Pirkko Juntunen

I am a violin and orchestra teacher in Music School. I have taught orchestras and chamber music groups for tens of years and found that those lessons are an excellent opportunity for practicing in addition to play together skills, some instrument technological skills, as well. Accordingly I have made arrangements and compositions, which are kind of play together etudes for my students. For youngest violin students I made the “Mary had a little lamb” suite, which can be played after a couple of weeks of violin studies .With this suite the child can practice for instance taking turns between arco and pizzicato styles, flageolet, left hand pizzicato, bow division and basic rhythms. The aim of this suite is a play style “letting go” , a flow like learning style, playing in the stream of music like musicians do. I have noticed that it is nice to sing and play the pieces.” Bää bää vita lamm”, “Buns” and “The second “ include singing in addition to playing. In Finland we like TANGO music, so do I, as well. I have used tango as pedagogical tool for instruction. With “Toddlertango” the child learns clear pizzicato playing and exact rhythmic playing, with “Scale Tango” minor key and chromatic scales and syncopation, as well.“Birds Tango” is a cheerful flurry of great tits` singing, in “Christmas Tango” a well known Christmas song is in a disguise of a tango. I have added a few compositions I made for youngster musicals in which both classical string orchestra played together with a rock band. “Valse Macabre” describes young people`s struggles, “Old Girl`s Vals” the yearning for old times and dancing saloons, “For Ever” is a romantic daydream of everlasting happiness and love. After writing my new scores with notation programmes I found that the playback was a useful tool to support learning orchestra parts. This method I have called “Playback Orchestra” and I have found it very effective: players learn new pieces of music quickly and learn to play correctly, so I could keep the repertoires large and variable in style. This generated good and fertile play together culture. I also began to test the power of this new teaching style and in the autumn 2016 I defended my doctoral dissertation concerning technology supported aural based play together learning. You can read the dissertation here: http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-951-51-x2121-9 I wish you fine moments with my music!