New three-part professional development series gives K–12 orchestra directors and private studio teachers a research-backed on-ramp to teach electric strings, effects, and modern ensemble skills, at no cost.
NEWBURGH, N.Y., June 9, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Electric Violin Labs (EVL), the education and performance platform founded by Dr. Jess Ingrassellino, today announced free summer professional development for string educators. The three-workshop series is open to K–12 orchestra directors, private studio teachers, music administrators, and university string faculty across the United States. Find registration and full series details here.
The series addresses a widening gap in string education: students grow up listening to film scores, hip-hop, lo-fi, video game music, and string-driven indie, while most classroom string programs remain rooted exclusively in classical pedagogy and analog tools. According to EVL, this gap is one of the leading reasons students leave strings between middle and high school.
According to a 2024 peer-reviewed study published in Frontiers in Psychology, “autonomy, competency, and relatedness” are the “critical” internal factors shaping whether students continue or discontinue music education. Electric Violin Labs seeks to help teachers in “providing an autonomy-supportive, musically stimulating, and encouraging environment may prove more important than any predispositions to musical learning” (Kavčič Pucihar et al., 2024).
The free series includes three 60-minute workshops:
- From Classical to Contemporary: Expanding Your String Program — a “translate, don’t replace” framework for adding contemporary repertoire to existing concert cycles.
- What Students Actually Learn from Electric Strings: STEAM + Music Integration — the academic and standards case for administrators, mapped to the National Core Arts Standards.
- Using Effects to Teach Musical Concepts and Creative Listening — effects pedals as a teaching surface for timbre, dynamics, and form.
Each workshop is standards-aligned, administrator-friendly, and produces a classroom-ready artifact teachers can use immediately. Participants receive teacher and student-facing worksheets, deck outlines, and assessment tools.
The free series is the on-ramp to EVL’s full ten-workshop educator curriculum, which continues with paid deep dives on budget-conscious lab building, choice-based assessment, signal chain instruction, improvisation, and looping.
Electric Violin Labs was founded by Dr. Jess Ingrassellino, a software engineer, educator, and electric violinist whose work bridges traditional string pedagogy with contemporary performance technology. EVL’s curriculum is built on the principle that effects and electric strings are another avenue to teach core musical concepts already at the heart of string education. Free introduction to electric strings curriculum is available here.
CONTACT: drjess@electricviolinlabs.com
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SOURCE Electric Violin Labs
