Stradivari Violin 1–4

STRADIVARI is a three-volume collection that is the result of a personal challenge: to get my students to play the viola more motivated, without giving up a complete training of the instrument. My intention has been to put in the hands of the student and the teacher all the elements that I believe they need to achieve this.

The three volumes cover the entire elementary grade and are organised according to the fingering schemes so widely used in Anglo-Saxon methods; starting with 0-1-23-4 in the first volume, followed in the second with 0-12-3-4 and 0-1-2-34, and in the third volume with 01-2-34 and 01-2-3-4. In this way the student learns the whole chromatic scale in first position. In the third volume, work is also done in the third position. The fourth volume introduces the concepts of the professional level.

I have tried to sequence the difficulties in a very gradual way; from rhythms, notes, dynamics and harmonics to double strings, changes of position and three-note chords, trying to combine different keys, time signatures and accidentals so that the learning process is complete. At the beginning of each volume there is a summary of the most commonly used scales and arpeggios, with exercises in bow strokes and slurs.

One of the great attractions of the book, in my opinion, is the variety of musical styles it contains, which already motivates the student and gets him used to playing different types of music. The accompaniments are recorded on the CD that accompanies each of the books, and range from modern to classical styles with very different instrumentation. Apart from jazz, tango, Celtic or country music, there are also some more "serious" pieces, such as the etudes (two in each book) or the concertinos (one in each book), which serve as a summary of all the technique worked on.