The Importance of Music Education

Music Teaches Eight Abilities

In a recent podcast episode (episode 52: Why Study Music?), I discussed eight abilities that the study of music will develop. Let me list those eight abilities here:

• Ability to Listen
• Ability to Observe and Imitate
• Ability to Memorize
• Ability to Concentrate
• Ability to Perform
• Ability to be Disciplined
• Ability to Persevere
• Abilities of the Heart

My purpose in bringing up this discussion of the importance of music education is to remind us of Dr. Suzuki's greater mission. He did not merely teach the violin; his greater purpose was to teach the child to be a fine human being with a noble heart. He chose to do that through the study of the violin.

The episode takes a closer look at each of these abilities and why learning them is important for children (and adults). I like to think of these abilities as life skills to be applied in other areas of life. Not only do I believe that children should be taught these life skills, but I think that adults should improve these skill abilities (or learn them) as well. So let us look more closely at each of these eight abilities.

The first ability is the ability to listen. In the Suzuki program, children listen to the songs that they will learn. These children develop a very high level of listening ability and can figure out fingerings and bowings to songs that they have not yet learned except through hearing the songs. This ability to listen to such a high degree will carry over into other important areas of life, such as school, work, or ultimately in a loving relationship with another.

As these children continue lessons into the more advanced books of repertoire, they will also learn how to listen very carefully to their performance. This is a much more complex level of focused listening that expands a child’s ability to hear, listen, and evaluate. If students are not naturally aural learners, they can still develop the ability to listen to a very high degree.

Children also develop the ability to observe and imitate. Dr. Suzuki observed that children already use this ability when they learn to speak their native language. We were blessed with eyes and ears -- two of each -- and that is the best way we have to learn anything. I can make my teaching points clear to my students and their parents when I pick up my instrument and demonstrate the point.

The author John Holt wrote, “How Children Learn” (affiliate link). He describes how a young child learns by imitating: a very young child may attempt to imitate what they see someone else do, and then will stop and watch again to see whether their attempt at imitating measures up to what they saw. They watch, try it out, then watch to see how close they came, make adjustments, try it out again, then watch to see how close they came, make more adjustments, and so forth. In other words, the little ones learned how to do something by watching, imitating, and then trying it out.

An older child, in contrast, would watch, but the imitation might happen a few times in the older child’s mind or imagination first until the older child felt more comfortable and confident that the older child would be able to successfully recreate what the child observed. The podcast episode discusses even more points related to a child's imitation and learning, including the instinct of workmanship (listen).

Another ability developed through the study of music is the ability to memorize. In the Suzuki program, students memorize at first through listening to the pieces they are studying and in the same way that the students learned their native language through hearing and absorbing the language in the environment. In the Suzuki world, students hear the songs that they are studying because parents have the music playing in the home, and the students are constantly exposed to the sounds that the students will be making on the instrument. Later when students learn how to read the language of music, students will learn how to memorize using the sense of sight as well.

The ability to concentrate is a fourth ability developed in music study. I have published a book about the steps that lead to the Twinkle Variations for violin (The Twinkle Project), and I spend a great deal of the early book talking about how to develop concentration and focus in young children and beginning students. This skill development is not just limited to little children though; I spend a great deal of time working on this ability with my older university and adult students as well. It is important that we learn how to focus and concentrate at any stage of our development and life, because without focus and concentration, we do poor or shoddy work. We lose track of important details. We practice poorly, meaning that we learn how to do things inefficiently, with poor quality, and we are not fully engaged in what we are doing.

I remember standing in a line to get on an amusement park ride when I overheard two mothers talking about their 9 and 10 year old boys. The one mother said that she wanted to put her boy in trumpet lessons, but her boy did not concentrate very well. This mother thought that waiting awhile would be the solution. As any Suzuki music teacher would know, waiting will not fix the concentration and focus problem. The only way to learn how to concentrate and focus is to practice doing so. This is a regular part of lessons in my studio, and I ask that the parents of my students spend adequate time on this area as well at home.

The fifth ability is the ability to perform. This ability will apply to all areas of a student’s life. By learning how to perform, students learn how to present themselves and their ideas and work product to share with others. Music has the unique distinction as well of helping us to learn how to make connections with others. Music does not merely entertain by performing for spectators, as occurs in sports. Music adds that other dimension of establishing a communication and a connection with the listener. Since music is energy expressed mostly through sound but also through sight and feeling, it touches listeners on a physical level that sometimes listeners are not even aware is happening. Whenever I do leadership and energy development skill exercises in my group classes, there may be a few students and parents who will be surprised to discover how much connection there can be during a performance. And I mean this in a good way.

There are many performances that may be wonderful but that do not touch us to the core. Recently one of my high school advanced students attended a symphony concert where the performer played a concerto that my student was currently studying. At first my student loved the performance and raved about the many things that he heard during the concert. When I saw my student at his next lesson, he had some additional observations to make, such as that he did not feel that connection that we talk about. The performance was indeed great, but it was not that soul-touching, mind blowing experience that we will remember forever.

The ability to perform teaches us how to develop self confidence, how to present ourselves in a way that provides us with a sense of inner strength as well as projects that core strength to our audience. And performing also applies to other subjects and areas as well, from sports events and school presentations, to formal situations such as workplace demonstrations. Even being the new kid in the school will involve performance of some kind on the part of all students.

At the university, my violin studio holds a weekly seminar class where we meet to discuss pedagogy and technique development. We also perform for each other. My students learn the crucial performance skills, such as the importance of posture and how one walks onto a stage or into a room and the kind of effect this will have on the audience as well as the performer. We talk about our presentation physically as well as how to use our energy in the creation of the musical performance, and I know that these discussions about performance carry over into other areas of my students’ lives. This is a really, really important skill that is developed by music study.

The ability to be disciplined is one of the most important skills developed through the study of music. Music teaches students how to develop discipline in their personal habits as well as professional ones. Students learn how to practice correctly, how to maintain regular practice routines, how to prepare presentations, how to analyze things and go through a sequence of steps in order to learn and master a new piece of music, a new skill, or a refinement of an old piece or skill.

We learn how to be disciplined to some degree, usually with something that we like to do. Then we might move on to another activity and work on the discipline ability with the new activity. I find that following a marathon training program has quite nicely dovetailed with my ability to be disciplined about my music practices as well. I learned at a very young age how to be disciplined in my music, and I find that this ability has carried forward into many activities, from writing legal briefs that were 50 pages in length to running a 50K. Both of these activities took the same concentration, focus, and discipline that my music practices demanded from me.

The ability to persevere is the ability that will carry us through tough situations and keep us from giving up when things become hard. Life may be full of tragic, heart-wrenching, and mind-blowing events that will be difficult to overcome. Yet, many people do. The ability to persevere helps to give people the ability to work through tough times. 

The study of music teaches us how to develop that skill. We encounter stumbling blocks pretty much all the time. But for the love of the music, the fun of doing what we are doing, that fact that our parents seem to want us to do this and enjoy the activity and encourage us, and the fact that children generally want to please their parents, parents can really teach a child this important ability. With a little humor, lots of patience and kindness, and a generous dose of good will and encouragement, parents can help children work through any frustration or difficulty and come out the other side with a smile and a sense of pride that the child accomplished something. Dr. Suzuki said, “Teaching intonation and technique will never be more than a method. We do not have to become professional musicians. It is enough to grow up playing the violin. Because a person works at playing the violin well he develops ability to overcome any difficult problems by working. Then he accomplishes the ability to overcome even the hardest problems easily.”

And finally, the last ability of music education that I want to discuss is what Jeanne Luedke calls the abilities of the heart. Consider the possibilities of this quote from Dr. Suzuki: “Music exists for the purpose of growing an admirable heart. A child raised on Bach from a young age will develop the noble soul, powerful personality and the religious sensitivity of Bach. The force that makes a child want to live and survive will absorb the traits of Bach’s music to a high degree.”

Even young children can play a musical instrument and create a musical mood that will touch the heart of a listener. Music has that power, and even the youngest of children can learn how to express that power and share it with others, even very young children.

I tell my new studio parents that when children study music and how to play a musical instrument that these children will be exposed to the best of music that our culture has to offer. Music has been around since the beginning of recorded time, and what has survived over the centuries in this body of musical works is the best of these works. The child will absorb so many things while studying this music and how to play. The child will not only absorb the sounds of music, but also the expression of feelings and events and emotions and even the description of beautiful things in nature, including possibly the recreation of story within the musical notes – all of this will be absorbed by the child who is exposed to and studies this music and combination of sounds.

The child's parents and other family members will also absorb this same fabulous collection of the best of our culture. We also learn how to appreciate and study new ideas and sounds, including new music and music from different cultures besides the Western culture. Music gives our young students and children the tools necessary to learn about, connect with, and appreciate the creations of other cultures besides our own.

At some point in their music studies, my students ask me what book I’m in. I always answer the same way. I am in book 11. And this book is the hugest book of all the Suzuki books, because it is everything else that is not yet in books 1-10. This book has thousands of pieces in it.

The gift of the abilities of the heart is my favorite gift from the study of music, because I think that this was Dr. Suzuki’s most important mission in his teaching. Let us recommit to this mission in all that we do with our children and students.

To hear more about these eight abilities, visit the podcast: episode 52: Why Study Music?

To learn more about my book, The Twinkle Project, visit: my shop.

Happy Practicing!

----- Paula -----

 © 2017 by Paula E. Bird

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Dear Suzuki Parent (an Open Letter to Parents):

Written by Paula E. Bird ©2013

You left me a phone message yesterday that told me you were confused about what your 7-year old child should be focusing on at home. I have written out a very detailed practice list, including the amount of time that each item on the practice list would take to complete, and I have put the list in your child's violin case under the violin itself so that you will easily find it the next time you open your child's violin case and take out the violin for practice.

Your phone message raised a few points of discussion, however, and I would like to address them in this letter.

The Suzuki Method works quite well when all of the pieces are in place and the parties involved are working together. The parties involved are the Teacher, the Parent, and the Child. We refer to this as the Suzuki Triangle:

You may find more information about the teacher's responsibility and the Suzuki triangle by clicking here.

It is difficult to strengthen the working relationship between all three parties if one of the parties is frequently absent. You did not attend your child's lesson last week, nor the week before. Coming into the lesson during the last 5-10 minutes and asking me what the child should practice at home does not satisfy the requirement of holding up your end of the working relationship. You will not need to phone me or leave me messages about what the child should practice if you attend the lessons and take notes about the items that we are working on during the lessons.

If you plan to involve the other parent in this working relationship, then I ask that both of you take on a more active role during lessons. Rather than have the other parent drop off the child or sit through the child's lesson in a different room (and pay attention to the parent's phone rather than the child's lesson), please plan to have the parent sit inside the lesson area and take notes. I am happy to provide both of you with a parent notebook for the purpose of taking notes of things that your child needs to focus on at home.

To help you catch up with what your child and I have been learning together, let me summarize what I have been trying to accomplish:

• Concentration and Focus: Your child is 7 years old. Your child's attention span is limited, since this is the first time she has ever been involved in the study of skill development. Therefore, her concentration and focus need to be developed and strengthened. The first year of music lessons spends a great deal of time on this area. The child needs to establish a routine in her home practices so that she will actually learn how to concentrate and focus. Please plan to practice daily with your child at home. For more information about building concentration and focus, click here.
• Habit Formation: We develop skill and ability through repeated actions. We spend our first year of music instruction learning how to establish good practice and learning habits. We will not be able to accomplish this if your child practices once or twice during the week in between lessons. To build a habit, you must do the action repeatedly, preferably every day. Even a few minutes a day will help immensely to build up a habit and develop skill and ability over a period of time. Please plan to practice daily with your child at home, preferably at the same time every day. In the beginning, aim for 5-10 minutes as a starting point. As your child becomes accustomed to the habit and routine, your child will naturally increase concentration, focus, and attention span and be able to practice for longer periods of time and to learn even more skills and develop even greater abilities. Note also that you will spend less and less time on correcting bad posture habits if you practice daily. At this point, your child's practices are so sporadic and unproductive, that much of lesson and most likely home practice time is spent correcting poor posture habits. Your child will understandably have trouble remembering the correct way of doing things if she merely visits them a few times now and then. If you want to read a bit more about what a habit is, click here.
• Discipline and Perseverance: Your child will derive many great benefits from studying music. One of the greatest benefits will be the ability to be disciplined and to persevere. These abilities will serve your child throughout your child's lifetime. These abilities do not spontaneously create themselves in a vacuum. You must actually perform specific actions in order to learn how to be disciplined and to persevere through the sometimes tricky learning process. Your child will learn these skills at an incredible pace if you would role model these abilities yourself as a parent. When you practice daily with an established practice routine, you are showing your child how to perform these same behaviors. You are also sending your child the message that this is an area that is important to you and important for your child to learn. This parental role modeling will occur when you show the discipline of practicing daily and role model the perseverance of finding time daily in a busy schedule for practicing. In addition, you are teaching your child how to set priorities in your life schedule and how to show the child how interested you are in what the child is learning in lessons. For one parent's brief discussion about the power and value of a ten-minute practice, click here. For more information about the power of routine and the strong benefits that children derive from routine, click here.

Although I have listed these goals for the student, they are also mighty important for the parent to accomplish as well. When a parent first comes to me for lessons, I notice that the parent also has issues of concentration and focus, habit formation, and discipline and perseverance. A parent has difficulty paying attention to lesson content and group class activities. The parent falters at the challenge of finding and setting a regular time in the parent's daily schedule for working with the child. The parent falters at the trial of role modeling discipline by practicing daily and then considers the ultimate failure of quitting lessons rather than enduring the discomfort of persevering.

The first year of music lessons is very important, not only for the child but also for the child's parent. Music lessons provide an opportunity for the child to learn a skill and to develop a fine ability to express the child's spirit and emotions creatively. The Suzuki Method model provides the parent with opportunities to learn about the child in ways that the parent would not otherwise have in the regular scheme of things. The parent can observe the child as the child interacts with the teacher and other children. The parent will also learn more about the parent and the parent's relationship with the child through the parent's interaction with the child in home practices. And most of all, the home practice sessions are the parent's best opportunity to build a strong, loving, and nurturing relationship with the child.

Your phone message indicated to me that you are having troubles in all the areas I have discussed above. So here is my suggestion for you this week:

1. Schedule: Work on building the habit of practicing daily, preferably at the same time each week day. Look at your calendar today and find that time block, starting with 10 minutes. Write that time block into your family calendar so that everyone will honor it, especially you. It sometimes helps if you schedule practice time before another activity that your child enjoys. That way, if your child wastes her practice time with unproductive behaviors, the child will be wasting the child's time for her favorite activity. The sooner the child completes her practice assignment, the sooner the child will be able to begin the child's favorite activity, whether it is playing outside with friends, watching a favorite television show, or playing with toys.
2. Prepare Your Materials: Put your child's instrument in a safe place, and open the case. Make sure that the child's instrument is put together, but leave the bow loosened. You will find it easier to get started with practices if the instrument is ready to go. All you have to do at the time you have scheduled for practice is to go to the practice area and tighten up the bow. Everything else is ready for practice to start. You can even rosin the bow at the end of your practice session before you loosen it so that the bow is ready to go.
3. Set the Mood: Since you and your child are still novices, it is important for both of you to work on proper posture habits. Daily practice will make all of this much easier, you will find. For now, have the child stand in rest position and then take a bow.
4. Bow Hold Practice: Ask the child to show you her best bow hold. If you need help remembering how to make the correct bow hold, click here for some examples. Have your child hold this good bow hold posture for one minute. You may also play some bow games if you wish, such as doing the "Up Like a Rocket" jingle or passing the cup back and forth between you. Because good bow hold posture is so important to your child's future success at producing a good sound on the violin, find opportunities to practice bow holds whenever you can. Have your child make three good bow holds before each meal at home and before bedtime. If your child watches television, have your child hold the bow correctly throughout commercial breaks. Write yourself a note or two and post them somewhere that will remind you to do this.
5. Set Up Steps: Next, have your child follow the set up steps with the violin that I have taught you and the child so that the child is set up for success concerning her playing posture. If you need help remembering the set up steps, click here  and here to watch some of my students show you.
6. Violin Hold Practice: Once the child is in playing position, have the child stand there for one minute. You may balance a toy on the instrument, and you may play the recording of the Twinkle variations while your child is practicing her good posture. Eventually your child will be playing all of the Twinkles without a pause, as the recording does, so having your child stand in playing position at this point helps your child to build the stamina to hold the instrument for the same length of time that it takes to play through the Twinkle variations.
7. Twinkle Practice: Your child has learned how to play each Twinkle variation, but she lacks the stamina right now to play all of them at one time. So she will need a rest in between each variation. Have her stand in rest position in between each variation. This might be a good time to reinforce the proper bow hold. Have your child repeat the set up steps before playing each variation. Before the child begins playing the variation, talk through the points that the child needs to remember while playing the variation: fingering issues, good clean string crossings, staying on the bow highway, short staccato stopped bows. Pick one thing or point at a time. Because we are working at building up Twinkle stamina at this point, I want your child to play all of the variations at each practice. In future weeks, we will be working out different practice plans, but for this week and the next, we will be playing all of the Twinkle variations. If your child is having "one of those days," I think it would be alright to cut the practice short with just two Twinkle variations, but please do not make a habit of this or allow your child to make a habit of this. Use this shortened practice plan only on those really, really bad days, and no more than once every two weeks or so.

Ten-Minute Practice Plan: Please note that you will not be spending more than ten minutes a day on this practice plan. The rest position, bow, bow hold practice, and violin hold practice last a little over two minutes. The Twinkle variations may require five minutes or more. I have timed my students, and they generally do not take longer than five minutes to perform all the Twinkle variations. It is the time spent in between playing the variations that is wasted on dawdling, stalling, and other unwanted behaviors. If you use a timer with your child, you will notice that your child spends less time on wasted behaviors. Also, regular practice will eliminate much of the practice drama that you may be experiencing currently at home.

No Excuses: Please do not come to next week's lesson with the excuse that you were too busy to find ten minutes every day. Everyone can find ten minutes in a day. We probably waste a lot more than ten minutes on completely unproductive things. If you find that you still have trouble finding ten minutes a day, please bring your family calendar to your child's next lesson, and I will help you to find time in your schedule. I must note, however, that if you have such a busy life already on your and your child's schedule, then perhaps this is not the best time to start music lessons, or else you need to eliminate some of the activities you are currently involved in.

I believe that music lessons are extremely important for the child's development -- physically, mentally, and spiritually. Some of these developmental issues are only addressed through the study of music. Please consider this when you plan your schedule.

I hope that this letter addresses the question you raised in your phone message. Please call me if you have any questions about what I have discussed here or if you have any problems completing the practice homework I have assigned for this week.

Sincerely,

Paula Bird

PS: You might find it helpful to review the Parent Report Card.

How to Get Started After a Break

Written by Paula E. Bird ©2013
We have just finished a holiday break and school resumes for most of us in a few days. There may be some families out there whose holidays got the best of them and are now trying to figure out how to get started with a good practice routine.

I wrote an article about this about 5 months ago. If you missed that article the first time around, here is the link: How to Get Started After a Break.

I recommend that you start with a solid review of Twinkles and make sure that all the teaching points are still in place. Twinkles take 3.5 to 5 minutes to play through (with introductions to each variation). That amount of time requires a good deal of concentration and focus. Your child might begin to crater about Variation C if he has lost some of his practice concentration. Do not panic, as this focus will grow quickly over the span of a few days. Plan to use Twinkles as your first plan of attack to build focus and to awaken the ear, the muscles, and the musicianship.

If your child is in a book other than book 1, plan to review Twinkles plus the first song of the book the child studies.The first songs in each of the Suzuki books are a great way to help the child regain memory and confidence, as these songs are generally not as difficult as the last song in the previous book. La Folia may be the exception to that statement, but like a review of the Twinkle variations, I believe that La Folia is like a Twinkle review for an advanced student.

By this point, your child has been listening to the recordings a few days and is probably ready to work his way through the books to where he was before the break.

The task of getting started may seem insurmountable at first, probably due to the powerful pull of inertia to stay in the same state of being on break. Go open that violin case right now, rosin the bow, tune things up, and then leave the case open. Pretty soon the violin's siren call will pull you out of the inertia minefield. Start small and keep your practice sessions shorter for the first few days. Then add 5-10 minutes until you finally reach the place where you were before the break.

Happy Practicing!

Life Happens but Let's Not Make a Habit of It

Life happens. We are rocking along, singing our song, and whoops, something comes up and we are tugged off course. Something upsets our routine, and we cannot get to our regular practice or music lesson or group class. It is just for a brief time, we tell ourselves. We just need to get through the next few days, or this week, or through the weekend, we promise. Maybe we should not go to our lesson this week because we really are not as prepared as we should be.

We go anyway. We hang down our heads and admit that we did not practice well this week. The teacher is understanding. After all, the teacher is a nice person and kind and gracious. The teacher smiles and teaches the same lesson as last week. Or so we think, except that our child is not the same child as last week. So the teacher has to take a few steps further back than the previous lesson. Why is that?

Life does happen. Life happens to me as well. I have pockets of time when life seems to skitter out of control. I have my routines and systems in place to help guide me through these full patches of activities, and I understand how easy it is to get pulled under by life's periodic undertow.

As a teacher, I respond to these parental pronouncements with kindness, understanding, and graciousness. I truly understand. But, I also make sure that I help parents pull out of the downward spiral. Here is how I do that.

First, I explain to the parent what we might see from the child during that lesson today:

• inappropriate behavior
• dawdling or reluctance to follow instructions
• hesitation to participate in any lesson activity
• frustration that pops up quickly
• new bad habits
• shorter attention span
• lack of concentration and focus or for a shorter period of time than usual
• improper posture
• memory slips

Sometimes the parents try to discipline the children for these behaviors, but I try to head that off before it happens. Is it really the child's fault that he or she did not practice adequately the week before? Can we really in good conscience correct the child's behavior for something that the adults created? I think not, but that is what many parents try to do. Instead of examining the cause of the situation, parents are quick to act as if the child can easily spring back to normal with the snap of a finger. And yet, parents are not able to do that. How can we expect a child to snap back to normal that quickly when the parent was unable to do that during the week?

Life does indeed happen. After I explain to the parent what we might see from the child during the lesson, I then discuss how easy it might be for the parent to make "life happens" a habit. Because the parent skipped practices and routine the week before, the parent has now created a big pile of inertia. It is much easier to stay stuck in the mud of nonpractice. One week turns into two weeks. Now nonpractice and the excuse that "life happens" are the new habits and routine.

Here is how I help parents to get out of the rut:

• We look at the week's calendar together and discuss when practices might occur. I discuss this openly with the parent and sometimes the child too, because I want to be sure that this issue gets addressed. I know the parent is already battling the inertia of not practicing from the previous week, so my partnering in this discussion helps give the parent the sometimes added kick-in-the-pants that the parent needs to get moving in the right direction. Believe me, if I could really offer a physical kick to the parent's rear, I would gladly do it for the sake of the child. I settle for the figurative kick by having this frank discussion about schedule and calendar.
• We plan a short practice plan for the next 2-3 days, and then a gradually longer plan for the days thereafter. Depending on the current family home situation or the child's age, the short practice might be a five or ten minute practice list. My purpose here is to offer the parent and child something easy to accomplish. This little jolt to combat the nonpractice habit may be enough to get things rolling again.
• I throw in an element of randomness to the practice plan to get the child's attention and interest. It might be a new game that involves a spinner or dice or a timer. This intrigues the child and helps to reignite the child's and parent's interest in practice.
• We might make up colored pieces of paper for various activities and then throw a dice of colors to see which activity to do first.
• We might do a 1-minute bow hold or violin hold to get back into the habit of correct posture. We use a small hourglass (a minute timer) for this or my iPhone's timer.
• I find that I must completely provide this practice plan in order for it to happen. If I just suggest the idea, the parent is likely to let this slip by. Instead, I actually make up the practice game right there at the lesson. I set up a Popsicle stick game, I provide the spinner and dice, or I make up the colored paper list of practice tasks.
• I show the parent and child some possible practice sheets that they could use for the coming week. I have downloaded several great examples from Leslie Thackeray's website: The Practice Shoppe. If the parent finds one they are interested in, I send an email link to the particular practice sheet to the parent.
• We discuss the possibility of trying the 100 Days Practice Challenge. Leslie also has a nice example of that too: 100 Days.
• I have several prizes that I offer to a student who has completed the 100 days challenge. I give a little Mozart statue, a small violin pin, and another round pin that says "Outstanding Student" along with a certificate and other little doodads. Usually once a student has seen the loot that I will award upon completion of the 100 days challenge, the student is full of interest and motivation.
• I also explain how parents can help a younger child to make it through the long 100 days period by breaking it up into smaller, more digestible segments. For example, one family promised to award their six-year old son a small fish aquarium on the 100th day, but along the way, the parents awarded the child the parts to the final prize.
• On the 30th day, the child received the empty aquarium.
• On the 50th day, the child received the gravel that would go inside. The child was then able to begin putting his aquarium together.
• On the 75th day, the child received the plastic plants and other figures that would go inside the aquarium, and the child could begin to arrange his aquarium scenario.
• On the 100th day, the child received the fish.
• I extract a solemn promise from both the parent and child that they will practice every day in the coming week. The parent and child hold up the bow hand (right hand) and promise to practice. I also note in the student's handbook that the parent and child have made this promise. That way I will be reminded of the promise at the next lesson. Sometimes parents will text me during the week to tell me that the child is being very serious about fulfilling the promise.
• I might send an email or text message to the parent the next day to follow up on whether the parent has followed through with the practice plan. It amazes me to have a discussion such as all that I have written above here, and yet when I check in with the parent and student the next day, I find that again life has happened and that no practice plan has been followed. Such a short attention span!

I have met some parents here and there who seem to have trouble getting back on track despite my help. These are tougher cases for me. I might have to delve a little deeper into the reasons why the parent wants the child to have lessons when the parent is not helping the child to benefit from the lessons. And on occasion, I might have to let this parent go from the studio. It breaks my heart to do that, and I do not do it lightly or often. I might spend a year or more trying to turn the situation around; parents go through stages too, but that is a different article for another day.

Starting out small with tiny steps for a few days usually gets the parent and child beyond the inertia of nonpractice, although there might be a few days of bumpy drama, as both the parent and child need to work through the inertia together; this is not easy.

My main focus at this point is that life happens, but we do not want to allow this excuse to become a habit.

Monday Morning Check In: Figure it Out

A violinist friend of mine told me of her recent experience when she had a coaching session to improve her audition skills. She said the woman sat with closed eyes and listened to my friend play. After my friend finished playing, the woman began to list undesirable things that happened. For example, “your bow jumped a little in the second measure when you changed to the G string,” or “your articulation was uneven in measure 8.” My friend accepted the list of observations and waited expectantly for the woman’s suggestions, but the only advice the woman gave was, “you need to figure it out.” Huh? My friend’s story amused me, but I have thought about the woman’s advice quite a bit since I heard of it, and I think there is something valuable for us to learn from it.

Too many times we do things without really paying attention to what we are doing. We have all heard the advice to “live in the present,” “live in the moment,” or as one author puts it, “live deliberately” (Hrvoje Butkovic, Living Deliberately, 2011). We can gain great value when we discipline ourselves to stay focused and present, and to be deliberate in what we choose to do or say at any given moment.

If I had been in my friend’s place, I could have chosen to slough off the woman’s advice. At first, that was indeed my reaction to my friend’s story. However, as I thought about the story off and on for the few weeks after, I began to notice a new trend in my thinking. I started to notice times during my practice sessions and places in my music when things did not sound as I wanted. I found bowing skips and slipped articulation catches, and sometimes the bow would not bounce when it was supposed to. I began to pay attention to these moments, as I tried to “figure it out.” At first I did this to entertain myself; I may have giggled the first few times this happened, as I thought about what the woman would have said to me if I had played for her.

Then I realized that I actually did figure it out. I paid attention in a closer way. I noticed things, I observed problems, and I found that this type of thinking gave me the perspective of a teacher’s evaluating a student as he or she played, only I was the student in this scenario. I made a great deal of improvement in many areas since I started using this technique of figuring it out.

I want to urge parents and teachers to pay closer attention to things this week. Really pay attention to what is happening. Be sure to look at and listen to your child. Really look and listen. Notice the facial expression; hear the tone of voice. Sometimes I look at a student and see that they are not feeling well. There are circles under their eyes, and the skin tone is paler. Other times I hear the tinge of a whine or a tearful edge to a student’s voice when they have come too close to the maximum frustration level. Sometimes these little things signal a greater stress happening at the moment in the student’s life. I notice similar things in the faces of my students’ parents. When I pay attention to things outside the studio, I might notice that a colleague’s eyes no longer smile or that the shoulders droop. Perhaps I need to figure out why and see if there is anything that I can offer him or her that would help to brighten the day.

I could have titled this article “pay attention,” but that seems to be only one part of the exercise. When we admonish ourselves instead to “figure it out,” we give ourselves the mandate to ferret out the kernel of a lesson. From that kernel will grow the discovery and the education.

Since I have begun adding the “figure it out” advice to my life, I have discovered more things that need my attention. I have helped more of my students to be better teachers of themselves at home during practice sessions. I have shown more parents how to relate better to their children when they are truly involved with what is happening with their children at any given moment.

“Figure it out” means that we stay connected in a more meaningful way with what we are thinking or doing at the moment we are thinking or doing. We do not just glance our attention over things by sliding our focus from one place to another. Instead, we zero in on what is before us at the moment and consider what could be really happening below the surface of our attention.

If you have not been paying attention in your life as well as you might, I have some advice for you: “Figure it out.”

Monday Morning Check In: Choosing a Focus Point

Whenever I visit a Chinese restaurant, I am entertained by the place mats that explain the animals of the Chinese Zodiac. You may recall the 12-year cycle of animals, such as the dog, the rat, the sheep, or the ox. Each zodiac animal also contains a personality description and advice concerning what other animals to marry or avoid.

I like the idea of focus that the zodiac provides. Each animal in the zodiac represents a year. However, I do not know that I want to wait 12 years for my zodiac animal to come around again. However, the idea behind the zodiac – the focus point – is what I am interested in.

Our lives are full of distractions. There are many people and items that demand our attention. Life moves at a frenetic pace, as technological advances compete for our consumer approval. We need to constantly update our electronic devices lest we fall behind in our ability to communicate with each other. As a teacher, I see this communication gap widen between parents and their children and sometimes between authority figures and students.

For example, I find there are still some parents who have phones that are woefully out of step with the times. Please do not think that I am trying to argue for more consumerism. Instead I want to put forth the idea that parents should keep up with their children when it comes to technology. Just as I advocate that parents read the same books and view the same movies that their children read and see, so I also advocate that parents stay on top of the way technology works. The reason I advocate this position is so that parents are able to parent effectively.

When the Harry Potter craze started, I read the books because I wanted to know what my students were reading. When I got to book 5, I thought that the books contained incredibly frightening material for younger children. I discovered that many of my students read the books but that their parents had not kept up their reading. Sadly, these students were left to process the disturbing subject matter on their own. In the case of those parents who do screen what their children will read or see, please be sure to be timely about this. I know of several students who had to wait a year for their mothers to decide that some reading material was acceptable. Meanwhile, all the students’ friends had read the books, explained what happened to the non-reading students (and probably lent them the books to read secretly), and then moved on.

I recall a discussion with one student about something related to his phone. He remarked, “I don’t have a smart phone. I have a dumb phone.” This student was only able to make phone calls; his text message capability was prehistoric, time-consuming to use, and functionally useless. His mother joined our discussion, and I discovered that the reason behind the technology “lag” was that the mother was uncomfortable with the new technology. Instead of trying to figure it out, this mother opted to plead ignorance and lack of technological savvy. (Happily, this student is now in college, has purchased his own up-to-date laptop, and is humming along in step with the current technological trends, which fits his chosen profession related to sound recording technology.)

I understand that technology can cause a bit of fear and uncertainty, but I do not believe that ignorance and lack of technological savvy are really good excuses for not keeping up. I have seen two-year-old students use my iPhone. They knew exactly how to turn it on and work the buttons. (One of these same students actually called me one day on his mother’s new iPhone. This mother had more trouble using her phone than her little two-year old.) These same youngsters had mothers who still had not figured out how to use their phone. Do these mothers want their children to be able to use a smart phone in kindergarten when these mothers will not be able to do so? Think of the dangers lurking behind the Internet gateway, while these mothers will be clueless about how to protect their children. Why not just figure it out? If a two-year old can do it, then a grown-up will be able to learn how.

My favorite example of the technology gap can be heard at the university level. I frequently hear faculty complain that students do not keep up with their email. I am amused, because I have found that students have long passed by the email form of communication. Sure, they can still do it, but email is not the preferred method of communication. If I want to send an important message to my university students, I will send an email, because that is the preferred method of communication at the university level. However, if I want an instant response, I send a text message, and to cement the deal, I also send a message via Facebook. My students respond to the text messages first and foremost. I very seldom receive email responses, and occasionally, Facebook rules the day, but still the exception rather than the rule.

I started this article about the Chinese Zodiac and the idea of a year of focus, and I wound up with a discussion about the communication gap caused by parents who refuse to keep up with the current technology and trends. I know where I digressed and why, but let me get back to my original point. I know I had one somewhere. Oh yes, the many distractions that compete for our attention (and so many of these distractions are caused by technology and electronic devices). You wonder how I will relate this to the Chinese Zodiac?

I think we can take a page from the Chinese Zodiac and create our own focus points. Rather than devote one year per focus point, we can create our own calendar. Maybe we can devote a month or a semester or a season to each focus point, or maybe a week. I know that I use many different time frames for my focus points, and my points vary depending on the circumstances in which I need to use them.

For example, I typically begin the fall semester with an overall focus for my studio. This year, my focus is to help my parents and students to find a way to record and track their practice efforts. I went back to a handbook format that I had used for many years to keep my parents and students on task with practice and listening assignments. I have put this handbook back into play for the past two weeks, and already I have seen a big improvement in the organization that parents and students have put into their home practice sessions.

I may have a different focus for my university semester. For the fall, I may have one focus related to getting my students going for the university “year” and for the freshmen students especially. I may also have a focus for each of my various university roles: teacher, performer, scholar, and collaborator. Some of these roles and focus points may overlap. For the spring semester, I may have a different focus point related to student recital performances and opportunities to practice performing before others.

For the symphony or my performance opportunities as a professional musician, I may have additional focus points. For the past few years, my focus point has been “consistency,” where I strive to be consistent from one rehearsal to the next, and I practice so that I have the capability to maintain consistency. For my home, I may have focus points related to the upkeep of my home, my dachshunds, or the ranch animals (alpacas and donkeys).

I recommend that you select a focus point for the next month. Choose one word to represent this focus (or an animal, as found in the Chinese Zodiac), and put this word prominently on your calendar or somewhere that you will see it and contemplate it frequently. If you can, devote a morning page or two to discuss the meaning of this focus point to you:

• What does this focus point represent to you?
• How will it improve you or your life?
• How will it encourage your growth of character or personal development?
• What can you do to make this focus point happen?
• How will you decide whether you have succeeded at meeting your focus?
• How will you measure your success?

As many of you know, I am a big proponent of setting goals. I like having the “finish line” set before me. I like having a picture of an ultimate destination to aim for. I like climbing up mountains or running distance races. I like these things because they stretch me. These things demand more from me, and I grow stronger as a person of character, discipline, and knowledge because I strive to accomplish them. I think of focus points as those incremental stretches of road in between the larger goals. Some focus points involve more effort because they are those nasty road patches between miles 10 and 13 when the going is sluggish. Other focus points are those first few miles of uphill struggle to get started on a new project.

Please leave me a comment about your focus point this next month. I am interested in hearing what things other people are working around in their lives. If you have an animal to represent your focus point, then I want to hear what you have chosen and why!

Have a happy week!

P.S.: All this talk about keeping current with technology has a purpose. I recently discovered that I am unable to upgrade to the latest software update for my electronic device. It is time for me to purchase a newer, more up-to-date computer. As much as I love my current laptop (MacBook), I recognize that I need to move on to the next level for many reasons. I will move on to the next level in the next few months and hand down my current laptop to my dear husband, who would be happy to lag behind technology another year or two.

How to Get Started After a Break

Let us face the truth: we all take a break now and then. Maybe we are resting up after a strenuous season of performing. Maybe we have just finished a grueling series of activities that demanded a great deal of our time and emotion. Maybe we just came back from a much deserved vacation. Whatever the reason, we needed a break and we took it. Now we have had our rest and we need to get started back up again with our practice routine. But how? What is the best way to get started up again? I suggest that you follow three steps:

1. Evaluate Your Routine
2. Start Small
3. Build Your Plan

Step One: Evaluate Your Routine

First of all, I presume that you had a routine in the past. That would be good. If you did not have a routine or did not have much of a routine, this is a great chance for you to nail down this important point. As any music teacher will tell you, your child's music education and ability development will go much smoother and be much easier for you, the practice parent, if the child has a regular, structured practice routine. Your child's music teacher will be able to accomplish a great deal more in lessons. Your child's self esteem will grow as the child has more of a sense of accomplishment at lessons and in practices.

However, even if you had a regular, structured practice routine, this does not mean that you must remain tied to that routine. If you have taken a break, this would be a very good time to evaluate the effectiveness of your practice plan and routine. Is the practice plan still serving you and your family well? As you look ahead to the coming month, semester, or year, will your current routine fit well with whatever other demands there are on your time and energy?

Now would also be a good time to introduce any new elements that you planned to include in your home practices. Will you use a new recording system? Have you discovered a goal-planning form that you thought looked promising and useful? Do you have some new practice incentives or review plans? Have you learned of a new practice tip from another helpful parent?

Now is also a good time to do a little research about practicing or reviewing. I have a friend who recently published a book about reviewing. I would love to interview her for you, but in the meantime, you might look into her books now: Sue Hunt and her Music in Practice website.

Another useful website is Leslie Thackeray's The Practice Shoppe. You may find many interesting items here along with numerous practice charts in the site's free downloads section. I hope to bring you an interview from Leslie too one day.

Step Two: Start Small

As with any endeavor, it is better to start with a small step. For my pre-twinkle and early book 1 students, my "small step" is to go back to the very beginning. At first, the student's concentration and focus will need attention. If the student had enough ability to concentrate and focus for a 30 minute lesson previously, I may now find that the student's focus is merely strong enough for half that time. That is alright, because the student's focus will grow back to normal in as little as a week or a few days of concentrated effort.

I start with concentration games: staring contest, look-at-the-toy, peek-a-boo, and other "fascination" type games. I also go back to the basics in terms of posture. I notice that after a break, students seem to forget how to take a bow, stand in rest position, and get ready in playing position with the usual set up steps. So I go back to the beginning and work these initial set up steps again and again until students can once again do the set up steps routine without thinking. I may spend the entire first lesson working on this issue. I try to turn this into a fun game of "Suzuki Says," but my goal is to have my student and his or her parent go home with this issue well in hand. To read my previous article about set up steps, click here.

If there is any time left in the lesson (I would certainly hope so!), then I go to the next step. For pre-twinklers, my next step is to work through the pre-twinkle songs that we learn in lessons and group classes:

• Flower Song (Marilyn O'Boyle)
• Monkey Song (Marilyn O'Boyle)
• Songs from Joanne Martin's "Magic Carpet for Violin" (e.g., Tango, Easter Island Monkey, Bow River Fiddling)
• Songs from David Tasgal's "Strings Fun & Easy," such as:
• Lullaby
• Duck Song
• Blast Off
• I'm Number One
• We also use many of these songs to learn to read music.

For my book 1 students, after I check the set up steps and posture issues, I begin with the Twinkle Variations. If the student and parent have taken a break, then the Twinkle Variations are exactly the place to start. Even though I am a professional performing musician for over 42 years, I still find the Twinkle Variations to be the best method of cleaning up any bad habits in my posture, my playing, or my sound. I begin with the Twinkle Variations for all of my students as well as for myself. From there I progress to songs that occur in later books.

For most of my young students, I find that it never hurts to review songs that the students previously learned; in fact, I highly recommend review as the best step to take to improve a student's learning. I may spend most of the first group class in the fall semester reviewing songs that we already should know. I want my students to review regularly, but I know that unless I check on this every week, it may be skipped in home practices.

Even my most advanced students benefit from a review of early songs. I have my favorites for checking various points: Perpetual Motion, Etude, Minuet 2 or 3, Musette, Waltz, Gavotte from "Mignon," Minuet in G, Becker's Gavotte, Bach's Two Gavottes (book 3), Bach's Bourrée (book 3), the Seitz Concertos, the outer movements of the Vivaldi A minor Concerto, and so forth. Still, all of the songs in the Suzuki repertoire serve an important purpose in advancing a student's skill development, so all of the songs are worth reviewing.

I focus very strongly on review after my students have taken a break. I find that this type of intense review may take a few days or at most a week, but if a parent approaches this review with the right focus, the Suzuki practice world will improve immensely.

Step Three: Build Your Plan

Once you have evaluated your previous practice routine and plan and done some intense review of the building blocks of posture and playing well, it is time to build your future plan. There are several important ingredients to a good practice plan no matter what the age or level of the student or musician. I include the following components when I build a practice plan for my students: listening, review, tonalization, technique building, interpretation time, and performance time.

• Listening

I ask my students to listen every day to the repertoire they are studying. For example, if a student is in book 1, then I expect that student to listen to the book 1 songs daily. I ask parents to play the CD with a "background" volume and set it to repeat ("background" volume is a volume that allows you to talk without feeling a need to raise your voice to talk over the recording. When you set the volume appropriately, you will quickly forget that the music is playing, but the music plays and the listening magic happens). When appropriate, the student can add the book 2 CD, and so forth. I knew one mom who made a special recording of all ten of the Suzuki violin volumes and looped it through the house every day. I myself listen regularly to the repertoire that I study.

I have heard criticism about the listening program from non-Suzuki teachers that says listening will cause students to be robotic in their playing. I do not agree. As painters learn from studying and imitating the great masters in the Louvre, I believe that music students will learn with study to imitate the great performers that my students hear in good recordings. My advanced students do not automatically copy what they hear on a recording but instead bring a discussion to lessons about what they like and dislike in the recordings that my students heard. I encourage this sort of scholarship. This discerning evaluation all begins with a solid and consistent listening program.

• Review

A practice plan should include review of previous material that the student learned. Everything in the Suzuki repertoire builds on previous material. It is simpler to introduce new skills by incorporating them into material that is familiar and therefore easy for students to play. I strongly recommend that parents develop a systematic plan that will review previously learned material. Whether this plan includes a review chart, a coffee can full of popsicle sticks, an envelope with slips of paper, or a creative game challenge, parents should develop a system that will keep the student's focus on this important part of skill development. I like to include review items in the beginning of a practice routine to warm up the student's muscles, mental processes, and memory.

• Tonalization

Vocalists vocalize by practicing long tones to develop a beautiful sound or tone. Dr. Suzuki created the term "tonalization" to represent the similar study that other instruments do. Brass and woodwind players practice long tones. Dr. Suzuki thought that string players should also work on building tone through similar exercises. There are many possibilities to practice tonalization in the Suzuki repertoire; Dr. Suzuki included many such exercises throughout the Suzuki books. For more advanced students, a scale program or etude book might also serve as a place to develop a good tone and strong sound. Even pre-twinkle students may work on tonalization by playing open string songs or simple Twinkle rhythms on open strings. Every student of every level should incorporate tonalization of one kind or another in a practice plan. I like to include tonalization exercises early in the practice plan while the student is still warming up. Tonalization exercises provide a nice connection between warming up and technique building, the next area of my ideal practice plan.

• Technique Building

This area of the practice plan would include any areas of new skill and ability development. Perhaps the student has several previews of new songs to practice, or the student is adding new skills to previously learned songs. I would include anything new in the student's practice plan in this area. For advanced students, this could also include scales and etudes. I like to add technique building items early in the practice plan while the student's energy and focus are still fresh.

• Interpretation Time

This area is especially important for advanced students, but even younger or less advanced students can include this in the practice plan. I find that sometimes students and parents focus too easily on the technique building phase and neglect the expressive phase of music making. By focusing some time and attention on the skill of expression and interpretation, students learn how to build something larger than themselves. Students learn how to use music to connect with listeners and others, including fellow musicians.

Interpretation time includes attention to phrasing, dynamics, style, and musical expression. Here is a link to an article about artistic phrasing rules that was written by Leila Viss.

• Performance Time

One of the best ways to get back into a practice routine is to set up a performance schedule. Look ahead and schedule any possible performances. Perhaps it is a monthly community performance. We have a local coffee shop that provides performance opportunities for young students on the first Thursday night of each month. Performance opportunities might also include school talent shows, church services, studio recitals, community Christmas programs, or book graduation recitals. Put these performance opportunities on the calendar and work backwards to figure out mini-goals to prepare for the performances.

When starting up after a break, remember to think and start small. Build slowly. Reevaluate what you have done before. Add the components of a good practice plan that I have listed above a few at a time. It may seem overwhelming at first, but the process of igniting the practice fire will actually take less time than one would imagine.

The tricks are simple:

Get started.

Start small.

Monday Morning Check In: Location

I posted this weekend about the power of routine. Today’s Monday morning post has a related theme, because location can play a major part in establishing a routine.

Dr. Suzuki stated, “Man is the son of his environment.” This is a major tenet of the Suzuki philosophy of talent education. Tweak the environment, and you can produce amazing results in what a child learns.

Location is one aspect of environment. There are actually two parts to environment: the physical and the psychological. The psychological environment can be the subject of many posts, as it relates to enhancing the possibilities of environment in order to motivate the child to learn. There are many avenues to accomplish this, from individual lessons and home practice to group classes, from home concerts to public performances for the community, from attending a symphony performance to busking at the local market days.

The physical environment may take a few paragraphs to explain, but it will have one of the greatest impact on what the child absorbs in terms of learning, because a major aspect of the physical environment is that it, in large part, does not move around. We are stuck with this huge elephant; physical environment is difficult to alter in terms of its spatial dimensions.

The ingredients of physical environment are time and location. Time is an easy aspect of environment too. Just figure out the best time to do something and fine-tune the timing to reach the optimum results. Should we practice in the mornings or afternoons? Should we practice before or after a snack? Before or after dinner? Time involves a clock and a calendar.

The location aspect of the physical environment relies on different questions. Where is the best place to practice? What other things occur there or in the surroundings that might cause a detrimental distraction to an optimum learning environment? Is the ambient noise level conducive to focus and concentration or will the dog running through the space or the phone ringing nearby interrupt practice? Should we face the back wall or face in the direction of the big picture window that reveals the squirrel running along the tree branch or the bird hopping on the ground outside? Some children need more or less stimulation or noise.

Do not underestimate the power of location. I have discovered many fabulous environments in the past several decades. In the past I have worked quietly in a back guest room on a clean desk, the front library room in front of a large window, at the dining room table in the family area, and most recently, standing up with a laptop on my kitchen counter. I recall reading about a famous writer (whose name escapes me at the moment) who used to write standing up with a writing pad on top of a small refrigerator, which is what I tell myself to comfort me regarding my choice to write standing up at the kitchen counter in a room that lets me be a part of my dog pack at the same time.

The beauty of a choice location is that you can build a habit with the physicality of the space. Just as a writer can overcome writer’s block by building the habit of writing once the writer’s rear end hits the seat of the designated chair in the writing space, so a young child can overcome practicitis by building the habit of practicing in the same place (and preferably at the same time of day).

This week, give some consideration to what you have created in your physical environment. Is there something about your physical location that you can tweak in order to be more productive? Is there something in your environment that you can alter in order that your child is encouraged and supported in his or her learning efforts?

Please comment and suggest your favorite practice locations.