Good things are better when shared! Playing music together creates connection and builds social skills.

Students are motivated by their peers. When they see other children succeed it makes them believe they can do it as well. The amount of solo practice required for success can make achieving excellence on the violin a lonely road. With support from peers in group lessons students will remain committed to their practice goals.

Children in group lessons develop ensemble playing skills from the very beginning, learning how to synchronize their music making with others from the first lesson. Students develop performance skills in a low-consequence environment as they play in front of their peers every week.

Through group lessons students and parents share in the joys and frustrations of learning to play the violin.

There will be 4-6 children in each class.

A practice partner is an adult who will attend lessons with the child and practice with their student at home. During the classes the practice partner will be an engaged and active participant learning alongside their child. Practice partners will take notes and cellphone videos to insure that home practice is accurate to what was taught in the lessons. At home the practice partner acts at the “home teacher” reviewing with the student what was learned during the lesson. Practice partners are most often parents but can be any adult who can attend lessons and practice with the child each day.

The Suzuki method is a way of teaching the violin developed by Dr. Shinichi Suzuki. This method begins with the idea that musical ability is something that can be nurtured in every child. Through the mother-tongue approach students learn musical vocabulary and violin technique by listening and imitating before musical notation is introduced.

The class will mostly follow Suzuki principals, however we will play repertoire from outside the Suzuki books and will start note-reading earlier than many Suzuki classes.

Contact me by email at egcampbell@ucdavis.edu to register for group classes.