Lightly Row
A German folk tune — Hänschen klein ("Little Hans") — that became the English nursery song "Lightly Row". It's Suzuki's second piece, and it's built to teach one thing: dividing the bow.
"Lightly row, lightly row"
How to play it
Play the two short notes (E, C♯) in the UPPER half of the bow, then the long note in a full down-bow. All on the A string. The classic drill: divide the bow in your mind into two halves — quarters in one half, the long note across both.
"O'er the glassy waves we go"
How to play it
A clean walk up the A string — 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 — then the repeated E's. Keep every finger down as you climb, so the hand builds its shape once and holds it. Even bows, upper half.
Those two lines together are the A section. The whole tune is A – A′ – B – A′ — the form is repetitive, so once A is solid you're most of the way there.
The middle — "Let the breezes blow" (the B section)
How to play it
Four repeated 1st-finger B's, then a step up to D; then four repeated high-2 C♯'s, then up to E. The repeated notes are the test — completely even bows, no bump when nothing in the left hand changes. Small strokes, upper half. Then A′ finishes the tune.
A′ — the answer that lands home
How to play it
Starts like line 1 — E C♯ C♯, D B B — but then instead of climbing away, it steps out an A-major chord (A C♯ E, then E again) and settles on the open A, a whole note, held. Slow the bow into that final A and let it ring. This same line comes after the B section too — the tune is A, A′, B, A′.
The one thing this tune is for
Bow division — deciding, before you play, which part of the bow each note gets, so you never run out of bow or pile up at the frog. Short notes: less bow. Long notes: more.
The usual mistake
Running out of bow on the half notes because the quarters before them used too much. Plan it: the two quarters take the upper half, the half note takes a whole bow from there. And on the repeated notes (the B section), letting the bow lurch even though the left hand is doing nothing — keep it dead even.