Violin Video Lesson: Mintz's Patterns

Hi and welcome to VirtualSheetMusic.com's Meet the Expert. My name is William Fitzpatrick, and I am the Temianka professor of violin at the Hall-Musco Conservatory of Music which is located on the campus of Chapman University in Orange, California. I am as well Director of MusiShare in Irvine, California.

So do you remember our conversation about tetrachords? Remember it, a major tetrachord being a whole step, whole step, and a half step, that scales were made up of tetrachords? Well, I had a very interesting conversation with Shlomo Mintz many years ago at Juilliard.

Well, I was sort of walking around the practice rooms and saw Shlomo practicing in a room and decided to walk in and just sort of chat for a minute. We were chatting away and all of a sudden he looks at me and he goes, "Billy, can you do this?" [plays] Well, I went, "Okay, cool. Let's see." So I started to do it [plays] all the while thinking, "What in the world am I doing, and why am I doing this?" And all of a sudden, I went, "Oh my goodness." Shlomo had just shown me a way to practice all of the patterns that we find in a major scale in this little exercise. So why don't I break it down for you?

First off, we have half step, whole step, whole step. [plays] Second, whole step, half step, whole step. [plays] Third, whole step, whole step, half step. [plays] And finally, whole step, whole step, whole step, ascending, going up. [plays] And whole step, whole step, half step, descending, coming down. [plays] And with that, we can start again, as we were doing it before, but we are a half step higher. [plays] And we can go up as far as we want to. [plays] We can do it on any string that we want to. [plays] It's a great way to remind ourselves of what those patterns are as we are going up a scale.

Let me remind you, for example, if we were doing B flat, [plays] it's half step, whole step, whole step. That's part of the Mintz patterns. [plays] Whole step, whole step, whole step. Again, a part of the Mintz patterns. [plays] Whole, whole, half. I don't have to say it. [plays] Do I need to say? [plays] Whole, whole, half. [plays] Whole, whole, half. Thank you, Shlomo, and I'm happy to share it with you guys now.

Well, that's it for this video. If you have a comment, or a question, or a special request, please feel free to post them. See you next time.

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

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