Field Guide to String Education: Warm-ups

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Field Guide to String Education: Warm-ups is written for the music teacher who has the privilege of teaching strings. Dr. Matthew H. Spieker is an experienced classroom educator who offers insight and advice that works.
A genuine field guide is a small handbook that can fit in a pocket and be used as a quick reference to help someone identify plants and animals in nature. They are compact, easy to use, informative, and they make the experience of nature more enjoyable. In this same spirit, I hope you find these field guides as useful to help you teach stringed instruments to kids. They are written to provide you with brief, power-packed bits of information you can apply quickly to your classroom. It is my wish these field guides will transform your teaching.
You need a good reason for warm-ups because students will repeatedly as you "why?" Students do not like warm-ups, and if you do not have a good reason for these daily exercises, students will check out. I have watched too many rehearsals during which the director mindlessly throws out scales, and the students mindlessly play them. That is a colossal waste of time. Warm-ups should be intentional in their development and execution.
This field guide is about warm-ups. It begins with a chapter on helping you develop a good why for warm-ups. The discussion then turns to the warm-ups I have used for years. Good string pedagogy analyzes skills into left-side and right-side skills. My warm-ups follow this pattern with the left page is mostly about left-side skills and the right page is mostly about right-side skills. My warm-ups also finish with some ensemble skills mostly dealing with intonation. Although this eBook details the warm-ups I developed and use, it really is an encouragement to help the string educator write their own. The final chapter focuses on this outlines several more concepts that warm-ups could include.
My String Coach
In the early 2000s, a group of students called me "coach." At first it annoyed me a little, as I never saw myself as a coach. But they liked it, and there are far worse things they could call me. Then it occurred to me that coaching is a major part of my role as a music educator.
Tom Landry was one of the all-time best coaches in the NFL. He led the Dallas Cowboys to 20 consecutive winning seasons, 13 division titles, 5 NFC titles, and 2 Super Bowl wins. He once was asked about his secret to coaching. He said, "Make them [the players] do what they don't want to do, so that they will become what they want to be."
I have learned that much of what I do in the classroom is to make students do important things that they aren't happy about, so that when they perform on stage, they can feel that amazing sense of accomplishment. Teaching is difficult. It can be a grind and feel thankless, but it's also tremendously rewarding and important. If I can help teachers make the journey a bit easier, then I feel like I am contributing positively to the profession.
My String Coach (MSC) is dedicated to helping teachers in the profession of string education. This is accomplished through three aspects:
String Education Field Guides
MSC Youth Editions
MSC Teaching Materials

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