The Twelve-Key Challenge
We’ll move some really cool riffs through all twelve keys. You’ll learn how to harness your musical brain on a higher level of mastery. This will enable you to build skills like: how to lock new melodies into your memory faster; mastery over the basic intervals encountered in every piece of music you’ll ever play; how to move with lightning speed between half, first, and extended first positions; fingering options; how to bypass muscle memory in favor of auditory and analytical memory, and SO much more! Based on Julie’s book, Twelve-Key Practice: The Path to Mastery and Individuality.
Gypsy Jazz: Soup to Nuts
This class will introduce swing repertoire and techniques developed by Django Reinhardt and violinist Stephane Grappelli in France in the 1930s in the group, “The Quintette du Hot Club de France.” This uplifting swing style offers short, fun melodies with space for soloing that can often be boiled down to one five-note scale. Tunes will be organized and taught through specific practice approaches and skills.
Five Ways to Learn a Tune
Is it taking too long to learn a tune? Are you having trouble remembering tunes you thought you’d learned so well? Do you have to start at the beginning of the tune over and over again to remember the rest of it?
This session will illuminate the “muscles” of the musical brain and how to use them to lock in your tunes for life.
Blues Extravaganza
Violinists and vocalists invented the style we call “the blues.” Without the blues, we might not have Boogie Woogie, rock, pop, or possibly even swing! This style even influenced traditional Appalachian fiddling. We’ll explore techniques from the early blues fiddlers as well as the dynamic ingredients needed to jam over 12-bar blues. Let’s boost your Superpowers in this style.
The Chemistry of Nervousness
A negative performance experience can easily convert the joy of making and sharing music into a fearful, disappointing event. Julie will explain the role the two nervous systems play when left to their own devices. The good news is that there are specific steps you can take to harness your nerves and use them to create an even better performance!
Fear… How to Oust the Demon
Fear. What is it good for? Absolutely NOTHING! Yet it often runs our lives, sometimes hidden, yet other times, crippling. We were instilled with fear to protect us from predatory animals and dangerous situations. But most of us don’t encounter these conditions much—if at all—across our lives.
And for us musicians, fear can be crippling.
This session will explore the various conditions across our musical lives that push the fear button in us, how that affects our musicianship, and what we can do to change our gut reaction(s) to this debilitating emotion.
Playing Healthy: How to Avoid Injury and How to Heal Yourself
JULIE LYONN LIEBERMAN has presented Playing Healthy clinics throughout the United States as well as in Canada, Scotland, and France. Sites have included The Starling-Delay Symposium at Juilliard, National String Workshop, International String Workshop, Eastman Conservatory, Manhattan School of Music, The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, Berklee College of Music, the Royal Academy of Music, numerous colleges and universities, the European String Teachers Association, as well as for American String Teachers Associations’ and National Association for Music Educations’ state conferences, among others.
Ms. Lieberman IS the author of one of the first music medicine books in the world, You Are Your instrument (1991), now in its fifth edition and available as a digital book. She has also authored four spin-off DVDs: The Violin in Motion, Violin and Viola Ergonomics: Determine the Optimum Playing Position and Support for Your Body-Type; The Instrumentalist’s Guide to Fitness, Health, and Musicianship; and The Vocalist’s Guide to Fitness, Health, and Musicianship.
Fun Gateways Into Improvisation
Julie has been teaching string players and teachers how to improvise for over 40 years. She’s developed a coterie of engaging games and techniques to master this art. Throw fear and inhibition to the wind. Get ready to forge your own voice on your instrument.
Galician Tunes from Northwest Spain
During her work on her new trio of books, A Festival of Violin & Fiddle Styles FOR VIOLIN, FOR VIOLA, and FOR CELLO, Julie was able to connect with a Galician bagpiper in Spain, who unearthed some tunes from the late 1800s for her to include in the book. She will teach two during this session after filling you in on a touch of history about this style,
How to Sing While You Play
Julie first started to sing with her violin in the mid-1970s. Some of her voice students from her now defunct NYC Music Studio, included Grammy-nominated Vanessa Carlton, Grammy-nominated Putnam Murdoch, and a number of Broadway actors.
Julie performed live as a vocalist/violinist with the off-Broadway show she composed the music for and performed in at La Mama and Theatre of Nations, as well as on all of her recordings. This will be a fun session, starting with a few vocal warm-ups and techniques, followed by exercises with your instrument.
