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Do you spend most of your practice time practicing "songs" or pieces? I love to spend much of my practice time playing etudes. I have an old book from my high school days called Mazas Etudes Speciales which is full of delightful sounding exercises. Those are a bit of a challenge but so rewarding to play.
Lately, I've been practicing out of my Introducing the Positions books a lot. It is filled with short, beautiful melodies, as well as utilitarian shifting exercises. They are so much fun to play!
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Hey Sara, they sound great. I'll have to look at some more etudes. I have one from Suzuki which I know by heart and use as part of my warm up with scales. I think I should have more in my warm up 'repertoire'. I'll look into the Positions book for those.
Thanks for the tip.
Robyn
If you think you can, or you think you can't, you're probably right.
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I do both. I play a couple of songs that I'm working on to get them down pat, I breeze through some easy songs, and I also work out of my niece's book (Essential Elements 2000 for Strings).
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Great post idea Sara. I have some great etudes you guys can download under the sheet-music link. Check out these. I love the Paganini Caprices myself.
These are great as well:
Schradieck, Henry
The School Of Violin-Technics
"The richest person is not the one who has the most,
but the one who needs the least."
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I enjoy the Schradieck book as well. When you practice those you really do notice improvements quickly! Thanks for the reminder of all the great finds in the sheet music section, FM.
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GennaLea said:
I do both. I play a couple of songs that I'm working on to get them down pat, I breeze through some easy songs, and I also work out of my niece's book (Essential Elements 2000 for Strings).
I ordered the Essential Elements book for my daughter's upcoming violin lessons. It looks pretty good but it seems strange to me that they have notated bow exercises to practice on rosin instead of the instrument. It seems like all you're going to do is put WAY too much rosin on the bow.
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Ah, that makes more sense. 
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Barry said:
If you notice, everything prior is pizzicato so its a prep for bowing and was meant to prime a new bow.
It's pizzicato, but I'm a rebel and I bow the music anyway. 
LOL
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I love to play songs ... i think either Paul or David had mentioned that playing songs is so much fun and that he could not resist it (something like that) and same here:)
at the beginning or the end, or in between I would practice scales or my daughter's truely beginner's etudes:) like AEA, DAD, GDG 
I don't know any etudes yet. I try to practice natural notes on G, D, A, & E strings according to the fiddlerman's etudes. however, my fourth finger could not spread one step apart unless I hop my fingers on the fingerboard. I will either always have this problem or keep practicing to see if it will improve, which i hope it will.
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Obviously you should do what you enjoy doing Pky, however, etudes are designed to improve technique. They are very often geared for learning particular functions. That is not to say that you cannot learn technique from pieces of music as well. Also, some etudes are pieces and some pieces are etudes. Example, Bach Sonatas and Paganini Caprices.
"The richest person is not the one who has the most,
but the one who needs the least."
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My old time favorite was the Schradieck finger exercises for warm up.
However, I bought for my birthday a few days ago the Carl Flesch Scale System. I have no idea how to use it (never played a scale) but I feel my intonation suffers badly whne I have some quick passage going down or have to use the 1st finger for shifting, so I thought Flesch could be helpful and used as warm up every day!
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I have the Carl Flesch book as well. It's a great book. If others want to check it out, it is available for free in the free sheet music section here. Gotta love out of copyright material! 
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