The Importance of the Thumbs in Violin Performance : A Study in Exercise Classes focusing on Students without Violin Experience

[出版社版]This paper discusses the class results of String Instrument Exercises, a one-credit one-semester course that was taught in the second semester of the 2012 school year. For the past several years, we have advanced research concerning the effectiveness of the song collection New Tunes for Strings (Book 1) (by Stanley Fletcher) as an ensemble text for the introductory period. This time, we focused on the functions of the thumbs of both hands, which are important for violin performance. There was no major difference in the implementation content between this school year and previous school years in terms of instruction procedure and selection of teaching materials. In the 2012 school year, 24 students were taking the course. Among them, four had experience (one or more years of prior learning experience) with the violin. Our perennial challenge is to successfully teach courses that are both effective and efficient for teaching students without violin experience within the limited time of only 15 class meetings. However, now that, based on our experience, we have fixed the textbook songs and can approximate the abilities of students without violin experience, we have come to believe that we should set aside sufficient study time for learning the true essence of the violin as a bowed string instrument. The more complex the technique, the lower the possibility of achieving quick results. We introduced learning content to make students aware of the function of the thumbs into the curriculum, being fully aware of the fact that they would be having difficulties. The action of the right thumb affects bowing quality. Even slight functioning by the thumb will lead to variations in articulation. As for the left thumb, if one can combine the role of supporting the instrument with the role of controlling precise pitch in specific positions, the half shift becomes possible, and learning of so-called position shifts would gain momentum. Bow movement in the right hand that is rich in flexibility, along with beautiful left-handed form in wrapping the neck, can be achieved. Support from the left and right thumbs enables one to change tone color and increase range. In our investigations, we look back at the class notes and video footage from all 15 classes, as well as the analysis of the results from the course questionnaire surveys. This is a corrected and revised paper based on the contents of the research presentation on October 13 at the 44th Annual Conference of the Japan Music Education Society in Hirosaki