February 2001
The idea came to me on a flight. What would be the best way to introduce the finest violin playing techniques to students anywhere in the world? The information has been available since 1929 in books such as Die Kunst des Violinspiels by Karl Flesch and The Principles of Violin Playing and Teaching by Ivan Galamian (1962)-and since then, advances in the field warrant another treatise on the subject. But hardly any young students ever read these books. Human motions are intrinsically difficult to describe in print. To a non-violinist, such as a parent, the motions described are as incomprehensible after reading as they were before. Most readers are adult students at the end of their studies, and by then, it's too late. What would be the best way to teach a level of violin technique that has only been available to students able to audition into the world's best classes, such as those by Carl Flesch, Leopold Auer, Ivan Galamian, and Dorothy DeLay?

Motion pictures, where a picture is worth a thousand words, seemed to provide part of the answer. With film, motions can be demonstrated. And to reach struggling students all over the world, it seemed that the time was ripe to use a revolutionary new tool. While the Flesch and Galamian books may be hard to find in small towns in China, Armenia, or Russia, the Internet is becoming omnipresent. A violin technique web site, as such, could exist almost anywhere as a living document. It could be continually updated and expanded. And more, it could be a virtual international community for violin students and aficionados.

August 2001
Selling the idea took patience. I presented the concept to the Starling Foundation in Houston, where they expressed cautious optimism. I then met with Melissa Godoy, director/producer at On Location Multimedia, who had recently wrapped production on Classical Quest, an Emmy Award-winning public television program featuring the Starling Chamber Orchestra. She was most interested, and together with On Location's vice-president at the time, Jerry Smith, we developed a coherent proposal, which we submitted to the Starling Project Foundation.

March 2002
The Starling Project Foundation approved a grant for the proposed website! But, we needed a non-profit fiscal sponsor to manage the account. The Wyoming Fine Arts Center, a hub of fine musical training for children in the Cincinnati area, was invited to be the sponsor. Legal contracts were drawn up, scrutinized, and finally approved. Attorney Tim Matthews, president of On Location, was an excellent architect of the contract among the various organizations. It was time to begin.

Fall 2002
I started writing detailed lesson content and selecting exercise topics and sub-topics to feature on the site. Melissa developed a structure for the content she called, 'the palette for creativity on the violin.' The idea was to be able to see all the techniques available for expression on the violin at a glance through a series of drop-down menus. We wanted to visually portray the violinist's tools in a way that put artistic control in the hands of the player, while at the same time isolating one technique at a time. We also needed to find a way to show beginning, intermediate, and advanced levels of these techniques, as well as use of the techniques in performance. Melissa kept a flowchart going that would not be finalized for the next two years. There was an overwhelming amount of information to structure.

February 11, 2003
I met in New York with Jay K. Hoffman & Associates, a PR firm for some of the most renowned classical musicians, to invite them to handle publicity and the launch of the site. We quickly came to an agreement.

April 24, 2003
Jay K. Hoffman and Associates (Jay Hoffman, Clara Park, and Daisy Cho) came to Cincinnati to meet with myself and Starling Project Foundation Executive Director Nina Perlove, Starling Board member Brittany MacWilliams, and the On Location team who would be creating the website (web developer Clay Beyer, designers Joe Busam and Brad Bowman, and Melissa). Most significantly, Jay Hoffman pointed out a solution to the structural problem caused by quantity. Perhaps it wasn't necessary to show every lesson in a violin curriculum, but rather to focus on significant lessons—master classes, so to speak. I agreed that a website could not possibly replace a violin teacher, but it can demonstrate important concepts and serve as support for teachers. This also helped tie in the art of teaching itself as a serious examination on the site. Why not illustrate selected concepts as a series of master classes? As in any master class, the audience, students and teachers alike, could learn by observing other students and teachers. The concept of 'Violin Masterclass' was born.

We also made major decisions, including restricting the design to HTML technology for access. We knew we would be pushing the envelope anyway with large quantities of streaming media and we didn't want to further burden the users with Flash or other demanding files. We decided to use QuickTime as the streaming media format, since it is the streaming media player most used worldwide. The goal of reaching users in many different countries, including developing countries where broadband is not available, is an ideal we tried to maintain throughout development.

We also decided to target the design to a young audience, but not necessarily just children. The site should be attractive to teenagers and young adults, as well as to teachers and parents.

Finally, because we were locked into a rectangle for the streaming media segments, Melissa called for a more organic, curvaceous feel on the home page. Curves are not easy on the Internet, but Joe Busam and Clay Beyer were up to the task. Joe began the first of two designs that ultimately became our youthful, colorful, and shapely look and feel.

May 20, 2003
May brought another series of meetings with the same cast, plus director of photography Mike Bizzarri. We needed to decide how to proceed with the look and feel of the filmed segments. We knew that the website itself would be a complicated frame around the streaming media. Our singular goal within the streaming media box was to make the faces, hands, and violins pop. We aimed for simplicity and good crisp lighting. After a little experimentation, we settled on a particular shade of blue as our seamless background color, since blue provides enough contrast between almost all shades of flesh and the warm wood of a violin. We quickly dubbed our shade, 'website blue.'

We also noted that camera movement makes file sizes larger and difficult to stream, and that the quick movement of the subjects and their playing would be about all the challenge we could risk. We banned most camera movement and decided to shoot everything as a series of locked down varied focal lengths.