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Craig Birchfield

Jun 21, 2018
3 min

How to keep kids practicing through the summer

The sun is out and the clouds are gone. Hooray! This is the summertime creed of Oregon kids who have to run between raindrops for most of the winter. With school out and kids out and about it is sometimes hard to generate enthusiasm for strings practice. Here are some tips to beat the summertime practice blues. 1)Try a carrot. Okay, bribery can seem a bit graceless but a little reward goes a long way and a certain flying nanny I remember said a spoonful of sugar can expedite

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Craig Birchfield

May 22, 2017
3 min

The Infamous Violin Shaped Object

I had a call from a young lady the other day. She was having trouble keeping her brand new violin in tune. I asked if we had sold it to her. She said no but asked if I would look at it anyway. Of course, I said yes. It was a glossy black violin – one of those inexpensive violin outfits that you can get on eBamazon. Since tuning was the issue that was the first thing that I examined. As soon as I brought one of the strings up to pitch it would then drop like a rock. The intere

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Craig Birchfield

Apr 26, 2017
2 min

Important String Player Resources in Greater Portland

Here in the greater Portland metro area we have some excellent resources for string players. I will also list some links to the best of our our local ensembles, orchestras and luminaries. Violin, viola, cello and bass Teacher list: I have to start by tooting our own horn. We have a very good teacher resource page on our website. We have 100 teachers and private studios listed as well as 11 music schools that offer individual and group instruction. They are listed with their c

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Craig Birchfield

Jan 29, 2014
4 min

Pain is Not Gain (Part 2) Tips for Playing Pain Free 1/29/2014

I am finally getting around to keeping my promise about doing the second part of this article. I covered shoulder rests and chin rests in the last part so I will only touch briefly on those here. I’ll add a disclaimer that if you are experiencing significant to profound pain while playing or afterwards you should consult an expert and a doctor who specializes in this type of ailment (sports medicine, physical therapy or specifically for musicians). A very good source for a re

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Craig Birchfield

Dec 3, 2013
5 min

12/3/2013 Pain Is Not Gain – Part One

My wife used to be a dental assistant. Most of the dentists that she worked for tried to minimize the discomfort of their patients as much as possible but at least one she knew seemed to be oblivious to his patient’s discomfort or at least it appeared that way to her. Some old school dentists four decades ago seemed to regard pain as the penalty for not caring for your teeth. A few old school musicians still regard pain as the price we pay to become really good. I think that

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Craig Birchfield

Sep 26, 2013
3 min

9/26/2013 The Jet Airplane Analogy

I may have already mentioned this analogy in an earlier posting but I want to give you the full treatment here. I try to tell this story to every child that gets an instrument from our shop. Feel free to use it if it works for you. I get a lot of positive feedback especially from parents about it. I start off asking the young person if they have ever been on an airplane before. Nine times out of ten they have. This is how I tell the story with appropriate hand gestures and so

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Craig Birchfield

Aug 30, 2013
3 min

8/29/2013 Zombies Triumphant!

One of the advantages of writing a blog for your own business is that you can veer a bit off topical as long as you stay in the same universe as you major purpose. In my case that would be music education and enrichment. I do need to issue a couple disclaimers here. First, I am not talking about the undead, the Zombies are a band. Second, if you hate and detest all aspects of popular music you might want to skip this posting. After all we are talking about cellos and violins

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Craig Birchfield

Aug 9, 2013
3 min

8/9/2013 At what age should I start my child in music lessons?

Ah yes, that is the question. It is one that has been debated and discussed frequently by both parents and educators. We recently had an excellent guest blog entry on our site from our friend and local violin teacher Christine Goodner about pre-school children and music. I would highly recommend that you go back in our blog entries and read that article as well but I thought that I would throw in my two cents. Forty years ago the typical answer might have been 8 or 9 years ol

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Craig Birchfield

Mar 5, 2013
3 min

3/5/2013 Know Thy Instrument

I hate black boxes – gleaming silver whatchamacallits that are covered with little invisible question marks. I like to know what is going on inside. What makes this difficult is that we live in a world of black boxes. Cell phones, washing machines, TVs, stereos, computers, automobiles…how many of us actually know all of the intricacies and inner workings of these automations that we depend upon on a daily basis? Perhaps a few engineering types that are fountainheads of techni

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Craig Birchfield

Jan 26, 2013
3 min

1/26/2013 Time Has Come Today

Professor Steven Hawkin proved mathematically that when the Universe began so did time. That is pretty interesting when you think about it. Comedian Steven Wright said that God created time so that everything didn’t happen at once. He could be correct. All that I know is that everyone has the same amount of time in a day. No matter how rich you are you can’t go down to the 1st National Time Bank and purchase a few extra hours to get all of your work done. Oh, time seems to mo

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