Sazuki method?

[angelcookie]

Do you really have to pay for music lessons? Can kids self teach piano or violin? I'm thinking Suzuki and Montessori

[rbjmartin]

Suzuki method still requires a teacher, and that teacher has to be trained in Suzuki method.

[Quaremerepulisti]

"Self-teaching Suzuki" is a contradiction in terms.  Without knowing how to read music, you won't know which notes to play and when unless someone else shows you.

It is possible to teach yourself using standard pedagogy (you can learn Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge, etc., on your own).  However, lots of bad habits will seep in unless this is at least guided by a knowledgeable teacher.  If anything, even worse for the violin then for the piano.

[Chestertonian]

Is it possible? Yes?  Is it a good idea? It depends.  Self taught usually = self motivated so that already often = stronger neural connections and better practice habits.  I taught Suzuki piano for several years and my students all varied in degrees of internal motivation.  It's easy to teach yourself stuff from watching youtube but a competent teacher will challenge them to grow beyond familiarity and comfort as well as correct bad technique and bad form.  You can inadvertently learn poor technique which takes time to unlearn.

If money is tight I recommend group instruction or spacing lessons further apart.  But that's my 0.02.  I may or may not be a shill for Big Piano.

[Gardener]

My wife grew up learning Suzuki harp (instructed by the woman who assisted Suzuki in developing the harp curriculum), her sister learned Suzuki violin.

They taught it for a while. Their technique was awful, robotic, and had to be corrected by non-Suzuki instructors.

If you want, I can ask her to write out her thoughts on Suzuki and why she moved away from it. Interesting thing about it, her sister, now having learned how to properly play violin, can immediately tell a Suzuki student from non-Suzuki.

[Lynne]

I may or may not be a shill for Big Piano.

Gasp!

[Non Nobis]

Self taught usually = self motivated so that already often = stronger neural connections and better practice habits.  I taught Suzuki piano for several years and my students all varied in degrees of internal motivation.  ...

Both my great-grandmother and my grandmother taught piano, and they were fairly well known.  My grandmother taught at our state's conservatory of music. My mom didn't take it up.  I took piano lessons for a year or two (not from my grandmother) while I was a child, but after we moved we didn't have room or money for a piano. Years later, when I moved out on my own and had a good job, I bought a piano before a TV.  That sounds promising, but after 2-3 more years of lessons  I have hardly touched the piano (even after I got rid of the TV!)  I felt like I was an eternal beginner and wasn't really enjoying it.  Also I had need of "stronger neural connections and better practice habits"! But the piano is still here and I don't have arthritis in my hands yet, so I suppose anything is possible.  But I think I would be starting pretty much from scratch; also my hands are a little shaky.

Too late to ask my great-grandmother or my grandmother about how they taught!

[OCLittleFlower]

1) To excel in anything, you need a good and knowledgeable mentor.  Yes, you can self teach a bit, perhaps to a low-intermediate level or maybe even beyond, if you have talent.  Excellence, however, requires that guidance.  It's very sad when a talented person has to spend a lot of time correcting self-taught mistakes.  In sports, it can even be physically dangerous -- luckily music doesn't carry that risk.

2) I'm with Gardener on Suzuki, from what little I know of it.  Many of the Asian music "wunderkinds" around these parts use the method -- they all seem like robots, and they all seem the same.  While it is possible to develop a systematic method of teaching that still produces individual performers with artistic expression (example: the famous Vaganova method of classical ballet) it is rare.

[Gardener]

1) To excel in anything, you need a good and knowledgeable mentor.  Yes, you can self teach a bit, perhaps to a low-intermediate level or maybe even beyond, if you have talent.  Excellence, however, requires that guidance.  It's very sad when a talented person has to spend a lot of time correcting self-taught mistakes.  In sports, it can even be physically dangerous -- luckily music doesn't carry that risk.

2) I'm with Gardener on Suzuki, from what little I know of it.  Many of the Asian music "wunderkinds" around these parts use the method -- they all seem like robots, and they all seem the same.  While it is possible to develop a systematic method of teaching that still produces individual performers with artistic expression (example: the famous Vaganova method of classical ballet) it is rare.

Oh, music does carry that risk of injury. Repetitive use injuries from bad form/posture, specifically.

[Jayne]

One could incorporate some of the Suzuki method principles into one's children's experience of music.  It emphasizes exposing children to lots of good music from a very young age. The theory is that small children absorb music in a way similar to the way they learn language - by immersion.  Suzuki method also encourages performance from an early age to help children become accustomed to it and not become nervous.

However, I agree with the other comments here about the need for a teacher.

[GeorgeT]

I started teaching myself music at the age of 16. I used Hal Leonard books. They taught musical notation. I was very self disciplined at the time. Some funny accidents happened along the way.

When I learned about notes lasting 4 beats, etc, I thought that meant that they had to be played 4 times, etc.. Also, I was not familiar with most of the songs I was playing and I was too cheap to buy the cassette that had examples of the songs. As such, some songs sounded really choppy and really didn't flow.

But none of this discouraged me. I truly thought that this was how the songs were supposed to sound. And, when I learned I was wrong, the problem was easy to fix.

I am certainly not a master musician. But I can play almost anything I care to play. And, at any rate, my ideal for music always involved simple instrumentation. So, I guess it depends on what you want to achieve.

A career in music seems lousy to me, any way you want to cut it. If you are teaching children how to play music in order to have fun and learn discipline, I'd say make sure it is done in that order. It's easy to crush someone's love of playing with too much pushing. They might play well as long as they're in the program, but they may also just drop the whole thing once they are done. I guess genuine interest and attention span also factors in here.

[Gardener]

My SIL has been integrating the Ward method of teaching chant into her basic music theory portion of instruction to great success. The kids really like it, and it breaks things up from the sort of boring, typical modern methods of instruction.

One of the things she demonstrated to us was the use of flashcards to build on principles. After the child learns the principles, she lets them choose which combo of flash cards to sing, play, or hear. This allows them to match their anticipation of the sound, rhythm, etc., to what it actually is. Result: They know by looking what something should sound like and if one reverses this, they know by hearing it in their head what it should look like. It's my understanding that she does this w/ each principle and then combines them when the child has mastered each one.

[OCLittleFlower]

1) To excel in anything, you need a good and knowledgeable mentor.  Yes, you can self teach a bit, perhaps to a low-intermediate level or maybe even beyond, if you have talent.  Excellence, however, requires that guidance.  It's very sad when a talented person has to spend a lot of time correcting self-taught mistakes.  In sports, it can even be physically dangerous -- luckily music doesn't carry that risk.

2) I'm with Gardener on Suzuki, from what little I know of it.  Many of the Asian music "wunderkinds" around these parts use the method -- they all seem like robots, and they all seem the same.  While it is possible to develop a systematic method of teaching that still produces individual performers with artistic expression (example: the famous Vaganova method of classical ballet) it is rare.

Oh, music does carry that risk of injury. Repetitive use injuries from bad form/posture, specifically.

Oh yes -- I was more thinking about people like the kid I used to babysit.  She took gymnastics and would try to teach herself new vaults using the sofa.    So I meant more -- serious, dangerous injury, even break your neck sorts of things.

[Gardener]

1) To excel in anything, you need a good and knowledgeable mentor.  Yes, you can self teach a bit, perhaps to a low-intermediate level or maybe even beyond, if you have talent.  Excellence, however, requires that guidance.  It's very sad when a talented person has to spend a lot of time correcting self-taught mistakes.  In sports, it can even be physically dangerous -- luckily music doesn't carry that risk.

2) I'm with Gardener on Suzuki, from what little I know of it.  Many of the Asian music "wunderkinds" around these parts use the method -- they all seem like robots, and they all seem the same.  While it is possible to develop a systematic method of teaching that still produces individual performers with artistic expression (example: the famous Vaganova method of classical ballet) it is rare.

Oh, music does carry that risk of injury. Repetitive use injuries from bad form/posture, specifically.

Oh yes -- I was more thinking about people like the kid I used to babysit.  She took gymnastics and would try to teach herself new vaults using the sofa.    So I meant more -- serious, dangerous injury, even break your neck sorts of things.

Never underestimate the danger of the piccolo.

[Graham]

If you are teaching children how to play music in order to have fun and learn discipline, I'd say make sure it is done in that order.

Isn't this a basic principle for teaching anything? If it isn't it should be.