America the Beautiful Violin Lesson

Hello, this is Paul Huppert with onlinelessonvideos.com. In this lesson, we’ll be studying the famous American melody America the Beautiful by Samuel A. Ward. Also, I have included a pretty intense thrill study to accompany the melodic line. I hope you enjoy the lesson. In the beginning of this arrangement of America the Beautiful, we have a basic legato stroke—

[Demonstration]

That blends the D and includes the A strings. So you have to think in terms of the smoothness—

[Demonstration]

Both in terms of your left hand as well as your right—

[Demonstration]

You bring in the A string—

[Demonstration]

And then we play the double stop at the end of the first measure on both the A and the D string. Likewise for the second measure—

[Demonstration]

Blending—

[Demonstration]

And then bringing the fourth finger down—

[Demonstration]

Let me play those two measures for you again a little bit faster—

[Demonstration]

And then we go on to the third measure—

[Demonstration]

Here we rock over to the G string—

[Demonstration]

Back—

[Demonstration]

So there is a rocky motion in the bow arm—

[Demonstration]

Over to the G—

[Demonstration]

And then there is a slight shift up. We execute D flat with our first finger and we bring the fourth finger down, a fourth above the B flat for a harmonic effect—

[Demonstration]

Let me play a measure four for you again—

[Demonstration]

This is known as an artificial harmonic. We have a stop note which is the B flat—

[Demonstration]

And then an E flat, which is played lightly, accomplishing a harmonic. Now let's go on to the pickup into they fifth measure. We have a single note—

[Demonstration]

In the second position, an F natural—

[Demonstration]

And then we begin the thrilling portion.