About

The Musicol String Series is a set of beginner’s books for violin, viola, cello, double bass written by musician and early years music education specialist, Rachel Thomas (M.Ed)

Rachel has taught the violin for 30 years, working initially as a primary school teacher, then for 19 years for Doncaster Music Service and has a thriving private teaching practice.

Rachel taught many early years and Key Stage 1 groups in general musicality. She also taught individual, small group and Wider Opportunities beginners on the violin, and developed the Musicol teaching method with her many primary school age violinists.

She also spent many years training primary school teachers in Early Years Music.

How did Musicol come about.

After 20 years of teaching the violin, I felt there had to be an easier way to teach young children how to read musical notation for the violin. I knew that colour had been proved to be a very useful way to aid memory and pondered on how it could be used for the violin.

In 1997 I eventually decided to use colours that started with the letters of the four strings and give the strings these colours. This was really important so that no cognitive translation of colour to string needed to be made. The results with my beginner violinists were immediate (even with those as young as 4 and 5 years old.) As they read the notes for the open strings they were not confused as to which string to play, which meant instead of struggling with the reading of the notes they could think about how they were playing their pieces. This increased their confidence and boosted their enjoyment and encouraged further study.

I followed this concept through for the fingering and was encouraged to find that my students’ sight reading progressed just as quickly for fingering as for the open strings, because each section of the stave had a colour which helped the notes to become more easily remembered.

As a result of my discovery and using tried and tested exercises and studies I have now put these all into a beginner’s book, using the same material for the other strings so that they can also be used individually or in wider opportunities settings encouraging the development of the rarer instruments (viola and double bass). Each ‘Musicol®’ piece is also produced in conventional black and white format so that the colour notation becomes a stepping stone to fluency in traditional notation.

The studies in the book are memorable so that the students can also concentrate on their playing technique. Familiar tunes are also used to aid intonation and accurate placing of the fingers. Adding words to the tunes also aids the memory and development of rhythmic awareness.

Finally, the exercises in the initial tutor books have been designed to lead the student up to a standard from which they can proceed confidently to study Grade 1 level pieces provided by the major music examination boards.