Best Beginner Violin Books: A Violin Teacher's Ultimate Guide

As a violin teacher, I’m always on the lookout for the best violin books for beginners. In my studio, I have a filing cabinet packed full of violin method books. It might be a little bit of addiction, but I can’t help but always wonder if there’s a better way to teach something, a better violin method book for young children, a better book geared towards adult beginners. As a result, I’ve accumulated many beginner violin books. Whether you are looking for some note reading help, some easy jazz or fiddle songs for beginners, or just a “how-to” guide, here’s my list of the 10 best violin books for beginner players!

(Also check out my top picks for scale books, hymn books, and fiddle books!)

Best Beginner Violin Books for Kids

Learning the Violin, Book One

For a young child starting out, trying to bow, place left hand fingers correctly, and read music all at the same time can be very overwhelming. It’s also frustrating to just pluck open strings for weeks before ever learning a song. I love this book because it solves all those issues while making it fun for young beginners. There’s some helpful pages teaching children about the violin and how to take care of it, followed by some pages on the bow exercises. Before getting saturated with the bow, the book moves on to the left hand (playing pizzicato without the bow), and students have a few songs featuring each finger before moving on to real songs that actually sound good! Students learn how to play the violin without having to also learn to read music at the same time. Once students have a handle on the basics, the book introduces note reading. 

This book is also great for adults if you don’t want to be inundated with note reading while trying to learn violin basics.

Scaley Monsters

This is a great, fun, simple scale book for kids. Each scale and arpeggio is presented with a finger chart and a fun dinosaur rhythm to change things up. There’s also a song associated with each scale.

I Can Read Music

This is my favorite book for learning the violin notes, developing visual coordination with your left hand, and working on muscle memory. While the title might make this sound like it’s geared toward children, this is a great book for anyone looking for more practice note reading. Whether you are brand new to music, or maybe it’s just been a while, this book will quickly orient you with the notes on the violin. There are two pages per lesson, one on note reading and one on rhythm. I love that the book is split up this way since many other method books combine note reading and rhythms, making it difficult to focus on anything. The rhythm pages are great for working on your bow technique too! There’s also a Volume 2 for more advanced rhythms and notes.

Best Beginner Violin Books for Adults and Children

First Position Scale Studies

This scale book presents a varied approach to scales. Each scale features several pages with varying rhythms to keep things interesting!

Open String Bow Workouts for Violin

For violin students wanting a good bow warm-up, this is a perfect book. While nothing but open strings may sound boring, this book is anything but! Focus on big string crossings, varying bow speeds, planning out bow usage, and so much more.

Best Beginner Violin Method Books

A method book is a “how-to” book that often includes pictures showing students how to hold the bow and violin, where to put certain fingers, how to read music, etc. If you teaching yourself violin, I would recommend one of these method books.

Essential Elements for Violin

This is my go-to book for starting students out on the violin. I’ve gone through a lot of method books and I find that this book offers plenty for technique while still having fun, recognizable songs.

All for Strings

This method book is my pick for adult beginners. This is a great “no nonsense” beginner violin book. The first few pages teach many notes and songs without staff music, allowing students to develop the basics before worrying about note reading. The book contains many tunes you’ll recognize and enjoy playing. I also love the second All for Strings book and their companion theory books.

Best Beginner Violin Solo Books

I like students to always be working on solos in addition to method books and scale books. These are my favorite beginner violin books featuring longer songs.

Suzuki Violin School, Volume 1 and Volume 2

No other book that I know of has beginner level songs that are as pretty as Suzuki. You don’t have to learn via the Suzuki method to get a lot out of these books. Volume 1 starts out with some easy folk songs but soon gets into more of the traditional classical music. For those students wanting to focus on classical violin music, this is the beginning book for you. Definitely supplement with a note reading book as Suzuki starts off with notes all over the A string and E string. I like to take students through Volume 2. After the second book, I find students progress better by playing through entire concerti rather than continuing with Volume 3.

Mark O’Connor Violin Method Books

Mark O’Connor is perhaps the world’s most famous fiddler. His method books offer a wide variety of musical styles like traditional American fiddle, jazz , ragtime, and much more. The first book is easy for beginners and each book offers even more great songs and technique builders. This book is a must in my studio. All of my students love it!

Learn to Play Irish Fiddle

For those of you wanting a different approach to learning the violin, this is the book for you. Unlike many other fiddle books, this one starts right from the beginning with open strings and basic rhythms. There’s also some great information on how to play for self-learners. My favorite part about this book is that the songs actually sound awesome even though they start out only using one finger. Each new tune adds a new finger so you can start fiddling as soon as you learn how to put a left hand finger down! I would recommend supplementing this book with a note reading book since it focuses more on playing rather than note-reading and left hand muscle memory.

These are my favorite beginner violin books, but of course, I’m always excited to find more. Let me know what books you love! Happy Practicing!