 The Clarinet BBoard
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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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Author: Ginny
Date: 2000-01-30 17:46
I did not use Suzuki on my kids, but a modification of Kolday method for guitar and American ear training. Both occasionally make up songs, and the younger can improvise easily. The older one has perfect pitch and the younger can sound out complicated melodies, effortlessly. They began music traing at 3 (years for the older and months for the younger.) They each are wonderful sight readers and can sight sing. They are now 11 and 14.
I think that early training is the key, to get music in while the first language is still developing. Kolday is reported to have said that music training needs to start 9 months before the child's birth. In essence you train the parents to train the child.
Kolday teaches reading as ear training, by starting with simple songs that use a minor third for the first melodies taught and then moves to tunes such as Rain, Rain Go Away. Most kids can play these immediately and understand the up and downess of the staff in relation. The songs are ones that kids naturally sing, not written as an instrumental teaching tool. The method is ordered for rhythmic and natural pitch difficulty and progresses slowly.
I personally am not a fan of rote learning, which is why I did not teach Suzuki. However, the Suzuki method is reported to get consistently good results.
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Author: Hiroshi
Date: 2000-01-31 06:49
There is U.S.website called Suzuki Music Academy.
<A HRER=http://www.suzukimusicacademy.com/>Suzuki Music Academy</A>
You can contact them and request where Suzuki method teachers are available.
My personal considerations:
1)Is there any famous violinists or other instruments soloists who learned by this method? I have never heard of any.Even if one is taught by this method,he/she learns just for a few years.
2)It does not seem wise to let chldren learn only equal tempered scales.Violinists use pure tone scales rather.To let them learn while their brains are flexible may harm tone development later. It is like a mechanical tuner 'alive' or a real tone-deaf. There is no perfect way of music education.
3)Music is not the best thing to some people. Is it a good thing to let children learn music without children's free will?
4)I smell a commecialism from this kind of education.
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Author: Hiroshi
Date: 2000-01-31 06:56
I forgot to type this:
<A HREF=http://www.suzukimusicacademy.com/>Suzuki Music Academy</A>
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Author: Allen Cole
Date: 2000-01-31 07:41
I also tend to question the wisdom of instrumental training at preschool ages, and would like to see what the statistics are for the percentage of students who keep playing to school age--let alone the rest of their lives.
What I DO think is important is having music in the home. Lots of kids love those Disney sing-alongs (I won't even get into Barney)and others just benefit from having the music playing. My mother told me recently that when she played The Messiah on the stereo, little two-year-old me would sing "For" on each section entrance on For Unto Us A Child is Born. Genius? Hardly. My ex-girlfriend's baby would sing to the Sega game machine. But that music caught my attention and woke me up. I think that's why they say Mozart makes your kids smarter. Music with discernibe melody and a logical flow can grab a kid's attention and stay in their head.
On improvisation: That's true. Our notation system is only a few hundred years old, but they've found a 40,000 year old flute with a diatonic scale. In fact, improvisation is still an issue when studying church organ at the collegiate level.
On the learning process: I think that learning to play an instrument as you learn to read music is quite an impediment to learning as a whole. Playing whole-note, whole-rest, whole-note doesn't exactly inspire the troops at the beginning.
Get a kid to play Jingle Bells in any beginning band book. They don't read those simplified rhythms--they try to play the REAL rhythms that they're used to hearing. I have to explain to them that their band book has dumbed the song down because of reading considerations.
Another problem with simultaneously learning to read/play is that the manipulation of the instrument can distract the student from the tasks involved with reading. I think that it's better to get comfortable with the instrument if at all practical.
Playing by ear/feel: If, on the other hand, you just teach a kid their hand position, they can knock out Joy to the World in their first or second lesson just by adding and subtracting fingers. Outside of western classical music, this is a pretty common way to start playing.
On rote learning: I think we need more, not less. The biggest advantage of rote learning is that it forces the student to practice something enough to memorize it. One set of simple scale exercises, thoroughly learned and memorized, is (in my opinion) worth 6 pages of desperate last-minute cramming in the Rubank book.
Final thought: The most interested, disciplined and obedient kids can get past all this. But, I think that we're losing a lot of potentially competent amateurs. I also worry that if instrumental instruction comes at 3, we might lose some kids who would've done just fine at 11 or 12.
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Author: michael
Date: 2000-01-31 12:18
My 10 year old son is in a Montessori school (part of the public school system here in Houston) and he has been in a
xylophone band (Orph instruments) for 3 years. The kids are fantastic. From what my son has told me, the teacher tells them what notes to play in the song, gives them the tempo and rhythm and them they start practicing. The band is amazing with a big bass, altos, sopranos, a metallophone--about 10 players all together. I was a parent chaperone last year and they seem confident and not very
nervous in front of large crowds.
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Author: Lelia
Date: 2000-01-31 13:39
That confidence in performance is, IMHO, one of the big advantages of starting a child with Suzuki method. Those kids are fearless, and from what I've seen, most of them stay that way.
One thing to be aware of is that there's Suzuki . . . and then there's Suzuki. This used to be a very tightly-controlled, proprietary system, but today there are a lot of variations on the original program. Parents need to check out the lesson plan. IMHO, the original plan was seriously weak in one area in particular: Kids learned to play by ear fantastically well, but a lot of them had trouble learning to read music later, because the method introduced note reading too late. The kids then had to learn to read notes with "baby music" that was way below their kinesthetic skills at that point. A high percentage got bored and frustrated and quit at that point. I've talked to adults who started with old-style Suzuki who have told me they never did learn to read music well. Kids seem to do better in the long run if playing and reading aren't kept completely separate. Today, most Suzuki progams introduce note-reading within the first year. IMHO, that's important.
An advantage of Suzuki is that kids learn to play while walking around the room. They march with their instruments from the get-go. Suzuki kids have a big head start if they want to join a marching band later (they've already got the basic coordination of walking and playing at the same time -- it feels natural to them), and they also have freedom of movement when they play standing or sitting still. There's some evidence that this flexibility and willingness to change positions frequently makes Suzuki-trained kids less likely to develop the rigid practice postures that contribute to repetitive stress injury later.
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Author: Steven Epstein
Date: 2000-01-31 16:09
I wish I had learned to play clarinet this way. Then I would be capable of jamming with my string, piano, and accordian playing friends, instead of feeling left out,because they decided to play something without "charts". But like most people, I learned in school. First, on the Flute-o-phone, that simple recorder-like instrument, an instrument designed for playing simple tunes by ear, I do believe, but, no, we were taught to read right away. If you couldn't read well, you didn't get to play a "real" instrument. Then elem. school band, then private lessons, then jr high and high school concert and marching bands, with a few quite successful tries at jr All State and Regional All State, or whatever it was called. But for what? I wasn't going to be a pro classical clarinettist. I had some talent but didn't like to practice; it wasn't the music I wanted to play, the music my guitar - playing buddies played. That's why Turtle Island String Quartet can make a hit recording Jimi Hendrix; you never learn to play this stuff on orchestra and band instruments, so it sounds humorous. Same with "Toccata and Fugue in E-Minor" played on electric guitar. I only played because my parents, like most middle-class parents, believed in "exposing" their kids to music for "culture" and "well-roundedness" (on college applications). God forbid, however, you should ever want to make music a career:-). My parents, like most, never played (although my dad had a few trumpet lessons as a kid), so my "exposure" was totally in the hands of the educational system, a system that takes what ought to be hobbies and recreational activities and transforms them into competitive events. That's who I blame, not my parents, who couldn't have known better. It's amazing I never wound up hating the clarinet and wanted to pursue it again as an adult.
Ah, I'm done venting now....
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Author: Ron Wise
Date: 2000-01-31 22:44
I have sympathy for Steven Epstein. I have four children, one in High School, one in College, one about to graduate college, and one out a few years now. The first three went to college on music scholarships and the fourth one undoubtedly will also. I try to believe their interest in music is/was entirely because we encouraged them to pursue anything that interested them. I suspect, however, that having musically active parents (although both of us are chemists by career) who praised their talents and the wonderful scholarships available were also an influence. My observation is that the failure of the educational system to teach music as an enjoyable life-time pursuit that is not necessarily a career extends to and is probably worse at the college level. The High School teachers generally don't teach "fun" music (i.e. jamming). They are too worried about concerts, contests and preparing students to compete for scholarships. A good college music program will jazz bands, combos, etc. But it is rare indeed to hear a performance where the students really improvising freely. I think Steven hit the nail on the head when he asks "But for what!?" How many of these High School or even college music majors are going to be professional instrumentalists? Very few. How about a curriculum that teaches at least some of the skills to be a musician and enjoy playing for life? Although being limited to the charts may satisfy some for life, I think jamming is the key to "real" enjoyment and listening and music becoming a permanent part of ones life.
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Author: Allen Cole
Date: 2000-02-01 04:26
You pretty much hit the nail on the head there, Ron. This is one reason that I'm so desperate to get my website together.
Let me start with one point of disagreement. You are correct that high school teachers are not emphpasizing jamming skills, but I don't think that they realistically can. School ensemble programs are by nature not condusive to this, plus many classically trained schoolteachers suffer from a similar lack of skills and experience in this area.
In many cases, both students and teachers fear and misunderstand this stuff. Leila makes a terrific point in favor of Suzuki when she tells us that the kids are fearless and that they are used to physical timekeeping. HALLELUJAH!
This is something that students must largely teach themselves, but they usually don't know where to start. Once the starting points are found, there is a good chance of success.
I have to also bow to Leila's point about waiting too long to learn notes. Let me offer the following: Start playing by ear and write the notes down--pitches only. In this way, they have more rhythmic freedom earlier on. I have broken the process of writing down a song into approximately four stages. These stages can be learned separately as the young player becomes more sophisticated.
Oh the hobby/amateur aspect. What you are saying is SO TRUE. So few will be professionals, but so many could do so much if they had MUSICAL skills as well as instrumental skills.
And thus lies the question--how can we make music as interesting as a video game? I have been hanging out in some of the Yahoo clubs to try and observe the adolescent psyche. What I'm seeing truly frightens me.
Perhaps if we outlawed electricity...<g>
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