The ABCs of Violin for the Absolute Beginner: Violin, Book 1 | Janice Tucker Rhoda

The ABCs of Violin for the Absolute Beginner: Violin, Book 1 | Janice Tucker Rhoda | Written for beginner musicians by a natural musician

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The ABCs of Violin...

	The ABCs of Violin for the Absolute Beginner: Violin, Book 1 Janice Tucker Rhoda Carl Fischer Music, 1998 - 48 pages average customer review:based on 64 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A very balanced syllabus with familiar pieces

I learned my basic violin skills through Suzuki's methods and this ABCs series. Compared to Suzuki's, I think ABCs has a better arrangement in terms of difficulty of pieces. Before most of the pieces, you'd find a few "warm ups" exercises that allow the player to gain more control and confidence of the hard parts in the pieces. On top of that, I also enjoy the scores; there are about 20 popular pieces, plus another dozen of pieces composed by J. Rhoda that target the specific skills being covered. I really enjoyed them.

One more aspect I was especially happy to see is the early emphasis of using the 4th finger, which is not common in other violin teaching materials. For adult learners, I'd consider the 4th finger one of the major challenges and would love to know and perfect this technique as early as possible. This book does an excellent job on this.

I'd also like to advise new adult learners to seriously consider getting a teacher or at least a few group classes. So far, I have yet found a violin book that can enable a student to play nicely without the presence of a teacher. There are subtle things about playing violin that cannot really be conveyed on paper, at least I'd believe so.

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Written for beginner musicians by a natural musician

I love this book, I'm new to the violin and I loved it. It is truly for the beginner, [to the violin] but I understand how some people can get confused. This book is brilliant at instructing someone how to learn the violin, but it's written by someone with a musical inclination, and being read by some people who don't. If you have no idea how to read music, I suggest you purchase a supplemental music theory book. If you don't know how to hold a violin merely from looking at it, I don't know if you are the best candidate for playing one. Sorry, it's just the truth. Brilliant book though.

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Violin Book

The book makes the beginning steps of learning the violin amazingly easy, very easy to follow. Excellent!!!!

It is not book for absolute beginner, far from it

I myself recently started to study violin at ripe age of 37. I can see how this book may enhance my ability to play it. But, and this is big but, I took already 4 private lessons from professional violin teacher and I am still taking it, and not about to drop them very soon. You have to know how to hold bow, you should know how to place it correctly on strings, how to hold violin (different people hold it differently, but there's totally wrong way to hold it), you must know how to place your fingers on fingerboard, how to hold your palm under it. This book doesn't say anything about it. People you need teacher who can show you by example placing your elbow, fingers, in right position. This is not playing harmonica, or strumming easy chords on guitar, or even whistle on recorder (and I can play more or less on all those musical instruments). This is The VIOLIN. And this is not the book for absolute beginner. Let someone to show you how to start handle it correctly.

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A couple of drawbacks, but a very good choice

I purchased this book and the accompanying DVD based on the reviews I read here. The book has been extremely helpful in conjunction with the DVD, especially since after over 30 years of not playing, I am now back at the beginner level. I would like to emphasize that the DVD is almost a necessity to the book, your lessons will be much easier if you have both. Definitely with the investment.

I do have a couple of comments regarding the DVD.

Tuning:
The pitch pipe used on the DVD by Ms. Rhoda to tune the violin strings was not helpful to me at all. In fact, it was much, much more helpful to hear the sounds of the strings as they were being plucked and how the string should sound when tuned. You do not get that with the pitch pipe Ms. Rhoda used. It was impossible for me to tune using the sound of the pitch pipe and as a result, I had to replay (at least 7 times) the extremely short section where Ms. Rhoda is tuning the strings by plucking, to tune my violin properly. The emphasis for violin tuning should have been placed on hearing the strings (while plucking) as they are tuned, not just using a pitch pipe OR equal emphasis given to both.

Holding the Bow:
For me, in holding the bow, I found that if I held the bow hairs flat against the strings while playing, more often than not, I would play two strings at the same time (unintentionally). However, while watching the DVD, I noticed that Ms. Rhoda seemed to hold her bow so that the edge of the bow hairs were in contact with each string while playing, not the flat side. I tried it and I'm able to play one string at a time, which is what I wanted. I've also seen fiddlers/violinists play using the edge of the bow hairs, and it seems to work for me. However, this was not referenced on the DVD.

Overall, after reading reviews for some of the other beginning lesson books, I feel this was the best choice, but because of the above drawbacks to the DVD, I only gave it three stars.

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