This a video of  Pittsburgh musicians performing a string trio version of “When You Wish Upon a Star” at a Birthday Party in Beaver, PA. 

Being a dog owner myself I could not help but to take this photo during one of the weddings we played at. Yes, the dog IS the ring bearer, and a very well behaved one from what I saw!

This time our musicians played here not for a wedding ceremony but  for a three hour surprise birthday party! It was a very refreshing experience for us, since most of our jobs in the summer are weddings.  The hosts were amazing, absolutely loved our music, made the three hours of playing fly by.. it was fun! 

This is an issue that affects musicians and guests while playing for outdoor wedding ceremonies.  It might also help to decide how long the musicians should be playing for during the wedding prelude and postlude. 

Although musicians usually have overhead protection for outdoor weddings, most of the time wedding guests do not have such luxury; chairs for them are lined up at the ceremony site, possibly ending up in the hot, afternoon sun, resulting in a situation where most guests sit down for the ceremony just minutes before it starts.  In many cases there is either an outdoor large tent or a building near by where everyone gathers prior to the ceremony, avoiding the sun.

Many brides hire musicians to play twenty to thirty minutes of prelude music before the ceremony to entertain the waiting guests. In this case – this  can be a waste of money, since there are no guests at the site of the ceremony due to the hot weather.

It not that we mind playing outdoors, but the fact is: wedding guests cannot hear us.  Acoustical instruments’ sounds do not travel far in outdoors; we end up entertaining the nature around us!  The same applies to postlude music – guests usually retreat to cool areas immediately following the wedding ceremony, and once again, it us and and nature playing along.

For some weddings clients request us to move inside or in the shaded areas where guests are gathered for the prelude or postlude, hence making our music heard.

If it not the case for your wedding – I would strongly suggest having a very short prelude and postlude, and putting that extra saved money towards a honeymoon!

A very beautiful setting for outdoor wedding ceremonies with a pond as a background with plenty of nature around for wedding photos.  By coincidence, a good number of our Pittsburgh musicians live five to ten minutes away from South Park, putting traveling fees at zero for our clients.  The only “negative” is a nest of birds inside the gazebo that were very attentive during the wedding ceremony and accompanied the musicians during the processional music!

Another issue to consider in selecting wedding music for a wedding party’s processional is the number of people involved in it plus the distance they will be walking to the site of the ceremony.  Mostly, the issue is the walking distance.  Our musicians have played at weddings where the wedding party had to walk a fairly long aisle distance, and the piece for their processional music that was chosen by the bride was a short one.  In such situation musicians usually repeat the piece as many times as needed until the processional comes to conclusion.  

Personally, I would suggest selecting a longer wedding processional piece if your bridal party is more than four people.  

The same can be said for a bride’s processional music choice: a wedding piece that will be long enough for the entire bride’s walk without a need to repeat it.  For that reason Pachelbel’s Canon in D became a favorite for many brides and bridal parties. It is pretty, sounds fantastic with three or four instruments, well known and long enough to be played without repeats for long processionals.

Our string trio musicians played here for a jewish wedding ceremony.  As well as our musicians know Pittsburgh and its most popular places for weddings, this Temple was pretty tricky to find.  It is located in Monroeville area on the Northern Pike.  The main sign is somewhat obsured by the vegetation around it, and is not facing the road where it can be seen easily as you drive by.  We spoke to several wedding guests who had the same issue with finding the temple.  As a rule, we try to be at the site of the ceremony at least thirty minutes prior to the start of it, especially if we need to discuss issues with the officiant, bride, etc.  In this case, we could not get in the building until 2:05 and the ceremony’s start was scheduled for 2:30. When the musicians arrrived to the Temple – the doors were locked, and even guests were questioning the locked doors. Some had to sit in their cars with a/c running since it was a pretty hot day.

Whenever a parent of a young child contact me for private violin or viola lessons, their fist question is “Is my child too young to start a violin?”.  It has been an overall opinion among music professionals that if anything, music programs in public schools introduce instruments too late, and are non – existent in private schools as a rule due to lack of financial funds and mostly, lack of understanding of benefits that playing instruments brings.  

The concept of playing instruments is very similar to learning languages:  the earlier – the better.  Children who are bilingual (or more) were introduced to more than one language very early in their lives, hence becoming fluent and proficient in more than one. Children who start playing instruments prior to attending school have gained significant skills on the instrument by the time they reach third or fourth grade – the average age when string and band programs are introduced in most schools.  

From my experience as a private teacher, when a child starts violin lessons at around age five, by the third grade his/her level of playing usually equals to a sixth-seventh grade student who started playing in a public school in third or fourth grade without taking private lessons. 

An additional benefit to starting music lesson prior to attending school – a child has an opportunity to establish such concepts as discipline, work ethics, dedication, patience, and homework assignments.  Children who study instruments before attending school have no issues with getting used to homework and deadlines, they are already used to doing so on their instrument.  Throughout my years as a private teacher I have seen how children react differently to attending school. The big difference between those who are studying an instrument verses children who at times are “shocked” by attending school, following rules, etc. 

My personal guidelines for a “starting” age on violin lessons? A  child must know the first seven letters of the alphabet, and have an established conceptual thinking on lines and spaces.  These are usually established by the age of four, five at the latest.   The rest is gained with practice and dedication from all three parties involved, teacher, student and parents. 

 In my teaching of violin and viola private lessons, I keep returning to the theme of “how to practice” verses how long to practice.  It is a most commonly asked questions by parents of music students.  During private lessons, I spend a good amount of time on teaching young musicians how to approach studying a piece of music, how to learn it in a most efficient manner while still enjoying it, so practicing does not become an exercise in boredom and frustration; how to focus the energy not on the amount of time spent with an instrument, but on the quality of time spent while playing it. 

In particular, I stress a concept of analyzing a piece of music even prior to playing it for the first time.  Time that should be spend away from the instrument and devoted to studying that piece with a pencil in hand; identifying challenging music passages, notes and places in music that might be difficult to tackle based on the knowledge of your own music skills.  It is just as important to do the above process as it is actually playing the instrument.  By analyzing music prior to playing it a student will learn it in a much shorter time, since he/she has already identified and marked difficult places in music that would need more focus.  A piece of music is like a puzzle: some pieces fit easily together, the ones that are obvious, the others – are much harder to fit.  No piece of music is ALL hard – which makes it useless to practice the entire piece from start to finish at once. Identify/isolate problem spots and focus on those for a few days. Later, “piece” them together with the rest of the music and you will have a final product well learned. 

Whether it is a music piece, a math problem or any other challenge – mental analysis of the problem prior to execution of the solution is a key.  This approach will make learning easier, more efficient, hence faster and will provide a confidence booster when a student realizes that he/she is capable of surmounting any challenge. The inner knowledge “I can learn anything” will motivate a child’s desire to learn more on many different subjects, expanding his/her horizon and enjoying life in the process of learning. 

I have had many parents commenting that their children have taken analytical approach from music lessons and applied to school studies.  It worked wonders to many of them, students as young as six and seven year old.  Bottom line – children need to be taught  how  to learn, learning is not a natural skill but has to be obtain via others.

Below are photos of music that show how some of my students go about studying their pieces by marking challenging notes, measures, etc… That time DOES count as practicing, in case if you were wondering…

At times it is fun even for older music students to put aside their instruments and, in this case, brainstorm over a seemingly easy nine piece music-themed puzzle.  These two viola players tried as a team for three weeks to solve it…