Suzuki Lessons (Having Very Little to Do with Music)

It’s probably clear that being part of my kids music education is a big part of my life, it gets a substantial part of my time each day and I put a lot of time into thinking about it. And most people would probably nod and agree “Yeah, music education is great for kids” and leave it at that, but of course, being me and having spent so much time and emotional energy into it, I am surprised at how it has become a part of my identity, and I have been a little frustrated not to have met other parents doing it with whom I can talk about it. Lots of Suzuki parents are a little strange, I think you sort of have to be to look at your three year old and say “Hey, I have an idea, let’s make practicing the violin a part of our daily routine.”

So when I talk about being a Suzuki parent I have no idea what it means to you. Until my own kids were doing it I mostly thought of those other violinists who were learned to play by ear instead of learning to read music when I was a kid, or the freakishly poised Japanese toddlers on television, and it didn’t occur to me my own kids were ever going to be Suzuki kids. Our first ‘cello teacher in Dallas used the books but not the method, and my own sister used the books as her ‘cello teacher had, in a hodge-podge with her own experiences learning music and pedagogy classes from the university. Then we moved to Portland, and the ‘cello teacher Aodan got was really a Suzuki teacher. We had a mixed experience with his brothers’ violin teacher, but she made sure we were really immersed in the method and all of its implications. My sister got her Suzuki qualifications as a teacher as we started becoming real Suzuki students, and she and I have benefited from the other’s perspective in this process, and it’s something I fits naturally with her more empathetic and light-handed yet serious-about-the-music approach to teaching (should mention here that I really wish we were closer geographically so she could teach my son, but not being so, I am on the phone with her all of the time trying to get from her what Suzuki and music education really is about, what it really means).

This is what Suzuki means to me: making listening to the repertoire a part of daily routine, the parent as practice partner, sitting quietly in the lesson taking notes and then using the teacher’s suggestions to guide practice all week. Progressing through the songs in the books in the order they’re given, trusting that the order has its own logic, and watching my five year old get excited recognizing the piece his brother has already played that he is going to play one day. I think ideally we’d get to be part of more regular group classes, but that hasn’t worked for the younger boys with our family’s schedule this year.

So what have I learned from practicing music with my kids?

1) Modelling is a much more effective way of teaching than lecturing. The boys may need suggestions on ways to tweak their technique to get the sound they want, but they’re smart enough to hear the difference and letting them hear and adjust and work on making their own playing get closer to the sound they hear in their heads is much more effective than telling them what to do.

2) They listen better to themselves than to me, so it is more effective to ask them a question “Why do you think it sounds scratchy?” than to say “Hey, use more speed and less pressure and your sound won’t be so scratchy.”

3) The best practice is somewhere between work and play, it is paying attention to a challenge, and because I am trying to help them meet the challenge, I have the responsibility to help define the challenge in small, concrete ways (“Let’s see if we can do ten bows parallel to the bridge”) and create fun ways of representing the accomplishment — a tic tac toe board they get to fill in, or those little barrel of monkey monkeys hanging from a peg or the music stand. I have to learn to make the challenge appropriate, so it doesn’t feel like the finish line is always being moved further away, which would be frustrating, or that it is condescendingly easy, which would feel manipulative.

4) I am a more effective practice partner when I am matter-of-fact. I will empathize “it must be hard to stop playing while your brothers seem to be having fun, so we can go practice, but we need to get this done.” I try to make sure things that need working on are just things that need working on and not moral failures, even if the thing that needs working on is a more basic skill, like stopping and listening, and making sure that things accomplished are celebrated for the discipline and hard work they represent, not just for the skill they show. I do have an emotional response of course, when a small person shows the determination and faith to turn, by practicing, what seemed impossible into something that is a matter of course, whether it’s the concentration to a balance a small toy on the scroll while I play through Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, or getting a difficult bow stroke. It is moving. But that’s different than feeling proud when someone else admires or angry or frustrated when I cannot communicate what I need in the practice.

5) When you make practicing a matter of course, like toothbrushing, and you’re there alongside the child, making it good time that you spend together, the chore-like drudgerous aspect of practice goes away, which has made me re-evaluate a lot of the dreaded and drudgerous chores in my life, and how often there is a voice in my head resenting the unfairness I perceive or how I don’t feel like I don’t have time to do the things I want to.

6) That when the ‘cello teacher told me “When someone asks what you’re working on just say you’re trying to improve tone quality and intonation because that is the goal of the every Suzuki student at every level” there was something deeper there than a glib answer. It’s a letting go of the idea of “advanced” and “beginning” because the progress from one piece to another isn’t entirely arbitrary, but has to do with how much more learning the teacher believes can be wrung out of working on a particular piece for that particular student. Different stages are easier for different kids. I was given a gift as a violinist to get to be a beginner again with each of my kids and heal some of the weird feelings I had about hierarchical rankings of which violinist sits in which chair after auditions. Playing with three different boys with entirely different needs in terms of willingness to confront frustration, abilities to self-regulate, natural inclination, and orientation for my approval has helped me to let go of ideas of “natural talent” and realizing potential. I still have pangs when I hear a fifth grader rocking on a piece I played in high school or when Aodan tells me that the youngest violinist in his orchestra just turned six, but to my great astonishment the kids have internalized so many of the good aspects of Suzuki that they will remind me that what is important to them is the enjoyment of playing together.

7) That old “Process not Products” emphasis is everything. If something tragic happened, I would be grateful for the time I spent connected with my kids, making music with them and not be angry that we had wasted all this time and they’d never get to be the musician I was trying to turn them into (I’d be angry at the universe for a lot of other things, no doubt, but not about time spent wasted practicing). It’s not that the results of practicing are meaningless, it’s just that I cannot be oriented towards results, because learning a new skill ends up being a lot like growing something from a seed, long periods of apparent dormancy when progress is impossible to discern and then, over night, amazing shoots of tender greenness. Each of the three boys I have practiced with seems to go through periods of what I call maintenance practicing — where I am satisfied just at not apparently losing any skills, and then there will be a little leap and suddenly we’re at a new level, and I’ve had to learn that these two things are different aspects of the same process, and it happens in the building a marriage, it happens in trying to develop as a writer, it just is how life is.