Dust Off, Tune Up

Whether you last played at school or university, this course is designed to enable a stress-free, informative and successful return to playing again. Each session supports you as you revisit, revise and develop the skills learnt during those years. You'll start with instrument maintenance and care, move through posture and comfortable holding/sitting positions, and then focus on producing a resonant and attractive sound. During the course, you'll also receive technique, musical interpretation and aural skill sessions for you to use in the future, and have time to discuss ideas about where and how you can continue playing. 

This is a route to get you back into playing, and covers the instrument (and case), musical interpretation, how to learn and performing skills. The strategies and skills gained on this course will give you the confidence you need to return to solo, chamber music and orchestral playing. 

In your first session, you’ll dust off and tune up your instrument. In your next session you’ll look at ergonomic comfort and balance in holding your instrument, before moving onto creating tone and intonation. In later sessions, Miranda Francis will show you how to use the voice, ear and inner ear in playing and learning. Using pieces you know and love, and bringing in new repertoire, you'll have sessions on specific techniques (including scales), and how to apply them in repertoire. Together, these lessons will help you to understand the process of learning and playing. 

The course will largely be taught as a group in a supportive environment with nine sessions of 75 minutes each. You will be divided into instrument-specific groups for more detailed technical sessions. 

In a group of like-minded adults in a supportive environment, some sessions will be for the whole group, e.g. instrument care, warm ups, tone, intonation, creating music, repertoire choice and context, but we will also divide into instrument specific groups for technique sessions. These smaller groups will allow you to gain a deeper knowledge of your string instrument.

You will need to have had regular tuition of at least three years on your instrument (at any age), and have an instrument and bow in playing condition. There are no expectations of individual accomplishment or level.

On the course, we'll provide hard copies of music for ensemble repertoire in order to develop learning and rehearsal skills, and discussing choice and context. You don’t need to prepare anything in advance, just make sure your instrument and bow are in working condition. Please bring any of your own music that you might like to play again. We will be reminding you of how much you know – and recovering what has been forgotten! 

On the course you are also encouraged to explore and make use of the wonderful collection of sheet music in the Benslow Music Library.