The Difference Between Traditional & The Suzuki Method

What is the difference between traditional method and the Suzuki method?

     Well, the main difference that some people already know is that traditional music teaching methods are based off of learning by note-reading and the Suzuki method is based off of learning by rote or by ear. Some people have had problems with the Suzuki method due to some students having difficulties with notereading later on, but a good suzuki teacher knows that even if they are learning by ear, they also need to be learning how to read from day one.

     The biggest difference between traditional and Suzuki methods are parents involvement. What other activities for children do you learn alongside your child? Dance? Soccer? Swimming? Nope! When your child struggles with something in these activities, do you find yourself wishing you knew how to better help them?

     As a Suzuki teacher, it is our job to not only educate the child, but to educate the parent as well and really moreso. The parent needs to know how to do everything the child is learning (technique, scales, etudes) up through the end of book one as a minimum. On top of this, the parent needs to know practicing strategies and how to implement daily practice into their already crazy schedules!

This is ESSENTIAL to the success of the child, because with other activities, it is common practice to drop the child off, and pick them up when practice or rehearsal is over. Music is incredibly complicated and with a parents help, a child can progress so much faster and therefore stay motivated! Without parents help, the teacher often finds themselves teaching the same thing in every lesson and parents end up wasting their hard earned money.

     The biggest advantage to having parents involved with the child’s music lessons, is that they can help oversee that repetitions are quality repetitions and not just quantity. Children will want to sit down and just rush through everything and say they’ve done it. BUT that doesn’t help them learn or master anything.

     A good Suzuki teacher is patient not only with the students, but with the parents as they try to figure out how to make the method work for them. It can be a challenge, but I guarantee the outcome is SO incredibly worth it.

     Another major difference between traditional and Suzuki methods, are that the Suzuki method’s priority is actually not on learning music at all! It’s on building good character!

We focus on yes, the obvious like daily practicing, which builds discipline… but there are some major underlying themes that music can teach us about real life. Such as concepts like “chunking”. When we get overwhelmed, instead of giving up, we break things down into tiny “chunks” and accomplish one chunk at a time, until we can master the bigger chunks! I recently got told by a non-musical mentor, that I was letting my to-do list overwhelm me and they proceeded to hand me an article to read about “chunking”. What a kick I got out of that! All the lessons I teach my students, can apply to my own life as well! How about yours? Do you need to add some “chunking” to your own to-do list? I know I do!

     Good character also means that when we make a mistake, we don’t just repeat the same mistake over and over again and not stop, slow down, and try to fix it! It also means that even if we have a hard time with those mistakes, we do NOT give up and build grit and resilience to our failures. We use failure as the best teacher out there!

     How you approach your child’s Suzuki music lessons, is how you teach your child to approach life themselves. You lead, by example! It can be really tough to hear sometimes, but truth is the only way to get better at something. For example, if you let the child get away with not practicing their minimum requirements, you are telling that child it is okay to superficially approach any challenge or commitment in their future lives. OUCH, right!?

     

     The Suzuki method is set up in such a wooonderful way because the concepts build upon one another in a sequential way. You start with learning the foundations in the twinkles, and reinforce those concepts throughout the rest of the books. So it is REALLY important to master these techniques in the very beginning! If you let or encourage a child to play pieces ahead of their current piece, even though they have no idea what techniques are needed to play those pieces, you are saying “It’s okay to not work hard on what you are supposed to do, before what you want to do. It’s okay not to master something really well, before moving on to the next concept!” Again, OUCH!!

Not to mention that for every time you practice something wrong, you have to practice it right two times because of our best friend and our worst enemy… muscle memory! Ugh!

If you want to give the child something different to work on, find out their interests and let them explore that! There are so many beginner, big note Disney song books, Taylor Swift sheet music, etc. etc.. Or have them pick a song they really love and try to figure out the notes by ear… whatever you have to do, to keep them motivated and engaged, but NOT trying to sneak forward in the method book!

     These are things that can sometimes be difficult to think about in the moment, when you’re tired and exhausted from a long day. Trust me, I get it! Although I don’t have children, I teach long hours sometimes and run two separate companies and yet STILL have to sit down and make myself practice. Pablo Casals, a legendary cellist that significantly contributed to the world of cello, was asked at age 90 why he still practiced? His answer was “Because I think I’m making progress!”

One comment I have gotten from a lot of former students’ parents is that “So-and-so really enjoyed lessons with you, you find a way to make it fun and more interesting than our current teacher”. I’m not saying this to stroke my own ego, I’m saying this because if you do not make something fun for a child, that child will begin to resent it and dislike it, eventually getting so sick and tired of it they will convince you to let them quit. Perhaps it’s because I have ADHD which is a blessing as well as a curse. It helps me sometimes see through the eyes of a child, which clearly screams at me “I want to like this, but you’re making this too complicated and boring for me!” Of course with anything in life, there is a good balance that needs to be had. If you’re having too much fun, you’re not getting anything done. At the same time, you need to be engaged or you won’t learn!

I will share strategies for making at-home practice fun at a later date.

     My point today, is that I too often hear parents say “Johnny is tired of this piece and wants to move on”. In traditional methods, they do “move on” very quickly. But they take much longer to master skills, and their tone and abilities suffer because of that. By asking your teacher to move on, you are enabling the child’s short attention span and you are teaching them to allow their frustration to win. You are allowing them to not master something to the best of their ability. You are saying “teacher, IIII am bored of this and want Johnny to move on….” But isn’t the greater lesson for your child, to work really hard at something and polish it to a level of excellence?

I hope you have this session helpful! Please send me ideas for future sessions! I cannot help you, if I do not know the struggle! 

Happy Practicing!!

-Ms. Leilah

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