Shar Music Blog

You’ve seen your child through the many stages of learning the violin. The cardboard box violin. The struggle to use the correct bowings and fingerings. Conquering scales and new songs. You’ve watched them grow into a little musician. Maybe they’re…

Have you ever lost track of time while on a hike? You’re marveling at the beauty of trees, streams, and mountains, feeling downright absorbed by nature for what feels like at least 2 hours—only to discover that 4 hours have passed? Or have you ever…

Melissa Lusk is co-author of The Violin Recital Album, a companion publication to the Sassmannshaus Early Start on the Violin series. She is a violinist and a violist. Her hobbies include gardening, composting, vermiculture, sewing and now weaving. She…

There's a lot that can go wrong when planning a wedding, so the live music should be the last thing the couple has to worry about. However, if you're the musician gigging at a wedding, it is your temporary raison d’etre and you owe it to your clients to…

Think you know how to play Brahms? Douglas Woodfull-Harris, Editor for Orchestral and Chamber Music at Bärenreiter, gives us a preview of "the overwhelming amount of vital information" contained in the new Bärenreiter Urtext editions of Brahms. If you're…

Differences are invisible until discovered. A common picture riddle found in children’s coloring books includes a number of seemingly identical snow men (or teddy bears, men in raincoats with umbrellas, etc.), one of which has a slight difference. Which…

One of our favorite bloggers, James Engman, had the chance to sit down with the up-and-coming eclectic musical group The alt Default. While the members of the group – Nathaniel Wolkstein, David Connor, and Hannah Nicholas – are all classically trained…

 One of our favorite bloggers, James Engman, had the chance to sit down with the up-and-coming eclectic musical group The alt Default. While the members of the group – Nathaniel Wolkstein, David Connor, and Hannah Nicholas – are all classically trained…

For many years now, SHAR has carried the much-loved method book series Adventures in Violinland by Shirley Givens. Because of the esteem we have for Shirley, it's a great honor to offer her a space on our blog to answer a question that those of you…

When I saw an email from Lee Jin Rui about writing a guest blog for SHAR, I almost deleted it. “Is this spam?” I thought. But after navigating to Jin’s violin lessons website, I thought, “Hey, online lessons are something our customers might want to…