Workshops

Dan and Laurel are passionate about sharing tips and tricks for backing up singers as a lead instrument, such as a violin. See https://www.laurelthomsen.com/Violin_Geek_Blog/Entries/2014/5/23_%22Complementing_the_Singer%22_workshop_June_12th_at_Evolution_studio!.html

In these “Complementing the Vocalist” workshops, Dan and Laurel help participants explore how to improvise around a vocal melody line with harmony and rhythm techniques and how to support the message and genre of a song, elevating the melody line and the vocalist. Contact Dan and Laurel for more information about holding a Complementing the Singer workshop.

Dan and Laurel enjoy sharing tips and tricks for songwriters and composers, helping students find their muse, melody, and rhythm. A particularly involved topic, songwriting workshops can certainly be a few hours, but work best over a few days.

Held ideally as a 4+ day “camp” with a concert for the participants at the end, the first day we explore exercises to spark students’ creativity and cover songwriting basics, including stylistic forms and prosody. The second day we hone in on a song topic and start writing together, focusing on lyrics, including lyric rhythm, rhyme, and meter. The third day we cover lyric melody, instrumental hooks, accompaniment, and arrangement. The fourth day, we piece it all together and cover performance topics, including presentation, stage presence, managing performance anxiety, and audience engagement. Contact Dan and Laurel for more information about holding a Songwriting camp/workshop.

Experiencing significant performance anxiety herself as a child in competitive orchestra and audition situations, Laurel enjoys hosting workshops to help players overcome stage fright. In these workshops, besides experience over 20 years as a violin and viola teacher, Laurel draws on her training as a certified Clinical Hypnotherapist and certified yoga instructor, sharing mind-body techniques to help participants release past traumas and “future pace”, as many athletes do, for successful upcoming concerts. Participants explore the specific and often surprising triggers for performance anxiety, and we drill a quick, but effective centering meditation used by many of the most successful players and taught at the Julliard School. Though shorter timeframes are possible, this topic is best held as a 4+ hour workshop or better yet, a multi-day camp where we can dive deep and see lasting results. Contact Laurel directly if you’d like to explore the possibilities for a workshop focusing on overcoming performance anxiety.

An interpretation workshop would use a few pieces/tunes to help attendees explore how to bring emotion and storytelling into their music and is often held as a master class, with each participant sharing a piece/tune they’d like to polish - modifying bowing/strumming, vibrato, dynamics, delivery of vocals and the message of the song, and learning to hear music in a broader context of feeling and genre. Contact Dan and Laurel for more information about holding an interpretation workshop.

An improvisation workshop could start with the basics of melodic and rhythm improv or look at the details of a specific genre, such as Blues, or Ragtime, helping students gain confidence in finding their unique voice while giving a nod to tradition. Contact Dan and Laurel for more information about holding an improvisation workshop.

For a more general multi-instrumental workshop, Dan and Laurel enjoy sharing insights about how to move from "technician" to "musician", helping students get in touch with or rekindle a joy for music, and sharing creativity and confidence exercises. Contact Dan and Laurel to discuss holding a musicianship workshop.

For elementary through high school settings, and students who may or may not have prior musical experience, Dan and Laurel enjoy combining a short concert program with an interactive workshop.

Topics include:

• What makes a genre?: Students delight as Dan and Laurel perform and discuss a variety of songs across different genres, and then take a popular song and demonstrate how changing just a few musical elements, such as the rhythm/groove and ornaments we employ, can completely transform the song from one genre to the next.
• Emotion in music: If we've ever heard music that makes us want to cry, or tap our toes and dance, or smile and feel energetic, we know that music can have a big influence on our mood. But what makes a sad song sad sounding, or a happy song happy sounding? Dan and Laurel play a variety of songs, telling the story of each and demonstrating how small changes in the notes, articulations, and rhythms we use can instantly alter the emotional effect the music has.
• Show and Tell: Geared towards younger students, Dan and Laurel talk about their instruments and how they got started in music, answer student questions, and play a few songs.
• Young Songwriters in the Making: Geared towards younger students, Dan and Laurel play a few songs and then help the students write their own song, learning about song structure, rhythm, and tonality along the way.

Laurel enjoys exploring violin topics that focus on technique, interpretation, or improvisation. She has authored two Strings magazine multi-media projects which provide a curriculum of technique topics frequently of interest to classical musicians and fiddlers alike, including bowing and tone topics, phrasing and groove, emotion and dynamics, shifting and intonation, etc.. See:

https://store.allthingsstrings.com/collections/improve-your-violin-viola-technique

https://store.allthingsstrings.com/collections/improve-your-bowing-technique

She also loves to help students develop or fix their vibrato, and has created a comprehensive curriculum which includes both classical and fiddle style vibrato techniques. The online version is available here https://www.completevibratomastery.com

It can be possible to mix and match topics depending on the age and abilities of the workshop attendees. While we can certainly focus on learning new repertoire as many workshops out there do, many students, both privately and in workshop enjoy taking advantage of Laurel’s keen ability to get to the heart of troublesome playing issues and articulate step by step routes to mastery. This learning can be applied to any repertoire and these workshops often include students who play a broad range of genres, yet everyone is generally interested in improving, for example, their tone, demystifying dynamics, mastering vibrato, etc. Contact Laurel directly if you’d like to explore the possibilities for a string technique based workshop.

Laurel enjoys diving deep into the inner workings of both tunes and classical repertoire. Workshops may run either as a masterclass, or offer students new tunes and pieces which we build from the ground up. These could be either fiddle tunes for a fiddle based workshop, or classical repertoire and ensemble work for a classical based group.

These workshops may be geared towards beginning students, where we start with even just the basics of playing the instrument, or all the way through advanced students, where we might be focusing on bowing, vibrato style, ornaments, phrasing or groove, and other topics which will polish a tune or a piece to performance ready. Contact Laurel directly if you’d like to explore the possibilities for a string technique based workshop.

Dan enjoys teaching his style of “one man band” guitar playing which allow students to play rhythm, bass, and lead lines all at once. He also enjoys teaching various picking and slide techniques, and accompaniment techniques for vocals/lyrics. Contact Dan for more information about guitar workshops.

Dan has been called a “walking folk fest” and enjoys teaching songs ranging from flat picking Norman Blake style folk and bluegrass tunes to the Beatles, Simon & Garfunkle, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, CCR, Tom Petty etc.. Contact Dan for more information about guitar workshops.