Tim Rohwer: Composer

To give my students a fun song to practice over holiday break, I put together a little "Garage Band" made accompaniment to the song Jingle Bells.  Anyone interested can feel free to download the mp3's of these.  Here are some different versions: Slow Moderate Fast Also, here is the PDF of the song for download: Jingle Bells My hope is to start taking some of these simple public domain songs and putting them online for students and anyone wanting to play violin to utilize.  More with this as I start to update my blog. New things to come soon: -Composition Class updates -A New Original Composition for a Local High School Orchestra -New "Bag of Tricks" Teaching ideas

I've recently been debating with myself what defines the best teachers and the most successful teachers.  While I have been an a quest to get better as a music teacher, I keep seeing much success with my current studio.  I'm grateful for the job and for the number of students I've had, and I appreciate earning the income for my family.  I also find myself confused at the success, as I know that the other violin teachers have more experience and better credentials.  Not to say that the other teachers aren't successful, but I have been confused about the great success that I have had despite the lack that I have in some areas. Thinking about this, I came to realize that I love what I do.  I love music, I love playing, and I love the students that came in.  I get excited about teaching different ideas and concepts and about playing music.  When we talk about music, I'll often be saying things like:  "Mozart is awesome!" or "Isn't shifting so cool!...

In the midst of starting to get lots of students again, and taking care of young kids, and general life craziness, I've managed to get a few of the videos for the 14 week music theory course.  Two of the first week videos are now finished, and a couple more should be done pretty soon.  Here is the 1st video: The example videos are in the comments for this video.  Some more videos to come soon will be more about the structure of the class generally, but then we'll start delving into more of the theory elements, and about the composition assignments that will help understand the theory that we talk about. The goal of the course is to be able to write some simple songs with harmony, so if you're interested in writing, follow along with the videos, and let me know what you come up with.  Also, let me know any thoughts you have on this video and any others we post, as this is going to be a completely new course and curriculum.  :)

I've been working at the Utah Conservatory to put together a music theory class that is designed to help kids use theory right away in making compositions.  More updates on this as they come along, but part of my intention is to make many of the resources available online for the students to use.  My goal is to start anyone out with note reading and build up from their so that anyone who has sang or played an instrument can start to learn the theory that will allow them to write some basic and simple songs.  It's a lofty goal, and I think it is one that will help me refine the class structure. More updates on this class as they come.

One of my professors (Dr. Ted Ashton) used to refer to ways to teach concepts as your "bag of tricks."  As you would teach more, you would continue to develop this "bag of tricks" so that in many different situations you would be able to teach lots of concepts in many different ways.  In addition to coming up with your own bag of tricks, it can be really useful to find out the ways other teachers teach the same concepts.  This especially useful since students will all think in a variety of ways, and it may be that the way one teacher teaches a concept is easier for one student to understand than the way you teach it. I'd like to start sharing some of my "bag of tricks," as I've begun to find some very effective ways of teaching certain concepts.  Today I wanted to focus on some approaches I've had to teaching scales to beginning students.  Some of this may take longer than a lesson to discuss with a student, and I find that sometimes we have...

A couple years back I did a string trio arrangement of "Come, Come Ye Saints" for a musical presentation for our church.  Since Pioneer Day is coming up this weekend, I thought it would be appropriate to put together a recording of this arrangement on various websites.  Here is the youtube and soundcloud versions of these recordings.  I'll also be updating the blog to have these recordings available for streaming and download sometime soon. My goal when writing this arrangement was to make it simple and still beautiful.  Each verse has a different feel to it to help create some variety throughout.  I've also spread things around in the arrangement so that each instrument has at least one time they get to play the melody. Here is the link to download and print the parts for this arrangement:   Violin and Viola Arrangements Happy Pioneer Day everyone! :)

Recently, I've been hoping to start doing more recording work.  I realized a great way to do this, both to help myself in understanding the recording and mixing process and to help me create a nice final product would be to record some of the hymns.  I wanted to put these out in many different venues, so my plan is to put the recordings I do on youtube, soundcloud, and some other sites to help get my recordings listened to. I'm also hoping to help those who might be hoping to find some uplifting music to listen to, and to generally start getting the music I play listened to.  Let me know if you want any other specific hymns or other songs.  Thanks, and enjoy!

I have been putting together some arrangements for my students in the Summer, and for the orchestra class I've put together a string quartet arrangement of The Infernal Galop, commonly known as the Can-Can, by Offenbach.  All of the parts are put together, and we should be playing it for summer time.  I also put together a recording of it so that my students can have something that they can listen to in preparation, and here it is: The Infernal Galop (Can-Can) by Jacques Offenbach As I put together more arrangements I hope to keep putting recordings and eventually make the parts and scores available to by for any string teachers who might be interested.  Other arrangements soon to be put up here: Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Garland Waltz, also by Tchaikovsky (I have a student who loves Tchaikovsky) I also put together a violin solo with piano accompaniment of the Garland Waltz that is a little longer than the string quartet arrang...

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...

I recently started teaching an orchestra class, and I put together an arrangement of Vivaldi's Spring (1st Movement) from The Four Seasons.  It was very successful, and the kids in the class did a great job with it.  I decided to get it recorded, and so recorded myself performing each of the parts, mixed them all together and got the following result: Spring 1st Movement for Beginning String Orchestra This is also one of my first forays into recording.  I did some recording with a friend in college and for a music technology class, but going through the whole process myself was a good experience. Soon, I am hoping to edit the parts and make this arrangement available for purchase, as well as some  others that I have been doing for my class.

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...

After taking a break from writing (both new compositions and for the blog) to focus on teaching a large group of students, my schedule should hopefully get to a point where I can start to add both to the articles here and also finish up and create new compositions.  I'm hoping to also start sharing some insights from teaching, and some of the resources I've been creating for my students. If all goes well, here are some things soon to come: -An article on a principle I'm calling the "patience threshold." -Arrangements for orchestra groups of some classical pieces -More sight reading exercises -More progress on previous compositions -New Warm-Up compositions exercises