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In these very first episodes of the Violin Geek Podcast you'll learn to train your ears for excellent intonation on your violin or viola. String teacher Laurel Thomsen helps you tune the nine basic finger patterns found in all our major and minor scales ...
Athletes have long used visualization to improve performance. Now you can too! In this episode of the Violin Geek Podcast we use a visualization technique to imagine the excellent musician in you! Come gain the inner resources you need to achieve success. ...
Not all listening is conscious, or honest! And sometimes we imagine that we sound worse or better then we do. In this episode of the Violin Geek Podcast learn how developing a solid connection between what we think we sound like and what we actually ...
If you’re a string player, have you ever thought about left and right side independence? Perhaps not. The violin family instruments require such asymmetrical positions and motions, I suspect that many string players have never considered how interconnected ...
This Renaissance carol, “Riu Riu Chiu”, has been going around in my head for weeks! I recorded this version today on Garage Band, uploaded it to YouTube (my first time!!), and wanted to share it with everyone in honor of California's Spanish heritage. ...
My partner and I have a friend who jokes about the fact that we never have anything but very specialized magazines lying around. Next to the piles of Strings Magazine and The Strad, my non-specialized reads are as specialized as Yoga Journal, VegeLife, ...
As we all know, music lesson regularity and continuity are essential to progress. In an effort to decrease cancellations with current students, and to provide instruction to students in rural areas and foreign countries without access to good teachers ...
Please email me at laurel@laurelthomsen.com if you have a violin, viola, fiddle, music biz, or practice related question you’d like answered in the blog or on a podcast, have a story or insight to share, or if you’d like to inquire about violin, viola, or fiddle lessons with me, in-person or online via Skype, FaceTime, or Zoom.
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