From sheet music of arrangements and original compositions to music education resources for string players and composers, this blog is a collection of resources for musicians, teachers, and students alike.
Tim Rohwer's Arrangements and Compositions on YouTube
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Yay!! New content on my blog! There is now a list of compositions, one containing a link to the 1st movement of my string quartet on YouTube. (Hey, look at that, there's even a link in this post).
I recently took another job as an orchestra teacher. Seeing how much people have liked the harmonic exercise minor version of "Mary Had a Little Lamb" from a few years back, and knowing that my beginning orchestra would have a limited playing range, I decided to take the minor version of "Mary Had a Little Lamb" and orchestrate it for a beginning orchestra and a more advanced orchestra. To do this, I placed the main melody in an "A" part for Violin, Viola, and Cello. I then added harmony parts, Violin Part B, Viola and Violin Part C, Cello D, and Bass E. To have this become a more "official" piece, I expanded out the structure of the piece so that it would be an ABA structure for the section. Beyond that, I added two other movements using children's songs as the overall theme for a suite of songs, which I have called "Scary Bedtime Songs." The first movement is Scary Mary, the 2nd is Zombie John (taking inspiration from Gus...
For those who are not as familiar with violin repertoire, there is a book of etudes for beginners written by Franz Wohlfahrt. These are quite famous in the string world, although some students might consider them infamous. I had been resistant to use them when I first started teaching since most students I assigned them to wouldn't practice them anyways. I have recently started to be more insistent that they spend time with them, to the point where we may spend half a lesson on just a Wohlfahrt etude. A colleague of mine who teaches piano has a similar set of etudes that he uses, and which many students may peg in the "infamous" category: the Hanon book (etudes by Charles-Louise Hanon). As I mentioned in the discussion on acquiring new skills and my Skill Acquisition Hierarchy , technique - the "how you do it" of any skill - is the foundation you build upon before you can become a true artist or even just get better at anything. Since this is the c...
I've recently been using a technique for teaching whole steps and half-steps with my students that I feel has been pretty effective, and I wanted to share what I do. I mention this to my violin students after they have been playing for a little while. I have students start with a simple tetrachord pattern (what I call the mini scale) on just one string, and from there we progress to a D major scale on the D and A strings. When they are starting to play on more than their D and A string, I introduce them to the fact that they can do a bigger scale on their whole instrument. At this point, I mention half steps and whole steps. I start by having students listen to the difference between half-steps and whole steps. I currently have a piano in my teaching studio, and so I'll play them the a half-step lower down on the piano, and tell them how it is like the "Jaws" theme. I then show them the contrasting sound of a whole step and mention how in music we ha...
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