If you’ve been around West County Strings for any length of time – or even if I’ve only taught you at an Institute for a week, in a group class at a workshop, or even in a 15-20 master class – you’ve likely heard me talk about the irreplaceable value and importance of listening frequently and consistently to quality recordings of the pieces you are working on, have worked on, and will work on in the future.  Here’s roughly what I usually say:

“Listening to your recordings is the number one easiest and most surefire way to make progress on your musical instrument.  And yet, it’s also the number one thing that students and their families do not do nearly enough of.”

How does listening to a recording help you make such incredible strides in progress, you say?  Well, I’m glad you asked.  When you listen to a piece, at the very least you get a sense of:

• The piece’s tempo (speed)
• The piece’s style (serious, playful, sombre, lighthearted, etc.)
• The piece’s rhythms
• The piece’s pitches
• The piece’s articulations (staccato, legato, etc.)
• the piece’s structure (do sections repeat, etc.)

And so much more.  The gist of the matter is that when you’ve listened to a piece sufficiently before you come to your lesson, we’re working on how to play something that you already subconsciously know to a great degree.  We’re not working on what to play and how to play it.  That makes lessons incredibly more productive, and over the course of weeks, and months, and years, can lead to graduating all the way through the Suzuki repertoire instead of getting stuck somewhere along the way.

I have to be honest: sometimes I can’t imagine why students and their families wouldn’t listen to their Suzuki CDs or whatever other recordings correspond to the repertoire they’re currently working on.  I was fortunate that my mom kept cassette tapes of all the Suzuki Violin Books interspersed between the car and my bedside radio, so we listened to them on the way to and from school, to and from sports practices, and while we were running errands around town, and I also often fell asleep listening to them, as well.

It’s never been easier than it is today to get ahold of the Suzuki CDs.  Between sharmusic.com, Amazon.com, iTunes, a plethora of local music stores, you can have your hands on a copy in as little as a few minutes.  And the quality of the recordings has never been higher.  Just this year, the Suzuki Association announced the release of new recordings featuring Hillary Hahn – one of the most impeccable violinists to grace the music world today, if not ever.

So, that would be one of my pleas:  Please, please, do not go to YouTube and listen to some random individual play the Suzuki repertoire.  You’re not guaranteed that they’re playing an accurate tempo, if they’re playing with the correct articulations, if they’re playing the dynamics marked in the music, if they’re playing with perfect intonation, or if they’re playing with beautiful tone.  And if you’re watching a video, you can add to that that you can’t be sure that they’re demonstrating good technique.  Just please, please don’t turn to YouTube as a substitute for quality recordings.

If you’re working on repertoire supplemental to the Suzuki repertoire, or after the Suzuki repertoire, it’s also never been easier to get your hands on quality recordings.  When I was learning concertos back in high school, I would drive from Illinois to one or two music shops in downtown St. Louis in hopes of turning up good recordings of the concertos I was working on.  Nowadays, you can pull up Spotify and literally have the very highest-quality recordings at your fingertips for free!  What a time to live in!

Now, I asked a rhetorical question earlier (“Why wouldn’t students and their families listen to the Suzuki CDs?”) and I know that there are some legitimate answers to that question.  The most obvious and frequent one is that children would simply rather listen to something else in the car, around the house, in their headphones, or before bed than their violin or viola music.  And I don’t want to deny that this can be a tough bridge to cross.  However, I think that if we slowly but steadily create a culture in our homes that listening to violin and viola music is something we do a bit of every day in this family, just like practicing, then it can be accomplished.  And trust me: the benefits far outweigh the struggle.

So, as we head into a new school year, I hope it will be one in which every single one of our students and their families listen to their recordings more than ever before!  In fact, let’s aim to be a community that all listens to their recordings every day!

Throughout my teaching career, I’ve generally been blessed with students and parents who “trust the process” and aren’t too overly eager to race blindly ahead through the repertoire.  This has never been more true than at present, and I’m extraordinarily grateful to be able to work by and large with students and parents who share a similar vision of the path of developing musical ability that includes repetition, review, and a logical, sensibly-paced progression through selections of music that match students’ ability.

That said, how many of us can truly say that we can “play any piece… no matter how long ago we have learned it,” much less play it “well?”

As I’ve thought about this principle this week, I’ve likened developing ability on a musical instrument to several images in my mind:

1. A pyramid under construction.
2. A skyscraper being built.
3. A growing tree.

I’ve always been moderately fascinated with ancient Egypt, and the engineering and architectural marvels they were able to accomplish without the use of modern tools.  When it comes to building pyramids, one simple principle is always at play: the higher the planned pinnacle of the pyramid, the wider the base of the pyramid must be.  I relate this to developing ability on a musical instrument by thinking that the greater heights of musical accomplishment we want to achieve the “wider our base” must be.  In this case, a “wide base” is being able to play every piece we’ve ever learned, and play them well.  What would happen if, as the workers continued to work on building the pyramid higher, the foundational layers began to crumble and fall into disrepair?  Would the structure ever be able to come to its envisioned fulfillment?

I’ve also aways been awed by the Chicago skyline, highlighted by the Sears (now Willis) Tower, and have on many occasions enjoyed walking through the streets of downtown Chicago, surrounded on all sides by almost unimaginably-high walls of steel and glass.  Skyscrapers are truly a modern engineering marvel, and one simple principle is at play in their design and construction: the greater the planned height of the skyscraper, the deeper the foundation that must first be dug, almost always accompanied by steel beams driven all the way down to bedrock.  Once again, I relate this to developing ability on a musical instrument by thinking that the greater heights of musical accomplishment we want to achieve, the “deeper our foundation” must be.  In this case, a “deep foundation” is once again being able to play every piece we’ve ever learned, and play them well.

And finally, I’ve always loved trees.  In fact, I often imagine that if I ever have a second career it would hopefully be in something like reforestation.  Or, in a perfect world, maybe I could find a way to raise support for preservation of the rainforests through musical benefits.  I digress.  When I think about trees, I am reminded that before they explode upward and outward, they spend the first several years of their life putting down roots, which continue to grow deeper and wider underground as the tree does so visibly above ground.  And what happens to a tree if its root system is damaged?  No matter how healthy the tree is above ground, it will suffer to some degree, and if the roots are damaged enough the tree will die.  I relate this to developing ability on a musical instrument by thinking that the higher, and wider, and more blossoming and beautiful we want our ability to be, the deeper, and wider, and stronger, and more healthy we need to keep our “roots.”  And in this case, our “roots” are every piece we’ve ever learned, and maintaining the ability to play those pieces and play them well.

I do still get the occasional request to “move ahead faster,” to “focus more on new material,” or to “spend less time on review.”  And while I can understand the desires that motivate these requests, and think they’re often if not always well-intentioned, I think they miss out on a key element of developing ability on a musical instrument that lies in having a deep, wide, strong, healthy base of repertoire that in itself teaches and reinforces good technical and musical skills.  I hope that reflecting on this particular of Dr. Suzuki’s principles will help bring us all into a more unified vision of what creates long-term, sustainable success as we prepare to head into a new school year together!

One of the things that makes the Suzuki Method unique, is that instead of primarily being a series of progressive exercises it is a series of progressive pieces of music.  Both approaches are similar in that if the exercises are taught correctly, they progressively develop good technique and ability in the student.  Where the two approaches differ is that learning a progressive series of pieces is inherently more fun for the vast, vast majority of students than learning a series of progressive exercises is (Dr. Suzuki was, after all, a big proponent of joy in students’ playing and their lives, and could almost always be found with a smile on his face).  And when all is said and done, the Suzuki student is left with a large catalogue of pieces they have learned which they can enjoy playing.

The problem is that, all too often, we fail to give review (the frequent, intentional replaying and restudying of the pieces we have already learned) its proper place of importance in our overall learning experience.  Instead of remaining pieces that are easily accessible at our fingertips, review pieces often become shelved in the furthest recesses of our mind that must be dredged up with great pain and difficulty.  This defeats the entire purpose of both being able to enjoy our review pieces, and to use them as the ideal platform on which to improve the quality of our playing.

A foreign language teacher once used this metaphor with my class once we had taken all the basic courses in the language and were on to more advanced translation and application.  He said, “Knowing a foreign language is like pushing a huge stone wheel (think of one taller than yourself).  Once you’ve got it rolling, it takes just the occasional little push to keep it moving.  But let it grind to a halt, and you will have to exert all the effort in the world to get it moving again.”

Maybe many of you reading this find yourself in the place where you know that your knowledge and facility with your review pieces has ground to that metaphorical halt.  One of the great opportunities that we’ve had this summer, as we’ve followed our weekly review charts is to get those juices flowing again – to get that stone creeping forward once more.  But don’t ever, ever let up!  Listening to your recordings (which will be the topic for a future week) and being a good student of your review are two of the single most important things you can do to be successful at learning your instrument, to enjoy playing your instrument, and to become a mature, accomplished musician.

So, here’s to review.  We’ll be going over some in your lessons this week!