Our Teacher Training in Eclectic Styles is the first in the world!

Julie Lyonn Lieberman started the eclectic styles teacher training three summers ago to help prepare string teachers for 21st music education.
It is widely understood at this junction in history that our string students must learn about the music that 95% of the world listens to, plays, and performs in addition to Western European classical music. Most string teachers did not have an opportunity to train in American vernacular and world styles. Strings Without Boundaries can give you that opportunity in a safe, comfortable setting.

The Eclectic Styles Teacher Training Program will provide you with new right- and left-hand techniques, the necessary skills to teach improvisation and composition, and an overview of American and world styles. Sessions will include American fiddle styles with Jan Farrar Royce and jazz styles with Martin Norgaard. Download your free Alternative Styles Teacher Manual!

• Teachers may elect to take any one, two, or all three of these courses

• Teachers will receive a certificate of accomplishment in each course specifying the material covered.

• Graduate and continuing ed. credits are available for teachers who participate in these sessions. For more information, email Chris Bromley. 

Course offerings:

DEVELOPING AN ECLECTIC STYLES Curriculum

taught by Julie Lyonn Lieberman
(3 hours each day)

This comprehensive five-day course will be coordinated with the text, “Alternative Strings: The New Curriculum” and provide educators with the tools they need to include alternative string styles in their classroom curriculum.

 

Topics include:

• Getting Started: Choosing Styles for your Students, Creating a Lesson Plan

• Choosing Repertoire: American, World

• Essential Left- and Right-Hand Techniques

• Rhythm: Fundamental Skills and Grooves

• Improvisation: Structural and Harmonic Building Blocks that draw on the musical imagination of the world

• Audio Support and Equipment

• Amplification: nuts and bolts

• Community Support How to generate it

• Getting the most out of an Eclectic Styles Guest Clinician 

Click here to download Julie's Teacher Training Manual from her website

Jazz Teacher Training
taught by Martin Norgaard
(1 1/2 hours each day)

Improvisation is the ideal activity for introducing creative thinking into the music performance classroom. Norgaard will cover improvisation exercises designed for elementary through high-school string students. Through careful sequencing Norgaard has developed a method that will have both you and your students improvising with confidence. The course is based on Norgaard’s book series Jazz Wizard Junior.
 

Fiddling Teacher Training
taught by Janet Farrar-Royce
(1 1/2 hours each day)

Janet Farrar-Royce brings a wealth of experience gained from years of teaching fiddling in her own public school classrooms. She has recently been signed on as a Lecturer for the Yale Teacher
Training Program. In fact, she is the whole Music Education division! She’ll share tunes, ideas, fiddling expertise, lesson plans, research and teaching techniques from her own teaching experiences and from her books which include "Fiddling Fingers" and  "The American Fiddle Method"

• Why teach fiddling and how to incorporate it into your curriculum (studio or classroom)

• Teaching “The Fiddler’s Way” from Lesson #1! 

• Teaching improvisation in little steps that can be incorporated into what you are already doing.

• Incorporating fiddling into the existing string curriculum in a manner that meets the National Standards, including tools for monitoring and assessment.  

• Finding and choosing tunes that include musical lessons and historical value.

• Learn tunes, left and right hand fiddling techniques and back-up and harmony methods for from a wide range of  American fiddling traditions, including Scottish, Irish, English, New England, Cape Breton, Franco-American, Quebecois, Texas, Southern and Old-Timey

• Adapting fiddle tunes for viola, ’cello & bass. 

• Including Special Education students in your fiddling lessons and clubs.

• Teaching your students how to write a simple bass line.

• Teaching your students how to create their own string band arrangements for performance.

• Connecting with the families of your students and your community with a Fiddle Club

• Running a dance that everyone can enjoy (even you!)

• Reasonable ways to continue your own education in Alternative Styles performing, especially as it relates to fiddling

Back to previous page