Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Music Literacy in the Suzuki Method

This is mine.  My paper for Composition Theory class.  No touchy.


Introduction

            I’m interested in exploring how the process of learning to speak is analogous to the process of learning to play music and how that is shown in the Suzuki Method’s mother tongue approach to teaching.  In the mid 1900’s, Japanese violinist, Shin’ichi Suzuki realized that if young children could so easily learn even the most challenging of languages, then they also have the ability to become talented musicians.  He created a theory of teaching instrumental music that was based off of the process of children learning their native language.
            This “mother-tongue approach” is two-fold, first, it is strongly grounded in full immersion in music, and secondly, it is very concerned with creating a community of musicians.  This is taken undoubtedly from Vygotsky’s theory of social learning.
            I want to investigate how constructs of language such as grammar and punctuation translate into the “language” of music and how they are learned and taught.  In both languages, learning is almost exclusively oral, with words being spoken aloud and notes being played by ear and not by reading them off a page, and both “languages” social learning reigns supreme.  

Supplemental Information

            Mostly, Suzuki programs are based in the public school systems, or less frequently, there are independent schools of music that offer this training.  It is common for children to start learning music very young, although this is not always necessary.  This program was first designed for violinists, but has since been expanded to many instruments, although Suzuki has its heart in the string family.

Conceptual Framework

            I’m interested in the analogous nature of music to language and how that forms the basis for this movement in music education style.  This is the concept of literacy, and how one can be “literate” in many different things, such as interacting in certain social situations and learning how to use an internet search engine.  Since music bears a certain similarity to languages—communicative, structured, reading, writing, speaking/playing—it will be interesting to explore this possibility though the lens of the Suzuki method.
            I’m interested in the social learning aspect of this program, that is, the community of those who are literate in music that the child slowly becomes a part of, like how a child slowly joins a culture of those who speak a certain language.  The child-instructor relationship is very crucial to this and so is the relationship between the students as they can also mentor each other.  The concept that relates to this is Vygotsky’s sociocultural learning theory.

Methodology
           
            My research was a combination of remembering my childhood and Googling the Suzuki method.  Firstly I got a brief overview of the method from the Suzuki Association’s website, then I watched a ten minute documentary on YouTube.  I remained on YouTube, watching videos of five year olds playing the violin at their recitals and being taught in lessons.  Eventually, I got bored of that and started looking up pictures on Google Images that best represented the Suzuki method.  I chose the internet as my main source since it is so easily accessible in comparison to almost anything else.  There was no real need to track people down and interview them, or to try and sit in on a class.
            I also did a lot of thinking about my own experience in my school’s Suzuki Strings program that I was a part of from the third grade until I graduated.  I remembered some things I had forgotten and tried not to be too nostalgic about it. 

Findings
           
            During my research, I noticed that there seemed to be two main things that the Suzuki method boiled down to, that is the community of musicians that the child is brought up in and also the idea that music should come as naturally as speaking. 

            The community of musicians, that is, those that are literate in music, is analogous to the community that is literate in the child’s native language.  Made up of peers and parents and teachers, they are a support system for the child’s learning progress as the child learns the language, in this case, music.  The parents provide literacy opportunities first, in the home, before the child goes to school, they have to make sure the student practices their instrument in a similarly natural way to the way that they practice speaking and reading.  It ought to be as enjoyable and as praiseworthy as learning new words is. 
            It is fairly common for one of the students’ parents to learn to play the same instrument as the child, in just the same way that parents speak the same language as their child.  The child becomes more invested in the learning process and more enthusiastic if the parent-child relationship is played upon.  The young student will have more to gain by becoming literate like their parent(s) because the parents are “stimulating the child’s desire to imitate” them (Piano Key, Suzuki Piano Method).  This also fosters the parent-child bond, and creates a very safe and supported space for the child to explore their new literacy.
            An important part of the literate community is the celebration of the child’s accomplishments.  Just as they are rewarded and praised for saying their first words and eventually learning to speak properly, so too are they praised and celebrated for becoming literate in their instrument.  It is common practice in the Suzuki method to have recitals that mark certain achievements in the students’ progression.  These are usually the completion of a book, which is a collection of increasingly difficult pieces of music that the student learns.  The most popular of these recitals is always the child’s first one, which can range from all the students in the entire grade, to a single student.
            In these concerts, or recitals, the student is always accompanied by their instructor, either on piano, or on the instrument the student plays.  This practice is to create a supportive environment for the child so that the recitals do not have the stress associated with a final exam type of situation because that is not the purpose of such events.  They are intended to be enjoyable celebrations of learning and music and so the student must not be made to feel pressured.
            In the learning of one’s native language, this recital is probably the equivalent of a child being able to read his bedtime story aloud alongside the parent. 
            Much of the Suzuki method is seemingly inspired by, or at the least, similar to the theories of the psychologist Lev Vygotsky.  Although Suzuki’s quest was to create generations of people that were, ultimately, better people, with “noble hearts”, in practice, his teachings were very grounded in the socio-cultural theories of the Soviet psychologist.  If we take away the moral philosophies, Suzuki’s work amounts to a new and effective, scientifically grounded way to teach music. 
           Vygotsky’s concept of the Zone of Proximal Development, ZPD, refers to the things that a child is learning to do.  In our case, it is to play music.  At the low levels of the ZPD are the things that the child do on his own and at the higher levels are the child’s potential abilities that may be achieved with the help of a skilled teacher.  Since the students are involved in small lesson groups, these teachers may also be their peers, perhaps an older student, or one who is naturally talented at a certain skill.  For example, a student who has better vibrato than another can share their insight with a struggling peer (photo from suzukiassociation.org).  More commonly, in the upper level orchestral groups, the section leader will suggest bowings and fingerings for the rest of the students in their section.  Granted, they will probably require the teacher’s approval, but it is the section leaders that take the initiative if something doesn’t feel right, or can be made easier.
            It is also very important for the student to be constantly exposed to the sounds of music, just as they are constantly exposed to the sounds of their native language.  For student in Suzuki programs, this is mainly achieved by listening to recordings of the pieces that are in the books, although it is certainly not limited to that.  The recordings are performed by professionals and serve as guides for what the students ought to sound like.  This isn’t to say that the students must imitate the player on the recordings, but rather that it is a good example of good tone and precision.  Recordings exist in the language-learning world as well; tapes of native speakers saying things like “Where is the bathroom?” or, “Hello, my name is” so that students can hear all the inflections and accents that would be incredibly hard to pick up on from working with text alone.  Listening to music is good for musicians in the same way that reading books is good for writers; they get more exposure to the craft, can be inspired, or can notice something they couldn’t have before.  Live music also falls into this category since it has all the benefits of listening to the recordings, but with the added benefit of being able to learn about the performance aspects of music.  Students are encouraged to attend as many music performances as they can, especially if these performers are their peers, which further helps to create the community.

Reflection
           
            If I could have done this project differently, I may have picked a slightly different topic, since researching the learning of music-as-language was rather challenging.  I was probably looking in some of the wrong places.  It would have been interesting to find a connection with Ong’s “Writing is a Technology that Restructures Thought” and investigate how music affects the thought processes of humans, if it even does at all.  I suspect that it would be rather similar to the oral culture when the child is learning to play by ear, and then perhaps there may be a change in their thoughts as they learn to read music, just as when people gain the written word.

            My understanding of the term literacy has changed over the course of this project because I had the unique challenge of examining musical literacy through the lens of language literacy.  The two line up surprisingly well, but sometimes it is a challenge to think of how it is possible to immerse a child in music as fully as they are immersed in their native languages.  If I had more time, I’d want to study how adults learn music and how it differs and is similar to the way that young children learn music.  The adults, of course, will probably have a harder time than the children, since adults lack the extreme neuroplasticity of children.  Perhaps there are people who retain this quickness of the brain, are they the ones we call geniuses?  

Monday, May 4, 2015

I dropped off the face of the earth...I'm sorry

I had a wee bit of a mental breakdown.
yes, just like that.


But now I'm back to normal.  Because normal exists...


Hopefully posts will be fairly regular again, but I can't make any promises.