Pro Tools HD as violin lessons teaching tool?
There’s an easy way to get more mileage out of your own violin lessons, or to add punch and effectiveness to your own instruction if you teach violin lessons: record your performance, or your student’s playing, and then review it together. It was absolutely eye-opening for me to review my recorded practice sessions and individual passages – the sounds I thought I was making with the instrument while I was playing weren’t close to what was actually happening! I had all kinds of tempo problems, and my playing was riddled with accidental notes.
While it was a little disconcerting at first, ultimately it was the absolute best teaching tool for me. It taught me how to listen while I played, instead of just cranking away and hoping it was all fitting together somehow. It sounds obvious (and maybe it is), but listening to my own recorded playing really improved my skills by leaps and bounds. I was able to get out of my own little bubble and really get in sync with the rest of the song, and make adjustments nearly automatically to variations in other musicians’ tempo, intonation, etc.
If you have already caught the bug of songwriting and recording, you probably already have a favorite music recording software suite. It’s not entirely common in the violin community to record music though, so I’ll list a few tools to help you improve your violin lessons (either as the student or the teacher).
- Garage Band by Apple. It comes standard with all Macs, and it’s super simple to use. Also a Windows version if you’re not yet a Mac convert.
- Logic Express (also by Apple). An extremely powerful step up from Garage Band, with enough functionality to record and produce a very solid album.
- Logic Pro. The next step up in Apple’s lineup. Everything you could want, and then some, with some exceptional surround sound features.
- Pro Tools HD from Digidesign. This requires some special computer hardware, and some audio interface hardware to get your violin’s notes onto a recording. For the serious musician, but also a very capable teaching method.
There you have it – the best way to improve your playing is by listening to yourself play, and there is a wide variety of tools available to help you do that. Now go play!