Violin Etudes for Beginners

[tangleweeds]

I didn't want to hijack the Kreutzer thread, so here's what I wondered when reading it:

Can anyone suggest violin etudes that might be helpful for a rank beginner on mandolin (and fretted instruments in general)?

I play a bit of piano, and know that I go through phases of really enjoying technical exercises. But I don't want to hurt myself trying things requiring technique that I don't yet have.

For pianists, I need the violin equivalent equivalent to Czerny etudes for beginning pianists, or the beginnings of Hanon. Stuff they torture kids with. My childhood piano lessons ended over Czerny. While harmonious enough, I found it musically vacant, and wouldn't practice it.

It's ironic that I grew up to really enjoy meditative etude playing. I like scales and arpeggios now too, though.

[SincereCorgi]

Wohlfahrt is great, stays in first position, and Dancla is pretty good but starts shifting after a few pages. Most of the actual Hanon-esque violin books (like Sevcik) were developed to deal with intonation and bow issues that aren't really issues on mandolin, unfortunately.

[Beanzy]

Although not laid out as a book of etudes the Bickford books are full of them and they get you going in a building block manner so you're progressing from basics up. From his references he seems to have cherry picked from many of the earlier great and good in all things mandolin.
Book 1 is available from the NY public library as a PDF so you can have a look then decide if the remaining ones are worth buying for you. (I did)

[Jim Garber]

If you can find a copy of Goichberg's Thirty-Five Etudes for Mandolin, grab it. It is a fun little book with tunes that start sort of like fiddle tunes but move onward. I wish it would be reissued.

As Eoin noted above, many of the mandolin methods draw on appropriate violin etudes to teach some techniques.

[Sterling]

I've been going through the Suzuki Violin books. They work pretty well. I'm plowing through book four now, along with other stuff.

[Nick Royal]

John Goodin has a cd out called "Deer Tracks (for solo mandolin)" which are fun tunes and really good for sight reading practice. I think you can get the cd from his website.

[Pasha Alden]

If you can find a copy of Goichberg's Thirty-Five Etudes for Mandolin, grab it.
I assume that book is available in the US and UK?
Drifting back to violin music, what about SuZuka books? Are they suitable?

[Pasha Alden]

Thanks for the answer about Suzuki violin books, I inadvertently typed a and it should be "I" sorry.
I am ordering them from our braille library.

[Jim Garber]

If you can find a copy of Goichberg's Thirty-Five Etudes for Mandolin, grab it.
I assume that book is available in the US and UK?
Drifting back to violin music, what about SuZuka books? Are they suitable?

The Goichberg Etudes were published originally in 1937. It was published anew prob in the 1980s by Plucked String Press but has since gone out of print.

I just found this article about the Goichberg studies on Marilynn Mair's site.

>>>I just found 20 Progressive Etudes by Carlo Munier for free download here.

[Manfred Hacker]

Jim G., Thanks for the link to the Munier Etudes.
I have only looked at a few and they don't look like beginners' stuff.
tangleweed, why don't you get Marilynn Mair's Book "The Complete Mandolinist". There are plenty of exercises of varying difficulty there, including some really nice, more advanced, performance pieces.

[tangleweeds]

Is anyone else getting a PHP error on Marilyn Mair's site?

[Killian King]

Although not laid out as a book of etudes the Bickford books are full of them and they get you going in a building block manner so you're progressing from basics up. From his references he seems to have cherry picked from many of the earlier great and good in all things mandolin.
Book 1 is available from the NY public library as a PDF so you can have a look then decide if the remaining ones are worth buying for you. (I did)

Thanks for the tip. I downloaded a pdf copy of the Bickford method. I am really impressed with the detail it contains regarding all facets of beginning mandolin. The pages describing how to hold the mandolin in particular.

Also of note is the page containing a key for locating the notes on a mandolin when using standard notation. Very useful.