Vanessa

I trained orginally as a professional actress but, being also musically trained and coming from an extremely musical family, I soon found myself combining these two great passions into my work with children over the last 40 years.
I worked at first for Singing Sally's in Leicestershire for 11 years before starting my own music and movement business, teaching primary aged children about world habitats through music, movement and drama. Throughout this time I was also teaching violin privately.
Over time, my creative and applied drama approach to music crept in to my private teaching too and I now use my own story and character based method of learning the violin and reading music which has proved a great hit with the youngest of children. It is based on 40 years experience of both teaching the violin and entertaining and educating the under 5s. I specialise in the early grades (up to ABRSM Grade 5 Violin and Grade 5 Music Theory) as I love inspiring the beginner and being involved in that first spark of joy when an instrument is first encountered and mastered by someone who really wants to play. I have so much experience with very young children that I feel I really know how to engage and inspire them in all aspects of musicality. Of course, I love teaching the older children too, using the traditional method through a carefully planned curriculum that draws on exercises and material from Shinzu Suzuki's method.

Tutoring Experience

I come from a very musical background. Both my parents were music teachers and my brother was internationally renowned double bass player, Corin Long.
I gained grade 8 distinction on the violin at age 14 and have been teaching up to Grade 5 ABRSM in both Violin and Theory of Music ever since (over 40 years!)
I particularly enjoy teaching the younger child and am very experienced with beginners/intermediate.
I trained in the Stringbabies method in 2016 which helps very young children to read music and develop general musicianship through a system of shapes.
More recently I have devised my own story based method, which the younger children find lots of fun. Through this method, children quickly learn to read notes, feel and understand rhythms deeply, and can easily express feeling when they play. I have found that very young children are also quickly inspired to write music of their own. They relate easily to the rhythmic characters in the story at a level that goes beyond learning to read symbols and the method meets them at the level of their own fascinations.

Tutoring Approach

My approach to teaching music is that it should always be enjoyable..never a chore!. Music making is the expression of joy through the manipulation of sound. It is a language of pleasure and those speaking the language should thoroughly enjoy expressing themselves that way. Of course, practice is not always joyfully undertaken but I make sure lessons (at least) are fun, inspiring, empowering and successful for the child. With children aged 3 to 7, I follow a story based method with each of the rhythms as delightful characters that children of this age can easily relate to. Their adventures beyond the rainbow are exciting, musical (of course) and packed with movement and expression. The children always want to know (and play on their violins!) what happens next and they delight in the rhythm exercises based on aspects of the story. I love teaching this way and I love how the children respond to it.