This collection offers new and exciting original pieces, transcriptions of old favorites, and spectacular folk song arrangements in a versatile three-part format. Teachers can augment their rehearsals and performances with this well thought-out book. The Piano accompaniment can enrich your sound and the optional percussion parts (reproducible from the conductor score)can be a great way to add a new sound to your string group.

The third volume moves students toward more advanced playing techniques and literature. This text continues to develop playing skills found in Book 2 and advances the student through more rigorous and lengthy literature. Instrument-specific selections promote performance, reinforcing shifting skills, more advanced bowing techniques, and complex and multiple-meter pieces. The book contains solo literature that: enables the student to use higher positions with suggested fingerings; features accidentals that challenge left-hand intonation; utilizes more complex time signatures, multiple-meters, and challenging rhythmic patterns; and develops the bow stroke to perform more expressive dynamics and musicianship.

This volume continues the development of playing skills found in Book 1 and progresses to more complex rhythms, left-hand finger patterns and techniques, bowing techniques, and preparation for shifting. Book 2 introduces students to: long and controlled bow strokes, slurred legato and staccato bow strokes, string-crossing slurs, and producing dynamic contrasts; new rhythmic patterns including dotted notes, triplets, sixteenth notes, swinging eighth notes, and syncopated rhythms; new time signatures including 6/8 and 3/8, along with cut time for cello/bass; and major and minor left-hand string patterns, extended fingerings, and beginning octave harmonics and shifting.

Volume 1 begins with open strings and basic notation, rhythms, and bowing skills. New notes, notation, and bowing skills are added in logical progression, reinforcing both right- and left-hand technique and developing the cognition for string performance. This book introduces students to: the basic major and minor tetrachords on all four strings; essential rhythmic notation from whole notes through eighth-note patterns; left-hand techniques such as easily played double stops, left-hand pizzicato, and differentiating whole and half steps; and bowing techniques, beginning with the detache bow stroke and continuing with staccato, slurs, producing dynamics with the bow, lifting the bow, arco-to-pizzicato technique, and hooked and loure bow strokes.

Designed to use during your regular rehearsals, this well-sequenced approach to improvisation is an ideal way to introduce your students to Jazz. It covers both straight and swing 8th note styles, and includes 2 CDs with dozens of music examples, echo patterns, and accompaniment tracks. Each unit features a composition that reinforces the skills learned in that unit. Besides being ideal for learning, any of these pieces may be played in performance!

Featuring 15 pieces with full score analyses, techniques for conducting and teaching, background information and supplemental exercises, Lessons in Performance bridges the gap between rehearsal and concert halls. Also ideal for cross-curricular teaching, all supplemental materials incorporate the National Standards. In addition, this publication provides a perfect theme for summer string camps. You are sure to find multiple uses for this outstanding educational publication!

Learning was never so much fun! If you're looking for an orchestra method that builds solid musicianship while motivating your students to practice throughout the year, then you've found it! This incredible new orchestra method is sound in its pedagogy, written by leading young orchestra composers and educators, including Sandra Dackow and Michael Alexander. The integration of important pieces from the orchestra world, that are both familiar and fun to play, is one of the stellar aspects of this method. Throughout the book, students experience music from a veritable "who's who" list of great orchestra composers. They'll discover the musical contributions of Georges Bizet, Ludwig van Beethoven, Aaron Copland, Johann Sebastian Bach, Johann Strauss, Jr. and many other classical composers. Some of the notable features include:

• A wonderful variety of melodies that span various styles and periods, including many popular themes students will know
• A 96-track CD included with each student book spans exercises throughout the lesson book
• Professional accompaniments in diverse styles keep practice fun
• A comprehensive score with related activities and supplementary lesson ideas
• Historical notes on some of the most notable composers of orchestral music
• Develop compositional skills, music reading skills, and learn the correlation between art and music
• A Teacher Resource Guide that lets you explore concepts in a more in-depth way
• A teacher CD that includes wonderful listening opportunities for the students

Your students will love playing along with the CD accompaniment tracks! And, for the director, a comprehensive score makes lesson planning enjoyable. Related activities, supplementary lesson ideas, curriculum planning information and much, much more are offered to assist and inspire you. It's hard to say what your students will enjoy the most about their new lesson book: the colorful layout; the fun, familiar music; or the great play-along CD!

Orchestra Expressions takes students' musical knowledge to new heights by bringing the immediacy and dynamics of the real world into the music classroom. Previously learned material is reinforced and given added depth, dimension, and meaning when it is viewed in the context of history, culture, and students' own everyday experiences.

• Unique Elements
• Four-fingers-down start for every instrument
• Separate but simultaneous development of both hands
• Bass begins in III position developing early shifting
• Orchestra arrangements by Sandra Dackow
• Final full orchestra concert piece
• Play Music and Video Samples

A revolutionary method with a unique blend of time-tested attributes, advances in modern technology, and insights on how students learn and how teachers want to teach. Available in two formats: the Standard edition, and Director's Choice edition which allows teachers to customize the method's pedagogy, music, and enrichment materials. Sound Innovations provides fundamental teaching tools in a clear and organized format that allows directors to incorporate their own style of teaching and the Director's Choice edition is the first method that allows a director to easily customize the method to fit their unique teaching styles and classroom situations. The method is also available on the popular Smartmusic software and provides free access to the first 100 lines of music for students.

Sound Innovations for String Orchestra, Book 2 continues your students' musical journey by teaching with segmented presentation of new concepts and introducing ensemble playing. Isolating concepts and teaching them individually helps facilitate understanding of the more advanced material. Following the unique Sound Innovations organization, the book contains four levels, each of which is divided into several sections that introduce concepts separately and provide plenty of practice and performance opportunities to reinforce each lesson.