Effective violin practice can be a challenge, and often you just wish you had your teacher there to model how it should sound. Am I playing the correct rhythm? Do I have the proper amount of weight in the bow? Articulation? Intonation?

Teachers, do you wish you could be with your students in each practice session to help them have a great practice week and come to lessons having made marked progress?

I am well acquainted with both of these scenarios. So well that it became the focus of my doctoral dissertation and the motivation to produce study aid recordings of the Mazas etudes for violin.

For years in my private studio a pattern continued. The repertoire part of the lesson went well, but progress was slow on the etudes. The reasons were always the same. “I couldn’t remember how it should sound.” “I practiced the wrong rhythm.” “I wasn’t sure of…(insert a hundred other things here!)”

One day a student asked if there were any study aid recordings available. I searched far and wide but found nothing I felt comfortable recommending. It was clear there was not a professionally produced study aid recording of the Mazas Etudes, so I decided to change that.