Author: Jerry K.
Date: 2000-01-30 14:36
In an earlier post, Ron Wise said:
My kids, on the other hand, can play a
tune along with the radio after an hour or so fiddling around to find out the fingerings on any
new instrument they pick up. The quality of the notes suck but darned if they aren't the correct
ones. This is very frustrating for PaPa.
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I've been reading about the Suzuki Method recently and Ron's comment struck a chord in me. One of the principles of Shinichi Suzuki's method (for teaching violin and piano, mostly, but other instruments are also taught) is to have the kids start off memorising their pieces, then learning to read music at a later time. The result seems to be that they learn to play by ear and sometimes will spontaneously begin to improvise (at least, according to Elizabeth Mills in her book The Suzuki Concept). Mills also speculates that improvisation was much more common in the days of Mozart and Beethoven, and earlier, because back then there was not so much emphasis on notated music, or on teaching the reading of music.
Anyone have experience with the Suzuki Method and what did you think of it? What about the idea of learning by ear first, then learning to read later? Good path to improvisation, or not?
(I'm a soon to be PaPa and am looking for ways make sure my daughter learns everything I didn't! Like perfect pitch and improvisation.)
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The Clarinet BBoard
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