Reverse-engineering the Suzuki method.

I like to get out and about in the afternoons, but I don’t much like going to too many appointments in one week.  Already our family has swimming lessons on Tuesday evenings, an early-childhood music class on Monday mornings, and a monthly science class at the local nature center.  So I have been reluctant to add musical instrument lessons for Oscar, even though I’d like him to start.  The primary reason is my resistance to adding yet another specific time and place that I have to show up. 

I only have one homeschooled child so far.  I can’t let this get out of hand so soon.

The secondary reason:  I’m not sure that Oscar’s ready to handle an expensive musical instrument.  Every time I get my guitar out, if I turn my back for a moment, he can’t stop himself from turning all the pegs.

But I’ve seen two little friends really bloom into loving their Suzuki violin and guitar lessons, respectively, and I know Oscar is a bit jealous of them.   Finally I hit on a temporary solution:  the recorder.

I knew already that any lessons before age eight, I wanted to do in the traditional Suzuki method.  (In that method, the parent begins by taking lessons herself with the child present; later, the parent and child take lessons together.  Also, the pieces are learned by memory at first rather than introducing note-reading, and attention is paid from the beginning to beautiful tone production.)  I hear that many Suzuki teachers in the U. S. have given up on getting parents to take lessons with their kids, which is too bad.  It sounds like fun to me!

But with a little bit of research, I discovered that we could probably learn the recorder together, at home, with some self-discipline on my part.   There are many advantages:

• The instrument is inexpensive — five dollars for one that looks and sounds sufficently important and impressive to a kindergartener.  I bought four!  (Now I need to buy some even cheaper ones for my toddler to play with.)
• It’s also highly portable and easy to care for.
• It’s simple enough that, because I can already read music well and my ear is reasonably well trained, I can learn the basics myself pretty quickly.
• The Suzuki books and CD are available for the recorder, as are a number of other resources (see, e.g., this one.)

I spent some time interviewing my two friends, the parents (respectively) of the little violin and guitar students, about their lessons:  what happened on the first day, how the lesson goes, what the kids learned first, how many pieces they learn at a time, how long they take to learn a piece, what skills are covered in what order.  I learned that the "syllabus," so to speak, is highly dependent on the instrument itself.  For example, the boy learning guitar learned how to hold his guitar and play a note right away; the girl learning violin spent a whole month just learning how to hold the bow.  The first pieces learned, too, are carefully chosen to complement the skills needed to learn to hold the instrument and produce good tone.  I also learned a few details, e.g., that the student learns to "take a bow" at the end of every lesson and practice, and that the family is supposed to play the CD as much as possible at home.

Then I turned to the Suzuki book, which had some basic messages for the beginning student and instructor, and tried to figure out from the order of the early pieces how one would proceed.  As far as I can tell, you start by covering up most of the holes with tape, and the first lessons are about producing the difficult low notes without squeaking, which requires the learner to work from the start at blowing gently.  (Most other recorder methods begin with the "easy" higher notes.)   Pieces of tape are removed one at a time as the student learns fingering, but in the very beginning he can focus on breathing and tone production.

I’m listening to the CD (which has harpsichord and viol backup, and sounds very cool and medieval).  I’m also working my way through the first few pieces, and Oscar is begging to be allowed to have "his" recorder, which is still locked away in the cabinet, or at least to be allowed to hold mine.  A little anticipation is good for him, I think. 

I plan to do a "lesson" once a week and practice daily, just as if we were doing traditional lessons.  I’ve no illusions that without an instructor I’ll be able to reproduce the "real" Suzuki method, but I’m hoping I can approximate it and at least learn whether Oscar needs to be signed up for outside lessons or whether he even really would want to.  I’ll write more about this as we go.