A Comprehensive Orchestra Curriculum for Years 3, 4 and Beyond

By Scott Rush, Christopher Selby

Habits of a Successful Middle Level String Musician is a field-tested musical collection of over 300 sequenced exercises for building fundamentals. Perfect to use with the entire string orchestra or a solo player, this series contains carefully sequenced finger pattern and shifting etudes, tone and articulation warm-ups, sight-reading exercises, rhythm vocabulary studies, chorales, and much more. In one place, this series collects everything an aspiring player needs to build fundamental musicianship skills and then be able to transfer those skills directly into the performance of great literature.

Habits of a Successful Middle Level String Musician is the answer to the very simple question, What should I be learning during fundamentals time?

Habits of a Successful Middle Level String Musician:
• Presents a differentiated, sequential, and comprehensive method for developing finger pattern and shifting skills to address the most common problems encountered by intermediate level orchestra students.
• Organizes tone, rhythm, and articulation patterns into a flexible and sequential series.
• Creates a method for teaching scales, arpeggios, and thirds that simultaneously accommodates students of different ability levels.
• Provides chorales for the development of intonation, tone quality, blend, and musicianship.
• Presents sequenced rhythm vocabulary charts in a format that allows transfer from timing to pitches in a musical context.
• Includes over ten pages of audition sight-reading exercises in a full- ensemble format that is well planned in scope and sequence.
• Promotes the idea that students should cross the threshold from the technical components of playing to music making.