I’ve been hearing a lot back and forth lately about whether a kid should learn how to play a given musical insrument (in most cases it’s a piano or violin) via something called the “Suzuki method” or not.
As it seems impossible to get a straight (i.e. non-biased) answer out of these arguers, I was wondering this: what *is[/i[ the Suzuki method? Why do people argue over its alleged virtues?
… and Google was the first friend I consulted. But how impersonal is that?
Suzuki method emphasizes parental involvement and learning by ear from recordings. This often produces musicians who are not good at reading sheet music. I guess I’m an extreme example since my father actually went as far as to take lessons himself. (Probably just an excuse to do something he’d wanted to do) I went through over 8 years of violin lessons and I still have trouble playing anything I haven’t heard before.
The Suzuki Method:
A few problems:
the above is from John Kendall’s artical in the
Music Educators Journal; Jul96, Vol. 83 Issue 1, p43
(this is just a small part of the article, and falls under fair use, I believe)
This author seems to be very “pro” this method.
I learned to play the violin through the Suzuki method from the age of 8 or 9. Actually, I was considered a bit on the old side at that point – most of the kids starting were about 5 or 6 or younger.
Fortunately, I had taken some guitar lessons around age 6 or 7, so I already had some rudimentary knowledge of reading music. However, while I did learn to play the violin, I’ve always been crap at what musicians call “sight reading,” which means being handed a sheet of unfamiliar music and being able to play it just as you read it off the page. In effect, in order to be able to learn music, I have to take it home, read it and play it slowly – when I am finally able to play a music I’m relying just as much on my “finger” memory as on the sheet music. The sheet music to some extent is giving cues to my fingers, which do much of the work on their own.
The “dangers” listed in the second quoted passage (in Garfield226’s post) seem more dangers of taking things to extremes, not dangers of the method as applied by a good teacher.
Paidhi girl takes violin lessons–she’s six. There’s no push to make her play more and more complicated things just for the heck of it–she moves on to the next piece in the series when she’s ready. And each piece is only slightly more complicated than the one before–it might introduce one new fingering thing, or one new rhythmic pattern, or whatever. None of this making a three year old play Mozart business. As far as reading music goes, she does get a bit of that in her lessons and has some to practice–but good sightreading takes quite some time and effort to develop. I don’t think eight years of violin lessons is neccesarily enough, even if it wasn’t the Suzuki method one learned by. I learned to read music in grade school, but wasn’t fluent by any means. I took flute lessons in high school, very much reading music for my lessons, and was still slow at it. It wasn’t until after four years of nearly daily sightreading practice in college–I mean a class just in sightreading and ear training, not general music or instrumental lessons–that I became even remotely good at it. And this was after ten years of already knowing how to read music and taking non-Suzuki lessons.
I would say, however, that the Suzuki method in the hands of an inflexible teacher would likely be a problem with some students. My daughter’s teacher tailors things to her (and the other students’) needs. She’ll bring in a piece that isn’t in the “program” if she feels it will fit the student’s level and help them along to the next “new thing” they have to learn, for instance. She works with each individual student, not just forcing them along a pre-determined track. If a teacher isn’t willing to do that, though, I can see there would be potential problems. I wouldn’t be the least suprised to discover that it was the abilities and attitudes of a given individual teacher, rather than adherence to a given method, that determines the success of a program.
I actually started doing the Suzuki method when I was a little under 4 years old. I played consistently for at least 14 years, although in the past 4 or so I haven’ t played very much. I’d say that I learned to sight read pretty well, and that sight reading was actually a pretty large part of my musical education. I can’t say exactly how closely my teacher taught to the proscribed method, but I’d imagine it was what Dr. Suzuki had in mind. Like Bren mentioned above, each song progresses in difficulty just a little bit, usually focusing on a new shifting pattern or harmonics or what have you. As for kids playing Mozart and Bach, I will say that I defintely played Vivaldi, Dvorak, Seitz, etc. when I was under 8 years old. Was this harmful to me? I can’t imagine why. I learned to play them for the technical skills, and when I became older, I went back to them with a view of developing them in a more musical sense. My teacher also would incoporate other music that wasn’t in the books when she thought appropriate.
I really can’t see why people think this would be harmful to a child. The only danger I can see is from a parent or teacher trying to create their own little child prodigy. This could come about from any method though.
I say, start the kids young, if they show interest, keep with it. Anything that keeps parents involved in their children’s interests is positive. Assuming that the parent keeps a healthy view of it, of course.
From encountering many many suzuki-tutored young musicians, I’ve come to the conclusion works no better or worse than ‘traditional’ teaching…and just like usual methods, it entirely depends on the quality of the individual teacher and on the teacher-pupil relationship.
In fact, any half-decent music teacher dealing with youung children should in any case be doing things very similarly to Suzuki method - copying and repetition, playing by ear, game-play, etc. Decide on the basis of the teacher, not the name of the method.
Most string players I knew when I was in school learned through the grade school strings program, myself included. The few people in my high school orchestra who did not learn through the public school system were usually taught using the Suzuki method through private instruction. From personal experience, the two friends I had back then who learned young using the Suzuki method of listening to the pieces on tape before playing them could not count. They could duplicate rhythms, but could not sightread decently and had problems with off-beats, syncopation, and complicated rhythms. String players in general get a bad reputation for not being able to count because of the Suzuki method.
However, one can still use the Suzuki method, or a modified version of, and the books and still learn how to count and sightread. I’ve always used the books and have never once used the accompanying tapes.
The books themselves are great because they are well-known classical pieces arranged in order of increasing difficulty and skill. The books don’t have any technical or scale exercises though.
The books are a quick way of gauging a player’s proficiency as well. If I tell another string player that I haven’t played in a long time and am currently redoing viola book 4, they know about what skill level I am. Now if I can just get myself back up to book 6…
This sounds very much to me like Professor Harold Hill’s “Think Method” from The Music Man. Maybe Harold was just a little ahead of his time.