new students with Suzuki background

[Bob]

"A family from my school recently asked me to teach piano lessons to their children ages 4, 6, and 9. The children previously studied Suzuki piano which I am not familiar with. Any suggestions on where to start with them at our first lessons??"



(Bob stole this question!  )

[pianistimo]

first, i would ask why they are switching methods?  if they aren't really wanting to switch methods, but just teachers - i would refer them to another suzuki teacher.  it's a specific way of going about things from the very beginning.

imo, i am against ear training ONLY from the very beginning.  the reason being, is that my bro never learned to sight read and completely relied on his ear.  it becomes a matter of practically fighting to get him to try to sight read.

i'd divide the lessons up (but first tell the mother that you will not - if you don't want to- be teaching strictly suzuki).  have them explain and show what they have learned so far. then, go ahead and pick up where they left off in suzuki for the first 10-15 minutes so they have continuity.  go on to the next piece - but tell them that you are letting these pieces be 'ear training pieces.'  do whatever the book says - or suzuki book that you pick up.

then the next 10-15 minutes explain what you want to help them learn and how YOU go about it.  give them YOUR method book, too.  and take time to go through whatever exercise books (i like 'a dozen a day' - as you can start to connect them and work out endurance as well as finger dexterity).  tell them how you want them to organize their practice time.  i always tell mine to start out with at least 10 minutes of warm-up exercises, scales, and chords.  then, to YOUR method first for 20 minutes.  and, end with suzuki (easiest for them to just hear via tape or however they've been learning).  then, they'll still have the repertoire they learned so quickly - but also be working up the sightreading to the same level and potential.

perhaps suzuki has changed in the last years - and your beginning students don't have a problem with sightreading. i'm just saying what happened to my brother.

[gruffalo]

what is suzuki training?

[leahcim]

"A family from my school recently asked me to teach piano lessons to their children ages 4, 6, and 9. The children previously studied Suzuki piano which I am not familiar with. Any suggestions on where to start with them at our first lessons??"

Teach them the way you do everyone else if that works, but wear a crash helmet

[cjp_piano]

I don't know too much about Suzuki except that it's a lot of playing by ear and learning by imitating and listening.  There's not alot of note-reading/sight-reading.  The comparison has been made to children learning how to imitate speech and language, and then LATER learning how to read it and write it.  Also, in Japan (where Suzuki taught of course) children had good music classes where everyone learned to read music!  So Suzuki didn't focus on that.

So you may find that their music-reading skills are not balanced with their playing ability, at least according to what we normally expect.  (Some teachers may think this is fine, others may not.)

But whatever experience students have had in the past, I would say just teach them like you usually do: help them improve! Where are they now and how can they be better?

I wouldn't say, "we're gonna do things MY way", I would just DO it my way.  Don't tell them that its going to be different, just say, "let's do this, . . try it this way,  . . . etc."

Good Luck

[gruffalo]

are there any well known pianists that have been brought up on suzuki?

[kelly_kelly]

Suzuki worked well (in my case)... but I didn't start with it. I had learned to read music long before I went to a Suzuki teacher, and started on bk. 2. My younger sister started with Suzuki. She's been playing for 1 1/2 yrs, and she can't read music, which I think is a problem, as my teacher seems to be unfazed by this fact. But as long as students learn to read eventually (preferably by book 2), it should be fine. And of course I'm talking about viola, but I think it should apply in general.     

[alwaystheangel]

Yeah, Suzuki was a good idea especially for the blind!  (my first teacher was a Suzuki teacher) I found it very frusterating after a year or so of Suzuki simply because the music got too complicated to hear and simply play like you are supposed to do.  But, in 2 years of Suzuki I was playing at a grade 5 RCM level.  But,  We ending up quitting Suzuki and I had to start right back at square one to learn how to read music.  I'm still very weak at sight reading and it's 10 years later.  It was also very difficult for me to go from playing grade 5 to preliminary Hal Lenord or whatever I started again with.  In a way I may as well have just started then instead of taking USzuki.  I think that you need to slowly teahc them music and wean them off of the method don't do it immediately as it is so frustering for the student, you really have no idea until you've been trhough it.  It's kind of like being a world class runner, hitting your head and having to learn how to walk again,  I'ts very frusterating so just make sure that you take that into consideration when you teach them otherwise they may get too frusterated and quit on you and that's such a shame!

[kelly_kelly]

I think you are supposed to read music with Suzuki. I mean, they have music books, which implies that the student should know how to read music. I think only book 1 (and maybe part of book 2) should be learned completely by ear. That's what my teacher does at any rate.

[alwaystheangel]

I got to the end of book two and was starting book three when we decided that this wasn't working.  The teacher was trying to teach me to read but she was really poor at it.  so we changed.

[balkanshpe]

Suzuki and Yamaha training sets the kids up for failure when it comes to learning how to read the language. I have had MANY transfer students who were suzuki trained- and- I taught the Yamaha method for several years out of school- and both methods did the kids a great disservice. If anything- they are extremely frustrated as their reading abilities are way behind their playing abilities.

If I were you- I would start them from the very beginning with an advanced piano method for beginners. This way- the book progresses faster but they will still get all of the benefits of learning how to read. Also- remind them that they will be frustrated- but it will only be temporary.

[galonia]

I have had successes with children who have been learning using the Suzuki method for up to four years before they came to me.  They could not read a note, which was actually not the most frustrating part - the worst thing was, because they are taught to find the sounds by listening, they will play wrong note after wrong note until they work out the right one, and then they continue with the rest of the piece.  This is completely opposite to the way I was taught, which is you know the right note and you hit it, and you certainly don't hang around on a wrong note until you get it right - you keep going, and make sure you correct it during practice time.

I don't know about the Suzuki method, so I don't know if this just happens to be these kids - one child in particular had this bad habit ingrained very deeply, so maybe her teacher just applied the methods incorrectly.

But the way I taught these children to sight-read is simply to concentrate more on sight-reading.  I kept them on pieces around the same level that they were at when they came to me, I don't see the need to bore a child with a beginners piano method when they have already been playing for some years.  But I actually have a separate part of the lesson devoted to honing sight-reading skills, and I simply gave Suzuki-background students more of that sort of time, and taught that part of the lesson more intensely.  It takes some time, but they do catch up.