hello I'm Yvonne Baron and I teach violin at Doncaster music service in today's short video
tutorial I'm going to be exploring one of the grade three ABRSM pieces for violin from the
2020 to 2023 exam syllabus and the piece I've chosen is singing in the rain which
is c1 in your exam book so just to set the theme this piece of music actually appeared
in a 1952 film called singing in the rain and it was a song a dance number for the American
entertainer Gene Kelly who in this number can be seen splashing in puddles and twirling round
lampposts the arrangement we'll be playing from today is by the British jazz pianist
Nikki Isles so I'm now going to play the piece you might like to follow your music as I do this
I really like this piece of music and think it would make an excellent choice as your final piece
in your grade 3 exam so let's look at it now in a little bit more detail just as in the film the
piece has got a very light-hearted and playful feel to it it's written in the key of G major
it's in 4/4 time there's the directions at the beginning indicate where to play it in a gently
swung feel now you might have been preparing for grade 3 by practicing some third position work where
your hand moves from first position and up into third position to find those higher notes of your
violin well this piece can all be played in first position so it gets rid of those panicked moments
of finding those notes higher up the violin you can play everything down in 1st position in fact
the only notes you play are d e f-sharp g a and b so pitch wise the piece is actually quite easy what
makes it more of a challenge are the rhythms we play usual minims and crotchets and dotted minims
but we've also got some tied notes in there some syncopated rhythms and where we have quavers we
need to play them as swung quavers let me give an example of that so if I play the very opening
few bars notice how they sound if I play them without swinging them so they will sound like this
now they don't want you to play like that in the exam they want your quavers to be swung so this
is how it's going to sound so can you hear how it gives it that really playful character to the
piece by swinging those rhythms so every time you get quavers like that in the piece that's
how they need to be played you'll notice that we don't actually start playing until the upbeat in
bar four the very last beat of bar four and on that very last beat I suggest you use an up-bow
to get you to a nice strong down bow in the following bar every time you get that phrase
every time you have a rest always take an up bow because the next note is going to sound much
better if you attack it on a down bow look out also for some of the other markings that appear
in the piece the last pizzicato crotchet for example is played staccato and two bars prior
to that we have an accented B in bar 34 I have a suggested bowing to make that note a little
bit easier actually if you look at the very last note in bar 32 for D that's going to be played
on an up bow the following two notes will be down up and then I suggest that you tuck
in the D at the end of the third that bar on an up bow so you'll actually have this another up
so that the b is a good strong accented down bow try that it's a little bit awkward but it
does make sense it does work the only thing you have to bear in mind there is that the final G
that's tied over in the last two bars down so in the rest be very quick to get your bow back
down to the bottom extend your finger ready for that final pizzicato that can be a little bit
tricky but with practice I'm sure you'll be able to play it fine watch out also for the dynamics we
start the piece moderately loud MF but by line 2 we're already playing Metso piano we've also
got crescendos and diminuendos the other thing that makes this piece a little bit awkward is the
rhythm and the notes that you have in bars 17 and 18 this is on line three of your music we
have to change from a B to an e the B and in both of those bars but very quickly so you want to be
in the middle of the bow here be very economical with how much bow you're using and practice those
changes a lot so there's a very quick tour of singing in the rain so before we finish let's
try and play it together from the beginning but it's a little bit slower than we did at
the start you can always rewind the video play to that slower speed again with me you can always
go back to the beginning of the video and play it at the proper tempo it's entirely up to you
well I hope you've enjoyed playing singing in the rain thank you very much for watching