New violin teacher

Lara played 'minuet 3' at her end-of-term concert and played twinkles at the end with all the kids.

We changed violin teacher in the middle of the year, so technically she is not new anymore. I knew the ex-violin teacher was young and not very experienced, but it didn't bother me until she went away for 3 months with little notice and the substitute teacher didn't even play violin regularly. After ringing around looking for a new teacher,I realised finding another Suzuki teacher would not be easy as eveyone knows everyone in this small Suzuki circle. And it seemed that most experienced teachers have long waiting lists. So luck must be on our side when we found the new teacher and made the switch in such a short time.

This new teacher is musically-trained (ie has a university music degree or two) as supposed to someone who teach because they can play the violin well. I used to think it wouldn't make much difference, however, after experiencing both, the difference is enormous. The new teacher spends a lot of time teaching correct postures and proper bow hold (this is very important if you dont' want RSI!). She teaches rhythems, note reading, and uses a variety of materials in addition to the Suzuki repertoire. She plays with Lara, on the violin or the piano as an accompanist, holds student concerts every term and gives very detailed home practice guidelines. She pays for an accomplished teacher to conduct a master class for her students every term (Lara would need a few more years of practice to be able to go to these master classes). The friend who recommended her called her a "true" teacher. Simon joked that I was in love with the new teacher because I couldn't stop talking about Lara's lesson afterwards. I was simply amazed at the difference Lara played after something she said or after she adjusted a finger or pointed out an error.

Home practices are also much better and less tears. I think the reason being the new teacher breaks the songs down into little managable steps. Rather than diving into the new songs, Lara would listen or sing to the music in the first week, doing shadow bows during the second week then play the first two bars in the third week etc. Lara is a perfectionist and she doesn't like challenges. This style of teaching reduces her anxiety and makes practice happier.  I am so happy we found her!

Suzuki Spring School

We spent a whole day at Abbotsleigh today attending Suzuki Spring School. The program was more intensive than I thought. Lara was in Group V8 (Book 1 up to etude). She had a tutorial lesson at 9.30am, repertoire lesson at 10.20, enrichment lesson at 11.30 and 'play in' at 12.20. We had a short 45-minute lunch break before the closing concert tuning and the concert itself at 2pm. We left home early this morning and didn't get home until 4pm!! I am exhausted and I didn't even play any violin!

This turned out to be a good distraction for me. I was very busy with work in the last 3 weeks that I not only neglected my motherly/wifely duty somewhat, I was in this 'work rut' that I stopped appreciate the important people/things in my life. Being surrounded by kids and violins today made me forget my 'little work problems' and cleared my head a little.

Lara didn't really want to play in another concert at the beginning of the day. But when asked what the best part of her day was, she said 'playing in the concert"!. I only managed to record half a song at the end (camera technical issue-insufficient memeory!). This song 'Perpetual motions' had great significance because it was also the song Lara played at her debut concert last week at her teacher's house (Lara's new violin teacher holds a student concert every term. I'm so glad we found her, but this is another story). At that concert, Lara 'forgot' one part of her song, luckily re-gained her composure during the variation part of the song. This is just like life I guess. Sometimes you play well, sometimes you don't. You go past that and life goes on!

A thing or two about violin

Lara is doing well with her violin. Even if some days we could only fit in a 10-minute quick practice (when I'm too tired to play or no energy to supervise), Lara is progressing well now passed the middle of book one. She is learning 'Andantino', 3 songs away from minuet 2. Bach's minuet 2 was the first violin song we heard when we sat in at a lesson back in Oct last year. I can hardly believe Lara is nearly playing that! The young fingers are very able - Lara can move her fingers faster than me now...

Lara went to a Suzuki violin funday a few weeks ago. It was for Book 1 & 2 kids, there were around 20 kids there. We met an experienced teacher Mrs Haywood (whom I was trying to get in touch with) there and saw how she taught. It was good value for only $10 one hour. Playing with other kids just made it more fun and the hour went very fast for Lara.

A small hiccup last week when Lara broke the bridge of her violin (she was being silly trying to play the wrong way). It meant no practice for 3 days, extra time spent to get the violin repaired on my day-off and $65 out of pocket (another shop was going to charge $95). Luckily there was a spare 1/8 violin we could borrow to do the lesson on Saturday morning.

At around the same time, I got a call from a teacher I spoke to earlier. She invited us to her student concert at her studio as she might have a spot next term. She has more advanced students, one of them played Vivaldi's Winter at the concert. She's located in Cherrybrook (a little far), but we will see what happens after the trial lesson.

Lots happening!

Violin lesson 25-Feb and beyond

Lara is learning "Song of the wind" at the moment, the second song after the Twinkle variations. The challenge of "Song of the wind" is the jumping Mr three, which Lara seemed to get quickly. Maybe being left-handed helped in that regard. The twinkles, though simple, were the toughest part of the violin journey. We experienced a lot of crying, and resistance during that time. I did not complain about it much, but it was hard work without a doubt. I did a lot of reflections (was I too strict, too relax, did I ask too much or not enough) and researches on internet, read books and wrote emails to teacher during that time in order to calm myself down. The Suzuki Institute holds 'twinkle graduation concert' in Opera House every year, because being able to play the twinkles is a great achievement. I see other parents going through the twinkles stage now and listening to their stories, I am very glad that Lara's home practice sessions are getting easier.

Music is a long road and we are only at the beginning. With violins, there is also that initial period of learning to hold a foreign object, tilt your head in an almost unnatural way, press down hard on your fingers(they do hurt) at the right place or you don't make a pleasant sound. We have our good and bad days. Lara's young teacher Elle said it took her a long time to complete the twinkles, but 18 years later, she's still playing. I think about this every time we encountered difficulties.

A friend was talking to me about starting her 2-year-old on violin lessons at 3. I don't think I will do that with Sam personally. At the Suzuki summer camp, I met a piano teacher whose 4-year-old girl started violin at 2 (& sat in at lessons at 18 months (Sam's age!) I didn't get a chance to hear her play but I watched her on stage at the final concert. She might play well but she didn't have the mental maturity to follow instructions. During the time she was on stage, she kept stopping in the middle of the song to do other things (look at other kids, scratch her arm etc). I can only imagine what daily practice would be like. Do I want to go through this with Sam every day? The answer is no.

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I was looking for photos to go with this post, and another 3 weeks passed. Lara is now up to 'oh come little children', the forth song after the twinkles. This song had some difficult parts (esp the two up bows). Just when I thought practices were better, we had an awful week. Luckily during this time, I chanced upon an article in "teaching suzuki" about learning 'oh come little children'. Then I realised my mistake - I couldn't expect Lara to remember the bow movements before she can play the song. I needed to just let her play the melody, once she knew the song well, the bow movements would follow. And she played so much better after that! I have a lot to learn too....

Suzuki summer school and first violin lesson in 2012

We neglected our violins somewhat and didn't practice every day in January. The teacher was away so there were no lessons. Furthermore, I bought our violins after the rental period was up so for a couple of weeks there were no tapes to guide the left fingers. The frustration of not getting the note right also cast a shadow over practice and made it less frequent. Fortunately Lara and I slowly learned to listen to the tunes and adjusted our fingers accordingly.



During the holiday, we manged to get to the Suzuki summer school for a couple of days. We attended 2 parent talks, a play-in session and the closing concert. It was nice to walk around in the beautiful Abbotsleigh ground, seeing kids with violins on their shoulders and immersing ourselves in music coming from many of the classrooms while lessons took place.

I'm glad Lara's teacher is back now. Lara just had her first violin lesson after 6 weeks of break. There were a lot of communications, changing of schedules before we finally arrived at the 8.30am Saturday lesson time. In the lesson, Lara learned to play 'small bow', a couple of bow work-outs (moving bow up & down and side to side in rapid consessions to build strength in arm and wrist) and the Allegro body movement song. This week, the main practice will be to get 'Mr 3' down as soon as possible after the open E in twinkles. I learned something new too - always start playing with a 'down bow'.

Looking forward to learning new songs this year!

Violin practice and concert

Lara had her violin concert last Saturday. She was included in the group twinkles at the last minute because she has not done all the twinkle variations yet(note 1). It was good training and great to see Lara trying to play the twinkle she has not yet learned by ear. There was a small group practice just before the concert. This was the first time Lara played with other kids (she played with me at home). Even though the other kids are more advanced than her, she did her best. The home practice sessions after the concert were very good and less tears. It's like a driving force, a goal (she already picked out a song she likes in Book 2) to work towards. I like the concept of group lessons in the Suzuki method, and look forward to more of these in the new year.

The home practices had been up and down. Practice was easy at the start, because it involved singing songs and playing games. I remembered the fist time Lara practiced the left hand at home. She thought she could not do it therefore refused even to try for 3 days. I'm glad we got over that hurdle! We usually spent about 1/2 an hour a night practicing violin. Most of the time, I got Lara to play the twinkle variations she alreay learned 4 or 5 times (each twinkle was about 1 minute long so that's 5 minutes). I don't know where rest of the time went. My next thing to try is perhaps to make practice a little more productive but keep in mind that music is just games and play for kids at this stage. Rather than a block of 30 minutes, I want to try 15 minutes of practice twice a day. Still trying to figure out where the second practice could fit in.

I went to check out some violins last week. I had to decide whether to rent the violins for another 3 months or buy a new/second-hand one. I don't know a lot about violins so the risk of getting a second hand one might be the set up fees on top of the violin. Lara is on a 1/8 violin at the moment and as she grows, we'll have to change violin sizes. Anyway I was talking to the violin dealer and I told him how Lara cried at home practices a lot, not because she didn't want to practice (she was usually the one who reminded me to practice) but she was frustrated she couldn't get the sound right. The violing dealer told me he got a lot of school violins for repairs. "One of the hardest thing I had to do is to clean the tear marks off" he said and showing me where the tears fell on the violin. So Lara is not the only kid who does this.... I have great admiration for any kids who play the simplest tunes because I know how much work is needed behind the scene...Here's a snippet of Lara's violin concert.



note:
Twinkle variations:
A - Busy Busy Stop Stop
B - ? (not learned yet)
C - Long little Long little(or Run Mummy Run Daddy)
D - Pineapple Pineapple
E - Running little catepillar

Nurtured by love & violin lesson

Another interesting book I read recently is called "Nurtured by love" by Shinichi Suzuki (translated by his wife). Suzuki's father owned the largest violin factory in Japan in the early 1900s in Japan. Suzuki started learning violin when he was 17. After 8 years of music stuides in Berlin, he returned to Japan (with his German wife) and started teaching kids violin and later started the "Talent Education" school. There are no chapters in this book and the events are not in sequence. There are snippets of information, thoughts plus stories under many headings so the book is hard to read at times. I also jumped from story to story and didn't read the book in sequence.

Suzuki believed talent is not inherited and it can be developed through education. He taught young kids to play violin through what he called the 'mother tongue' method - repetition and listening. He believes 'character first, ability second' and learnings should be made fun. There are many touching and inspiring stories in the book including how Suzuki taught a blind boy and a girl with epilepsy to play violin. I like the story of 'two girls raised by wolves' (I later googled and found scholars debated the trueness of this story). I also like the story of Suzuki's encounters with Einstein. Einstein was my childhood hero and when I learned that he played violin since six and said 'I know that the most joy in my life has come to me from my violin', I wanted to learn too. And when Lara showed an interest in violin, I jumped at the opportunity.

I did some research, talked to a few violin teachers in the area and took Lara and Sam to an early childhood music class. One of the violin teachers I talked to invited us to observe a lesson. Lara held the cupboard violin and pretended she was playing it while the lesson took place. I was surprised she sat through the 30 minute lesson. She showed great excitement watching kids playing the same music on youtube later that night.

I got the violin book/CD and lined up the first lesson. Lara will start with 20-minute lessons, and see how she goes. Next step is to hire the violin!