AUSTA News 2025
AUSTA ACT Report
We have had a fairly quiet start to the year with just one event so far. We held a Bowing Workshop with Rosemary Macphail presenting a session called
AUSTA Tasmania – upcoming events
AUSTA Tasmania has the following events planned for the coming months. As registrations open, they will be published under events.
Australian Honours for Elizabeth Morgan AM
AUSTA Founding Chair and Patron, Elizabeth Morgan has been recognised in the 2013 Australian Queen
How to improve String Technique and Musicianship
(in just twenty minutes a day!)
Music, perhaps more than any other human activity, enlists the synthetic cooperation of intellect, creativity and athleticism. As a physician and psychotherapist who spent nearly a decade working with students of classical music, I was deeply impressed by this inextricable interrelationship between mind and body. Eventually I devised a method of practice designed to...
How I Teach The Bass
My teaching methods have changed markedly over the years, partly through experience but also from my solo work and commissioning many new works for double bass. Three of my teachers (Laurence Gray, Bronwen Naish and Franti
The Joys of Teaching Beginner Violinists
Teaching beginner violinists is an incomparable, stimulating and enjoyable occupation. Each child is uniquely individual; every day produces new challenges and rewards. The last four decades have seen great improvements in beginners
The left hand
Professor Jan Sedivka, who had few peers in his knowledge of the workings of the left hand, left an important legacy of thought on the subject. Here are some of his ideas on tackling the problem of left hand asymmetry. Gleaned from my experience in teaching as his assistant for ten years and also from the video tapes he...
I teach what I needed to learn
How would you make progress with this challenging student? Let
String Teaching in Groups
The teaching of stringed instruments in groups is both well established and widespread in Australian schools as in many other parts of the world. There are a number of reasons for choosing to teach strings in groups such as budgetary constraints, timetabling and staffing efficiency, integration into the school curriculum, as support and extension activities for individual tuition, ensemble...
Practice and Parents
The ideal of most parents of musical children is be involved with practice in ways that maximises usefulness and minimises interference. No one knows your child the way you do - this can be a help but also a hindrance when it comes to music practice. Most teachers agree that for children of primary school age, and sometimes older, parental...
There
Is there any value in learning a stringed instrument? As teachers we try to inspire, and make lessons enjoyable. So much time, effort and money is spent in learning to play. Surely there is more to it than simply learning notes and tunes? How may we help our students get the most out of learning and doing the best...
Do I feel like Practising?
Practising is what we do for ourselves. It is solitary. It is where we work in harmony with ourselves and teach ourselves everything we will ever know. A good outside teacher is essential, and skills are learned in lessons. However it is that time on our own, where we make those skills our own, through our own brains and...