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Hello all,

We'd like to start piano lessons (primarily classical repertoire) for our daughter this fall (she's turning 8 this November). We're a lirttle confused about methods of teaching. Some are arguing for Suzuki Method, others for Traditional.

We'd appreciate any advise, experiences and feedback.

Thanks much.

It is an argument.
It is a decision the parents need to make by researching. Observe lessons, at both traditional and Suzuki teacher's studios. There are also different types of Suzuki teachers. Look into Suzuki Piano Basics teachers; their approach is more on learning a natural technique and listening to tone, perfecting each piece before going on, review, etc... But there are differences of course with how each teacher approaches the Suzuki philosophy/method in that group too. Make sure to observe. Also attending recitals and seeing how the teacher's students play is also a good sign if the teacher is a good. It all depends too on what the parents are after when it comes to music lessons for their child.
There are many books that you can read: Nurtured by Love, Sensibility and Education, My Thoughts on Piano Technique, My Thoughts on Suzuki Piano, Introduction to Suzuki Piano. As for books on traditional piano lessons, the only one I can think of is How to Teach Piano Successfully, by Denis Agay. I'm sure there are others and maybe other teachers can suggest.
If you haven't done so already, there are posts that I recently posted under Starting a Child on Lessons in the Piano Teachers Forum. You will get somewhat of an idea from what I wrote. You can also do a search to see more posts on the subject.
Good Luck!! Oh... also you can go to:

http://www.suzukiassociation.org/suzukiforum/

and
http://core.ecu.edu/hist/wilburnk/SuzukiPianoBasics/

The first link is a forum for Suzuki in general. You can ask questions there.

The second link is the Suzuki Piano Basics Website. There are a list of teachers in the directory.

Some people dislike the Suzuki method and rail against it because note reading is not immediately taught. They forget that there are a world of other things (technique, etc.) that are being handled first.

Short term, the traditional approach sounds very attractive because kids generally start with notes first. The problem I've found is that they are paying so much attention to the notes, that the student pays no attention to anything else. Technique ends up being dead last on things they learn.

If you think long-term, your child will be a better pianist with a much nicer sound if you go with Suzuki over traditional. However, you must keep in mind that it's something you need to stick with in order to get to note-reading. Especially if your child is young there must be a great deal of parent involvement, even more so in Suzuki than traditional.

This is most certainly not true. There are plenty of phenomenal and dreadful students who have arisen from both methods.

Andrew, feel free to try out teachers. You should be able to interview potential teachers before beginning lessons. Ask each teacher about their teaching philosophies. More importantly, get an idea of which teacher your daughter would get along with best. Would she work harder / feel most comfortable with a male or female teacher? Someone elderly or just out of college? There are a lot of different things you may want to consider beyond method--after all, they all lead to the same thing.

Remember that Suzuki requires a lot of parent involvement. You will probably be required to attend lessons, help with practice time daily, and attend training sessions. You may be the type of parents to love this involvement and time with your daughter, or you may be running around with a varying schedule and not enough time to take on this endeavor along with your daughter.

I've never studied a Suzuki method, and I've only taken piano lessons for a couple of months. I like the Suzuki method a lot for the youngest students; however, at age 8 I don't think it matters a whole lot. Some kids do best with listening-based because they're students who may otherwise depend soley on note-reading, and Suzuki makes these kids pay attention to sound. Other students who start on Suzuki never learn to read music very easily or reliably and depend too much on how a piece sounds. They may make tremendous progress early on by using their ear, but these students may be hindered later once they're forced to truly learn to read music and need to go back to the beginning with easy pieces to work on reading. This is what happened to my sister.

Overall, the method isn't as important as making sure your daughter enjoys playing and is improving steadily. Find a teacher who works hard and loves teaching and will make your daugher work hard and love playing.

I've had several former Suzuki students, and they all seem to have two things in common:

--lots of performance experience; and

--can't sight-read worth anything!

Since I believe that reading skills are extremely important, I've never been a fan of the Suzuki piano method. I think it works much better for STRINGS, however. Because the size of stringed instruments can be easily reduced to fit tiny fingers (half- and quarter-size violins & cellos), and because the kids perform so often in string groups/ensembles (plenty of peer encouragement), the Suzuki strings method seems more accessible to
the average young child.

When I teach a young beginner (7 or 8 years old), my goal is to help that child acquire musical skills that will enhance his/her life throughout adulthood. The coordination, concentration, and mental discipline acquired through traditional ("reading-based") lessons has proven more valuable to me as an adult than being able to perform a handful of memorized classical pieces.

Of course, that's just been my own experience. I'd love to hear from a teacher who's had success with the Suzuki piano method--I try to keep an open mind!

I've had success with Suzuki! Much more so than when teaching traditional. But that is just me.
All Suzuki teachers are different, like all traditional teachers are different. There are good and not so good ones out there. I make sure that one of the many reasons my beginning students learn by ear is so that the reading of music will make sense and easy (natural) for them to learn. My students take evaluations. Although, I start them later in their evaluations, when they do they are at grade level or beyond with their reading and musicianship skills (playing skills too.)
If La la keys received one of my students while they were in Book 1 or starting Book 2, yes they would appear to not be able to read music because my students start to learn to read at the beginning of Book 2. There is a very good reason for this. Music reading and playing by ear come together and they become just as good of readers of music as if they were studying traditionaly. And let's not forget, there are a lot of traditional students too that are poor music readers.
WKS70 pretty much nailed it in regards to the difference in approach.
What C.P. disagrees with, I do understand, except the goal for the good Suzuki teacher is to have ALL of their students play well regardless. There is a range of, phenomenal to playing well. It's the "Every Child Can" philosophy and it is quite obvious if you observe a succesful Suzuki teacher's studio.
Starting you child with Suzuki piano at age 7 -8 is fine. But don't delay, the earlier the better.

You are a Suzuki teacher, Pianobuff? How cool! I guess I should have remembered or realized that from somewhere, but didn't.

I'm not a Suzuki teacher, but I believe far more firmly in their methods than in the traditional approach. I. Can't. Stand. Traditional. That is, the traditional American approach. Is it the same elsewhere?

I have no doubt at all that there are teachers out there who do a wonderful job with traditional, but it's not for me. I was raised on traditional and I taught the various methods for a long time, and never could figure out why they all made me so unhappy. They seemed so silly, disorganized, and my students weren't learning at the speed that I thought they should go.

My piano teacher and his wife wrote a course that is the bridge between Suzuki and traditional, but I didn't know anything about it. When my daughter started lessons with a family member who used the traditional approach, I knew that although my daughter was being taught the exact same way that I taught my own students, it was all wrong. I managed to gracefully take my daughter away from the family member and put her in with the wife of my piano teacher. Oh what an amazing difference! Being able to sit in on my daughter's lessons was such a wonderful learning experience!

Within three months of the change in approach, I was completely convinced and made the jump with my own students. I've never looked back. When I have transfer students from traditional methods, it's amazing how they can have taken lessons for three and four years and yet still are not able to do some of the things that my beginner students learn within their first few months.

My daughter's piano teacher was a certified Suzuki teacher before she and her husband developed their own course. Their web site is www.silvapiano.com. Before I started using their course, I was unhappy with the traditional approach to the point that I had started researching Suzuki. I think I would have eventually made the jump to Suzuki.

people here should really check out "starting child on piano lessons" located at piano teachers forum.

pianobuff and myself - we went through quite a bit on this subject.

Thanks for the info WKS70! Their course sounds very interesting. I am always looking for other ideas with the same basic philosophy.
I currenty have an almost 14 year old beginner and would love to have her play well, quickly, and not be playing the same Suzuki pieces that my little ones learn. I do not want to start her on anything traditional as method books go, so something new might do the trick.

There is another option. Traditional lessons focus on reading, with playing ability entirely dependent on reading ability. Suzuki lessons focus on technique - doing it right technically. Simply Music lessons are very new to this country, but offer a 3rd alternative. Simply Music is a playing based method that teaches students to learn by doing, followed by a step by step reading education that relies heavily on what they are already able to play, just as children learn to speak before they learn to read and write. Technique develops naturally, with only a little coaching, as the student becomes more familiar and comfortable with playing the piano, both hands. I'd really encourage you to at least check it out at SimplyMusic.com.

I took a break of several weeks from this forum....simply too busy. So I missed the "starting child on piano lesson" thread that starsea49 mentioned. I'm kinda glad I missed it!

Starsea49, I have no doubt that you are an excellent teacher, but with all due respect, I disagreed with most of your arguments in the other thread. It's interesting that teachers can turn out excellent students, even though they have wildly different viewpoints. I do have a question for you. In reading through the other thread, I wondered if you love music (especially piano) for the sake of music or as a means to an end? This isn't to start a fight, just an honest question. I'm assuming that you love music as you are so passionate in your arguments, but I just got to wondering since you talked about how you and so many other children in your country were forced into it, that it was something that enables people to get into medical programs, using it to develop specific parts of the brain, coordination, etc. And yes, I agree that music is so very important for those reasons, but I wondered if it meant more than that to you?

Hope this doesn't come across in the wrong way. I really would like to know!

Cindy B,
I did check out simplymusic.com and it also interests me. I need to go back and see what the repertoire is like.
There is one thing that I do disagree with in your post in regards to technique.
When I teach my students, they do develop good technique (which to me is very important), but they also develop their ear (listening for good tone and correct pitch) and memorization skills, and being able to balance between hands, as well as internalizing a sense of rhythm. This is most easily done without the distraction of learning to read music at the same time. They also learn the discipline of taking lessons and practicing (repeating, etc...)
In other words, it is not just technique that is taught before reading music when teaching Suzuki.

C.P.--
What reading book did your sister's teacher start her out on? I do know of some Suzuki teachers that use American method books for their start in reading, which I do not use.
I use a reading book that correlates very well with the pieces my students have learned from ear in Book 1. The pieces in this reading book are not sub-standard by any means and are at the perfect level of challenge as well as musically written too.

Hi Cindy B.,
Well I went back to the web site and listened and watched the videos presented. It looks like an okay way to learn. But I will be honest, I am a little more of a perfectionist. I like to see better technique and better tone and less or no pedal. I also do not like to teach arrangements or simplified piano pieces, but instead the real thing. I also did not see very young children in the videos, most seemed to be ages 8 and up. But as far as general music making and having fun at the keyboard, it seems like it works.
There is just so much more to true musical artistry that I try to instill right from the beginning. I heard a lot of pedal in the video which just covers up faulty technique. Not my style. The technique I saw was poor which refelected poor tone. But with that being said, it looks like a fun way to learn simplified pieces quickly ages 8 and up.
Please, I hope I'm not sounding too harsh. Just the way I see it.

Pianobuff, she's my older sister, so I have no idea which books she used! She may not have had a certified Suzuki instructor, either. All I know is that listening and playing back was encouraged, but since that came very easily to her she went on to depend on listening and watching someone play the piece to the point where she couldn't sit down and read and play the music, even pieces much simpler than what she had been playing. She had to switch teachers a number of times, and since she was playing at quite a high level most teachers never really noticed or cared very much that she had trouble reading.

This is not, of course, what I expect with Suzuki teaching. I do not have a problem with proper Suzuki teaching, and I think it's the best approach for a lot of beginning kids, particularly the very youngest students (say ages 4 - 6) who would not be able to learn to read music easily at the beginning.

Here is my opinion.....

As teachers, we could go around and around the "Method Argument" for years and years, and never come to any solid, 100% bonafide, definite decisions about which method is "the best." And honestly, I don't think it is worth hashing it over and over again.

As I have said before, we all have different learning styles and strengths both as students and teachers. Both Suzuki, Simply Music, Traditional and anything else out there has the capability of producing excellent teachers, mediocre teachers and deficient teachers which leads to excellent students, mediocre students and deficient students; however it is important to realize that not all excellent teachers will have 100% success in molding excellent students. The teacher and the student MUST work well together and be able to understand one another's teaching and learning styles.

I think it's time we realize the importance of NOT making things a "method" issue (because no method is perfect, and never will be perfect), but more a "teaching" issue. As we all strive to become better at our craft and learn more about how the human brain is "wired" with regards to learning and teaching, I believe we can become better teachers and better help our students to become excelent musicians.

I think simply stated....."Avoid Mediocrity; Pursue Excellence."

Ok WKS70 ... this one is mainly for you ...

The definition of excellence has unfortunately deteriorated overtime. In many circles, what is considered excellent today would never have been calssified as high as mediocre when excellence demanded excellence.

To me, as well as many recognized music schools, colleges and universities, a good pianist is necessarily a good musician. An excellent pianist has the ability to transcribe any close piano score he sights or listens to, into an orchestral piece; thus enabling articulated interpretation that requires all different types of manual attacks to simulate the different timbres of the many various orchstral instruments that simulate activities intended by the composer. S/he ought to be able to do this without any excessive help from the teacher as s/he progresses. Initial suzuki fails to provide this type of instruction. The quality of musicianship resulting from proper instruction is always apparent. To achieve "true" virtuosity means internalising all aspects of musical knowledge, technique and vocabulory, employing all senses. I don't see how focusing on only one sense at the expense of all other senses, whether in the beginning or later, will help facilitate this. Infact, I don't believe in encouraging "laziness" in any sense(s) ... the more one refuses to read, the more the person should practice reading. A good teacher knows how to make reading fun!....rather than just postpone reading. If method books don't work, try something else to encourage reading ... create activities to inspire reading .... don't eliminate it altogether from his/her music lessons!!! Personalize his/her piano lesson plans.

Nuteachr has some really good points saying it's not so much the method ... rather it's the teacher that nurtures excellent students.

It's interesting to ponder over this; if we reward the donkey for sleeping on his job, what incentive is there to get the donkey to work hard? Suzuki gives the carrot of allowing students to play without understanding music. Once the student is spoiled, imagine how difficult it is to teach all of the elements of music that require hard work? That's the test I face every time a former suzuki student comes to me who suddenly is serious about learning music as opposed to immitating on the piano. This usually happens after s/he attended my piano recitals and was so awed by the viva voce section.

WKS70 - to answer your question whether I love music or not .... YES, I DO .... and i attribute it to my structured way of learning music that bestowed upon me the many "resources" to appreciate music. I not only "hear" music, I "listen" to music. Many people "hear" music and I hope they enjoy it like I did before any formal musical training. Trained musicians "listen" to music and appreciate the art. We are able to understand upon listening the different renderings of different concert pianists on the very same piece.

Whenever a trained musician holds in his/her hand several different editions of the same piece, s/he can most definitely hear the similarities/differences in his/her head. With the different "resources" I have, I'm able to understand (not necessarily agree) why different editors adopt different articulations.

All these "understanding" that we possess will enhance our abilities to deliver our performance on the piano as musically as possible, if not just equip us to be a discerning music connoisseur.

Oh, did I mention that these "understanding" also served as a form of inspiration for me?

Sorry to chime in on the middle of the train of thought here, but I was curious when it comes to parental involvement, is there a certain age that parents aren't required to be involved? What I was thinking is, what about a teenager? Would 14, 15, 16 yr. old's on still need to have parental involvement at lessons and practice?

Also, is the Suzuki method taught to adults?

One thing that sounds most impressive to me on the Suzuki method, although I don't teach it but basing my comments on what I've read, is the attention given to good technique from the beginning and being able to focus on good movements without being bogged down with reading at the same time. All too often, I think it's easy to get so focused on how to read the music for beginners, good technique can go by the wayside in order to "just get the notes".

Most of my students seem really motivated by wanting to learn what's on the written page, though. It's kind of like getting a new book or magazine to read. It creates curiousity as to what's in store, what's going to happen, where's the story going to go and one has to read to find out. When given a choice even with my students, "Would you like to learn this piece as written or learn to play it making up your own version with chords?" The usually choose to learn the written music.

I still, though, am attracted to the fact that Suzuki has students focusing on good technique over note reading at first. With traditional methods, how many students who are taught to learn to read the music from the beginning are also taught good technique?

Sarabande wrote:
"With traditional methods, how many students who are taught to learn to read the music from the beginning are also taught good technique?"

Precious few, I think. There are some excellent teachers out there who train their students well, but I don't think that most run-of-the-mill teachers who were trained traditional and use it with their students have that kind of in-grained training.

This is my second year working one day a week at a music academy. Both last year and this year, I got transfer students from other teachers in the school. The students are terrible! The teachers are allowed to use whatever method they prefer. All of the other piano teachers use one of the popular, traditional methods. Of the students who were transferred to me and from my prowling the hallways, listening to as many students as possible, I have not found anyone who has good technique. I attended the piano recitals, hoping to hear something that impressed me. Of all of them, I heard one girl whose technique was slightly better than most, but even then, not very impressive.

I was raised on the traditional method. I knew that I didn't have the sound that I wanted, but I had no idea how to achieve it. Not a single one of my traditional teachers ever approached technique in any way, shape or form. They concentrated on notes, rhythm, and occasionally, fingering. They all seemed to think that the bigger fistful of notes you could play, the better you were as a pianist. Things only turned around after I met my current piano teacher, heard him play and realized that he knew the secret to that sound I wanted so desperately to learn.

Maybe my teachers in childhood and teen years were unusually awful, I just don't know. At the time, my parents and I always thought that they were really good teachers and pianists. By the general public, they were considered excellent teachers. But over the past few years with my current piano teacher, I've had to re-learn the correct way to do EVERYTHING. There are some areas in which I still struggle. If I had had the benefits of this kind of training from the beginning, how much further could I have gone?

Pianobuff, as regards technique - perhaps you are the exception. Across the board, the piano teachers I know who have accepted transfer students from Suzuki studios say the same thing - technically accurate and mature, but expressively lacking. I know of no teachers other than one friend of mine who teaches traditional reading based methods who I'd refer students to in either Suzuki or traditional. She is what I consider an exception to the rule.

As far as age and perfection etc. My personal goal for anyone I teach is to give them music as a companion for the rest of their lives. I do not have as my goal technical perfection. In my own personal experience, the push to play it correctly and according to the composers original manuscript so overwhelmed the desire I had to play stuff I enjoyed that when I graduated with a bach degree in music, I quit playing the piano for nearly 10 years, except to accompany in church. NOW I have rediscovered the joy that is possible in piano playing because I've allowed myself to drop the unspoken agenda of an educational system which expects teachers to train students for Carnegie Hall or a similar classical performance future. What other reason is there for technical perfection?

I don't think you're harsh. I appreciate your openness. I want to add that perhaps we have a different personal definition of musical artistry. I aim to equip my students to be able to go in any direction they choose in music - composer, arranger, accompanist, concert pianist, recording artist. Just as I raised my son to be equipped to attend college if he wanted to, get a job of his choosing based on the degree of his choice, etc. The contemporary traditional music world lacks musical artistry because everyone is too busy reading, studying, and performing someone else's music with little or no attention spent on drawing out what is within the students themselves.

THAT is a very disputer argument, actually.

Most like Suzuki, because they think it's good for their child and that the pace is well thought out. And other dislike it because their child isn't learning enough of a larger repertoire or some sort of the other.

For me, I have NEVER played Suzuki for piano, I've learned Suzuki for violin though, and honestly, I can say that it was good, but not so much as a Traditional teaching. I switched violin teachers after a few years and the other teacher taught Traditional. And I learned MUCH more.

For Traditional you can try certain books like:
- John Thompson's Piano
- Technique is Fun
- Bastien & Bastien Piano
- Faber
- Fun Theory/Master Theory

They're all very good, and they're what I used when I was younger. I've been playing for around eight years now. But you might also want to do research and ask your child what she thinks. Show her the different books, and ask some teachers around your area. I liked the other books because they had pictures and colors and they looked exciting.

Good luck, and please let us know how everything goes.