Violin

Alternative Scale Manual

A comprehensive guide for the advanced student & conservatoire undergraduate

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Viola

Alternative Scale Manual

A comprehensive guide for the advanced student & conservatoire undergraduate

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Cello

Alternative Scale Manual

A comprehensive guide for the advanced student & conservatoire undergraduate

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Crabbers Alternative Scale System


If you find the process of learning and remembering scales challenging, then the Crabbers Alternative Scale System will help you.
These simple unique manuals for violin, viola and cello break from traditional notation and instead use only letters and numbers. The manual will help you to identify finger patterns more readily and therefore will improve the efficiency with your practice.
Richard Crabtree.

Find out more -Violin, Viola & Cello

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Music lessons online via Skype


Lessons on Skype/FaceTime or messenger offer the innovative teacher an extra dimension to their teaching and flexibility for students & parents.
 Music lessons on Skype are easy to arrange, and are now very much a reality for the serious teacher
and student.

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Courses and Events

 

Violin, Viola & Chamber Music Intensive Study Courses
Bristol UK - To be anounced
 

LMFL XVII International 
Summer Music Courses
15 - 29 July 2024 
Llandovery College (Wales) UK
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    What people are saying about the Crabbers Scale Manuals

The crabbers scale manual is the best system for learning scales! The clear presentation of note names with corresponding finger patterns, along with bowings and string changes, makes learning and memorising scales simple and straight forward. You automatically memorise the finger patterns and develop aural awareness through reading the notes in a 'grid/table' format, rather than reading endless lines of exhaustive staved notation.

Ronan MacManus BM (Hons) MMus,LTCL
Violin/viola tutor  

Programme Director  The Conservatoire
Music & Arts  Blackheath  London



Mr Crabtree's scale system is absolutely brilliant, and is so clear to understand. The new context of playing scales by using just notes and letters is for me a pleasant change from a traditional scale book. I would recommend this book most strongly, to professional and amateurs alike, as it creates a sense of achievement after finishing scale after scale. Also, there is a scale chart which I find invaluable; it gives me the chance to mix and match all the various scales. I have found that this helps improve my intonation as the more difficult scales are worked on each day. I thank Mr Richard Crabtree for investing so much of his time producing this wonderful manual - the value of it is priceless.


Julia Hwang  violin
Crabbers is an imaginative and welcome fresh approach to the building block of string playing, scales technique. Both well-presented and well-realised, it must be attractive to those who are discouraged by even the cover of a Whitehouse and Tabb scales manual. Taking the fingering into isolation allows the student to concentrate on one aspect of the learning process, and the cello manual has been worked with admirable dedication and thoughtfulness by David Burrowes. The sections on split thirds are a particularly excellent addition to study.

Justin Pearson 
Chairman of the London Cello Society