Cole's notes Suzuki

When choosing music education for yourself or your child, here are a few things you might not know about the Suzuki approach, sometimes called the Suzuki Method or even known as a style of learning. Specifically, the Suzuki piano series has seven books of material each with its own accompanying CD of recordings. These books start with simple traditional melodies and increase in style and complexity allowing the student to develop ability and skill to a high level. Through a collaborative process between a student, a teacher and a parent a personal journey of lifelong music appreciation and learning begins with listening and experiencing simple melodies, rhythms and harmonies. The teacher and parent provide the guidance for the student to develop their inner hearing and apply it to music much the same way they used this ability to learn their language. Listening to music, especially music that has some complexity, requires more clarity and time than a cell phone speaker or a car stereo on the way to the lesson. If you think of the way we learned to speak our language, it came to us "live" from the mouths of our parents and those who were around us the most. And, we heard the sounds often enough to breed familiarity and ease. Enough so, that through various listening experiences, over time, we were soon able to repeat those same sounds ourselves. Once a student finds they can play melodies, rhythms and harmonies well enough, they are introduced to music reading, giving them the tools they need to play more complex material. Learning this way differs with traditional approaches for piano where music reading using symbols (music book with music notation) is introduced before the sound is produced.