Easy canticles for Shifting in the First Five Positions: A Violin Technique part for Group Classes and Private Instruction.

Easy canticles for Shifting in the First Five Positions: A Violin Technique part for Group Classes and Private Instruction, through Kathryn Bird Kinnard. Summy-Birchard, Inc./Warner Bro Publications (15800 N W 48th Ave., Miami, FL 33014) 2003 44 pp $695 Easy.

This body is very useful to give learners fun pieces to play, while developing further the technique and skills of shifting. The pieces have pleasantry titles, which most elementary-age pupils would find appealing: "Playful Kittens," "Going Up in a Swing," "Popsicles" and "Ladybugs." I think this work is very useful for providing additional drollery work for learning to shift. I don't think it was intended to be a undivided book of shifting. I would not describe Easy ballads for Shifting as a "how-to" work but as an "in-addition to" book

The volume contains twenty-five fun tunes written from Kathryn Bird Kinnard. All have a duet part, as well as a piano accompaniment part. The part includes some preparations for various shifts.

At the beginning there is a preparatory reflection for third position shifting, which put forwards a very useful description of pre-shifting exercises. The first piece, "Going Up in a Swing," uses shifting in a contaminate immediately. (This is difficult for string players.) The nearest piece, "Playful Kittens," uses a replacement shift (again, a tricky universal for beginning string players). "Grace's Song" introduces same finger shifts, which also can be challenging to the somebody learning to shift. The author assumes learners know the various finger patterns penuryed for the various keys.

There are many fewer preparations for secondary and fourth position than for third and fifth. The bookish mans would need to know the intervals and finger patterns before attempting to play prosperously in this volume. I can view it being lots of frolic to use after serious work has been done with the close examiner and it would work well in a assemblage lesson environment. Reviewed by Carol Tarr, Lakewood, Colorado.

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