Why I love Suzuki method for music education

I believe there are good reasons for using the Suzuki method for the youngest students, three to six maybe. Their finger strength is very little, and the method simplifies music so that it can be played more easily with weak little fingers: it doesn’t even start using the fourth finger in the first year, only plays in first position for years, and key changes requiring different finger positions are also delayed. Tiny children who couldn’t play other pieces requiring position changes, use of fourth finger, etc. might be able to play Suzuki book one pieces. Likewise, it doesn’t start out by teaching children to read music because it was developed to teach little children who can’t read at all. It’s a nice introduction to music for tiny ones, learning how to replicate a song by listening to the same tape over and over again, and putting your fingers on the fingerboard tapes. After a few years, kids can pretty much play a succession of simple songs, and that’s a good starting position for serious music study. Even our conservatory prep uses Suzuki for the youngest students, before they get a permanent teacher.

We studied at a local Suzuki school for a few years, until we became disenchanted. To be fair to the method, part of our disenchantment was with mismanagement of the school. The teachers rarely stay there for more time than it takes them to get a better job, and it’s hard on a child to have his teacher changed or classes cancelled. But I also believe that more permanent teachers at a better-managed school would still have to work hard to overcome built-in shortcomings of the Suzuki method.

As Isabel says, “everyone learns the exact same songs in the exact same order and you must all sound exactly the same.” One of the problems with this procedure is that the children (I believe inevitably) treat moving to the next song like leveling up in a video game. Student A is considered “better” because he is playing Gossec Gavotte rather than the Happy Farmer. In my experience, children are in such a rush to move on to the next song to catch up or keep ahead that no child ever learns to play a song well and clearly. I wince as I recall our twice-yearly recitals, where children sawed horridly through songs down the Suzuki ladder. Parents were equally caught up in the pressure to advance through the books because it fed into their vanity and hope about their children’s precociousness. But everybody in the audience with a clear mind and without a tin ear was annoyed by the cacophony. Today we use “Suzuki” as a verb to describe sawing through a piece mechanically, out of rhythm and out of tune.

When we switched from the Suzuki method to the traditional method at conservatory prep, I told the Dean I’d rather my son learn to play fewer songs better. In the traditional method, learning to play a song better involves more than just playing the same song over and over again. It may require more hours of scales, finger exercises, bow arm exercises, and etudes in the same key than it does of playing the song itself. My son probably has learned fewer pieces in the past year than he would have if he’d kept with the Suzuki method, but they are harder than the Suzuki pieces he would have learned and I have no doubt whatsoever that he plays them much better than he would had he stayed with Suzuki.

One of the things our teacher focuses on which was absent from my son’s Suzuki study is the development of his ear. The first thing he said was “get rid of those tapes.” I know that within the Suzuki method the universally used fingerboard tapes are eventually surpassed, but I think they are kept for too long entirely, and distract the student from ear development. Students should be figuring out whether they are playing in tune by listening, not faking it by looking at tapes for years. One of the reasons I rarely heard a student at a Suzuki recital play an entire song in tune is the tapes. They allow a student to progress to songs he cannot really hear, and once they slip or the strings stretch the student just carries on out of tune oblivious to the difference. In the traditional method, tapes are removed earlier if used at all, and lessons focus heavily on developing correct intonation through hearing rather than seeing.

Suzuki proponents might argue that because their method focuses on learning songs from recordings it is even more dedicated to ear training. I don’t believe this to be the case. In my experience, intonation is ignored far too much in Suzuki; a microtone off seems to be good enough, where it isn’t with my son’s current teacher (and of course the correction is through hearing it rather than looking at a tape). Recordings are used in Suzuki not because that’s a better way to learn intonation but because they begin with children too young to read, and Suzuki ignores reading music until much later than the traditional method for this reason. This presents a difficult to correct impression to children that what is on the CD is “the music,” instead of what’s on the page being “the music.” Once the kids are into book two, they can no longer hear all the notes from the recordings accurately, and their imitations of what they hear begin to omit notes and simplify rhythms. The teachers begin to have great difficulty in reversing their students’ incorrect learning. Delaying the transition from playing with recordings to playing from sheet music also makes it difficult for children to learn music for which they have no recording. An intermediate child trained in the traditional method can easily play any of the intermediate Suzuki songs by sight; an intermediate child trained solely in Suzuki can’t play an intermediate piece for which no clear recording is available by any method – especially if it includes more than first position.

I believe that the Suzuki method is a good preparation for very young children to begin music study. There is no need, however, for children to begin as young as three to five, and beginning so young has no relation to how well they’ll play as adults. Though the stated ideology of every child being able to make music is beautiful and optimistic, it doesn’t necessarily embody this aspiration in practice. Most children who start Suzuki practice will quit before they are adults, and never touch an instrument again, because they are being forced to do it by their parents, whose emotional investment in having a “prodigy” can be an incredible burden for a youngster. Very few children are self-directed in any meaningful sense at the age of three to six, even “unschooled” children. PT herself says she won’t let her children self-direct themselves to school. Once children reach the age where self-direction becomes more meaningful – probably above ten for most kids – they can learn much more quickly, and can understand the intellectual basis of music much better as well. A motivated teenager could replace ten years of Suzuki study in two years. Pat Goltz gives a personal example and good analysis in “Shinichi Suzuki Had a Good Idea” (google it – PT puts linkers in quarantine).

The children who stick with the Suzuki method for a long time would do well to focus their goals on folk music and oral traditions, because they will be at a disadvantage when it comes to the classical tradition. If a child wants to play chamber music or in an orchestra successfully, he must at the very least modify Suzuki study if not switch to the traditional method entirely in order to learn music theory, reading, and the violin techniques he will need. The traditional method introduces formal music theory and solfege early on, which helps immensely with understanding and correctly playing written music. For collaboration in the classical tradition, this is essential. Children trained with traditional methods will be ready to collaborate meaningfully in classical ensembles sooner (Suzuki students may develop an advantage with folk music that is passed on without writing).

In our experience switching from Suzuki to traditional methods, it is clear to me that my son learned more in one year at the conservatory than he did in three years of the Suzuki method (taught principally by an instructor who studied with Suzuki in Japan). My son likes his lessons more, he likes his peers more, he likes his practice more, and it is more pleasant to listen to him play, especially at recitals. Part of this is having a more serious and reliable teacher (and a more serious school), but part of it is also the change in focus in his studies. As a result of this change, he has better opportunities to participate now in the world of classical music and a higher likelihood of continuing to be a musician for life. This is not to say that these things don’t happen with the Suzuki method; it’s just that, after early childhood the Suzuki method as compared to the traditional method may be more of a hindrance than a help.

Exactly. My child was part of a major metro youth orchestra (auditions required) and the number of Suzuki parents wailing that little Johnny was placed in a lower orchestra than they deserved was astounding. The directors held firm….these kids may have some skill in playing their instrument, but they have never participated in an orchestra and are simply not prepared. On the other hand, the kids who have been in the *public school* orchestra program (ours starts in elementary school) have the same skills AND have learned how to participate in an actual orchestra. What matters is the passion for learning and acquiring music theory….not the method.