files the first shows how the notes correspond to the staff and the second shows several different versions of the finger guide scaled down to a 1/16 size violin. The last version has tabs to tape behind the neck of the violin. I haven’t chosen which version I will actually use because I still think it needs a little work. I have already cut it out and fit one on her violin, it fits perfect but I have no training in music so I am not sure if it is correct, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Can anyone who plays the violin help me out? My daughter can sing many of the nursery rhymes in solfege. She has the bow hand and stance ok and she knows the letter names and solfege names of the strings. But she is frustrated because she wants to be able to play the songs on the violin. Since she can remember the songs in solfege but not in letter names(she can’t sight read unless I color code the notes) I am trying to make this finger guide so she can remember where to place her fingers for the correct note. Any help at all would be greatly appreciated.
Also, if this actually works, is there going to be a Little Musician Library so I can put it on the forum for other parents to print out?
Hi c4andy20!
I can play the piano but not violin, so I did not feel qualified to comment on your post. Let me print out your finger guide and show it to Ella’s violin teacher when we go for her next lesson on Saturday. Maybe she will be able to help.
Thank you so much.
When you print it, make sure that before you click [ok] on the print menu, under print scaling [none] is selected. Otherwise, most printers will automatically scale the page down to 95% or 96%.
My husband does play the violin he said he thinks its correct, but he is color blind and never learned solfege, so I felt like I needed others opinions before I go ahead with using this method on my daughter.
In regards to building up her sight reading skills, trying buying or making her a little (or big!) staff. I made one on the floor but you can use a white board, the fridge, or even poster board. It can be a simple or involved as you like. I considered using button magnets from walmart (50 for about $6) with little acrylic gems (rhinestones) glued on, glitter foam shapes, or small wooden cutouts from the craft shop. Maybe get her involved in this process of picking out supplies if you want to build your own. While watching LMs and playing with the staff, we use some key phrases to help us remember where things are on the Treble clef.
-Do Down Below / Down Below Do
-Re Snug like a bug (From Suzie’s Piano DVD)
-Mi is #1! (A cheer, Suzie too)
- Fa First Space
-So Second Line
-La ?
-Line Three Ti /Ti Line Three
- Do?
-Re?
-Mi-
-Fa is on the rooFFFFF. I hope he doesn’t FFFFFall…silly fa!
-So is up in space (both on a space and high, like up in the atmosphere, which would be above the roof)
Please feel free to contribute any that are missing or if you can think of anything better!
When you practice with the colors and talk about it when using LMs, you will find at some point you can hand her black notes and she will be able to place them anyway. The colors help with PP associations and it makes everything more fun and differentiated as they are beginning to learn. I think it is very satisfying for a child to see them so pretty all lined up in a rainbow on the staff. Another thing you can do is go to an online metronome website and set it a metronome to a slow-ish speed. If you have a floor staff or a board you can lay on the floor, get two very small hand held stuffed animals. In your animal voice say you are going on a walk on the staff and you really want your animal friend to come. Then, she can follow your animal “nose to nose” with yours (at least that is how we have done it with little dogs). It works best just doing line notes or spaces, or did for us anyway, chanting up and down the staff a new times in a session. If she is up to it, let her try and “lead” your animal. Hope that helps!
Wow TeachingMyToddlers, that’s a fantastic idea. I am going to try to make her a giant floor staff out of poster board. My kids are rough with things so I’m just trying to figure out how to laminate something so big. I am going to have to buy Suzie’s Piano Dvd, it sounds like something the kids would enjoy.
When we were using the beta version of LMs and they announced they were going to use rainbow colors, I made ping pong balls to match the colors. They were a BIG hit. My two little ones (almost 3 year old and just turned 4 year old) loved them so much. We use every time we do LMs. So I think they will love it too.
Now I am so excited because I have a new project to work on! :yes:
Nice balls! Did you prime them? Does the paint stick? Can’t damage much furniture with ping pong balls surely!
You can buy rolls of clear sticky contact plastic in most department and office supply stores. Kids use it to cover school books, mums use it to make thin books last longer! lol It does a great job as a substitute laminate on very large items. Just ask for book covering contact if you cant find it. Do get a helper to do a large item and lay it on bit by bit, smoothing out any air bibles with a soft cloth. Also if you have a choice the more expensive one is usually thicker and easier to use.
Oh contact paper sounds great. I didn’t even think about that.
Yeah I had to prime ping pong balls because they had a small logo and the paint sticks/covers better when you do. I would suggest priming them with spray paint. The first ones I did, I primed with acrylic and even though I watered it down a bit, they still ended up lumpy. The ones I primed with spray paint were nice and smooth. You will have to seal it with some sort of sealant. I used one from Plaid, it is an outdoor gloss sealer. Like I said my kids are rough on things and the ping pong balls have taken a really good beating and haven’t chipped or peeled. I bought acrylic paint from Walmart for less than $1 a bottle. The sealant I bought was $1.95 from Joann Crafts. I made 36 ping pong balls and did two coats and still have more than half a bottle of sealant.
Check out the “Perfect Pitch Videos” thread to see mine and the materials I used. It’s 20 feet long. lol But iIt can fit an ENTIRE LMs song on it, which was what I wanted and why it’s such a monstrosity, It’s been well worth the funny looks I am getting at the moment when people come to visit. 
I just uploaded some new youtube of Lily using it as well to plot out Twinkle Twinkle.
I recently came across this thread in my quest to build a soroban (which I have given up in favor of buying a teacher sized soroban, the beads are just too particular to source.) http://www.anythingpretty.com/2011/04/i-think-this-is-my-best-idea-ever.html on that page, she listed this website as a reputable place she got her materials. They also have wooden discs, I paid 29 cents each at AC Moore. I underestimated how many I would need initially and had to go back and buy more. Then I counted out the notes I would need for the songs my kids like the most and would want to place notes for first. http://www.craftparts.com/circles-wood-discs-c-461.html
Charge a bit extra for time and trouble and I think you’ll have a lot of parents buying your colored balls, you could go into business. lol
Good Luck with your staff, post pictures when you’re done!
Yes i am having trouble finding appropriate discs to paint. I was aiming a bit smaller but so far all i can find is a special order for unpainted coasters. Too big for me. I might get unpainted buttons.
Yes someone could make some money selling these items.
Manda, what size are you looking for? I was at the craft store yesterday returning a bottle of yellow spray paint I didn’t need. While there, I saw a pack of 1.5 inch discs. They seem like they would be a great size, and a search turns up that they are very easy to source online on etsy. Do you need something even smaller? http://www.etsy.com/search_results.php?search_type=supplies&search_query=1.5+wood+discs
TMT those will be perfect! thank you so much! Heaps cheaper than any other option I found! Even with the $10 postage! How many discs did you make? How many would you recommend making? I am thinking better to have too many than not enough! Plus I will probably end up using them on a floor staff at preschool.
Although you can input other songs into LMs, most likely you will be using it for the standard ones right off the bat I am guessing. If I had to do it again, I would have enough to make ANY of the standard nursery rhymes in LMs, This will be easier if you know the songs by heart. :happy: But for example, to make Twinkle Twinkle-
Do Do
So So
La La
So
Fa Fa
Mi Mi
Re Re
Do
So So
Fa Fa
Mi Mi
Re
So So
Fa Fa
Mi Mi
Re
Do Do
So So
La La
So
Fa Fa
Mi Mi
Re Re
Do
Which comes out to 6 Do’s, 6 Re’s, 8 Mi’s, 8 Fa’s, 10 So’s, 4 La’s, 0 Ti’s. Now repeat with the rest of the songs. You will only be creating ONE song at a time (unless you have more than one kid doing it at the same time separately.). So if in another song you needed 10 Mi’s, you don’t need 8 for the first song and 10 for the second, but rather just 10 altogether. Makes sense? I sat in the store and counted out the notes in piles from memory, initially only buying enough for twinkle twinkle. But then the kids wanted to make Itsy Bitsy and ran out of notes, so I went back again, And then again for another song for some sharps/flats. You get the picture. So do yourself a favor and just figure it out as best you can in the first place. We had to make more do’s because itsy bitsy needs a lot of do’s and the muffin man and wheels on the bus both require a lot of fa’s.
Actually, I do have a background in violin, started when I was 5 years old with the Suzuki method. Just recently purchased the Little Musician per TmT’s recommendation (my kids love it!), intrigued with the idea that a child could develop perfect pitch. I have relative pitch, not perfect pitch, but never studied solfege or piano until I went to conservatory.
When I began learning the violin, I had strips of colored tape adhered across the fingerboard under the strings as a guide. So on the A string, open A, B, C#, D, E, for instance.
I looked up finger position guides for violin, found this on the internet:
http://www.fretlessfingerguides.com/
Never tried them before. They might be difficult to position on the violin (see review), but worth a look.
TMT, I was being lazy and hoping you had figured it out already! lol
Eschlem, does putting tape under the stings change the pitch at all? Putting tape under the parts of a flute is one way to tune a stubborn instrument, so I was wondering how much difference tape makes to a violin.
Perfect pitch is definately aquirable as an adult and as a child. Relative pitch is obviously easier for an adult but I no longer need to hear a DO in order to recognize a Mi or So. I can even pick out a couple of sharps and flats now but those might be relative, I havnt tested them individually yet. The kids are picking it up even faster than me, I sometimes get them wrong on LM and they just giggle at me and say the real note.
Mandabplus3,
I suppose unlike the flute, tape isn’t used to adjust pitch on a violin. So I would say changing pitch isn’t normally an argument against using tape on the fingerboard in the beginning stages.
One of the first steps of learning to play the violin is mainly kinesthetic, I believe. The tapes are like “training wheels” for the beginner student to learn how to place the hands, where to put the fingers. Once the student has memorized finger placement and has solidified the hand frame, the tapes come off.
My very first violin was made out of a margarine box with a ruler attached to it with masking tape and a dowel for a bow, to practice stance and how to hold the violin and bow.
There were also tape markers on the bow, half bow for shorter notes, whole bow for longer notes.
I listened to the Suzuki pieces on recordings and then played them by ear, with the markers as guides.
As a mature musician, I later “rediscovered” that really the best way to improve my intonation was to record myself playing scales, lots and lots of scales. That sort of practice really provided a solid foundation for learning performance pieces.
As far as perfect pitch is concerned, I can memorize a pitch and hunt around from there, but absolute pitch seems pretty unattainable for
me as an adult. I agree that it may be possible for children to attain it, however. My kids have already amazed me when learning how to read at the age of 1 (thanks to Dr. Titzer, Little Reader, and don’t forget DadDude’s Fleschcards), so who knows what else they are capable of if I start early enough?
Google " note read with shapes and colors on the violin" for the suzuki book 1 song " go tell aunt rhody" if you want to check out my idea for teaching violin
I have been teaching violin for 41 years. I have taken some Suzuki training and using Suzuki books as well as my own books. I have designed and written my own Color-Shape method. I have written one book for Violin and 4 books for Piano using the same method. There are 5 colors which correspond to the five fingers. On Violin, the THUMB = PINK, the INDEX finger = BLUE, the Middle finger = GREEN, the Ring Finger = RED and the little finger = ORANGE. On the right hand for piano, the colors go in the same direction. The little finger = PINK and the RING finger = BLUE, the Middle finger = GREEN, the Index finger = RED and the THUMB = ORange. Each color is represented by a shape and the books are printed in black and white and then colored by the children. The shapes are PINK = STAR, BLUE = SQUARE , GREEN is a WEDGIE (or GREEN EGGS on PIANO) , RED = Triangle and Orange = a Diamond. The children color their songs. For more information my website is mapleleafmusicschool dot com. Many songs which are easy to sing are very hard to play on the violin because of the bowing and the fingering. Also on Youtube, check out Cassandra playing the “Train Express Song”. It takes the child often 2-3 months to hold the violin nicely and to bow correctly, even before using the left hand fingers. If any questions, just email me through the form on my website.
Tape isn`t used to adjust violin pitch. However, once each open string note is adjusted to the correct pitch for notes G, D, A, and E for the violin, the tapes on the fingerboards should naturally be in tune as a result of the open strings being at the correct pitch… the violin pegs are used to adjust the pitch of each open string note on the violin. Typically tuned using the piano. Turning the peg toward you lowers the pitch and turning the peg away makes the pitch higher
I have been teaching violin for 41 years. I tune the violin to standard tuning, G,D,A,E. However, the beginner uses only the E String and the A string. I use only 3 colored stripes which I place under the strings. You must understand that most violin teachers use only certain keys at first. The child usually spends some months on the \keys of A Major and D Major. After the child can play well in these keys, the next key to add is G major. Other keys are avoided the first year.
On the A String, Do = PINK for open A, Re = BLUE for note B, Mi = GREEN for Not C Sharp, and Fa = RED for the NOTE D.
The E String is the same- SOL = PINK = NOTE E, FA = BLUE = NOTE F Sharp, LA = GREEN and is NOTE G sharp, High DO is RED and is NOTE A
Notes such as C natural, F natural, B flat are avoided for the beginning months, maybe even the first year. And the Note B flat is definitely avoided, usually for the first 2 years. Besides this the violin MUSSuzuki Violin T be very small, the LEFT arm must make a Bit VEE shape and not be at all straight. My granddaughter started out with a 1/32 size. I also own violins in 1/`16 and 1/10 sizes which I RENT to my students. I highly recommend the book called “They’re rarely too young and never too old to twinkle” by Kay Collier Slone, published by SHAR Publications. In teaching Suzuki, the student learns by rote, and by listening. Their are also many clips on Youtube, if you type in Pretwinkle: Suzuki Violin Class – This is by teacher Eric Davenport. All the best, Skippy