Music PreCollege versus Suzuki Program

College Majors Music Major
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My kids loved their music lessons. One is a professional musician. The other still plays both instruments, but is not playing very much right now.

Both also keep in touch with their private teachers, both from high school and college (even the one who was not a music major played in the college orchestra for all four years and continued private lessons all four years of college).

The music major also went to summer programs beginning with New England Music Camp. Then went to BU Tanglewood Institute for two years, then Eastern Music Featival for two years, then Aspen.

But the decision to do this was solely the kid’s.

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It really depends on what your 11-year-old wants out of music. If s/he is interested mainly as a hobby, it’s find to stay in the Suzuki school. If s/he has sights set on a conservatory for college, s/he should be beyond Suzuki book 4 at this point and should not be playing Suzuki editions. If you want to keep your student’s options open, leave the Suzuki program because it will limit options later.

I’m going to add a little person history here: I have four kids who started out in a Suzuki program. We were pretty invested in the method: went to institutes in summer and on weekends, loved the school and group classes. My two middle kids picked it up quickly–they were in Book IV by first grade (by contrast, oldest was in book 4 at age 11.) Someone tapped me on the shoulder at an institute and quietly suggested that I look for a traditional teacher. I was very resistant to this because we enjoyed the system, and the people we knew there, so much. I started by taking all four to a local traditional teacher (with a great reputation) who had taught my own younger sister many years earlier. By now, she was an old woman with many laurels. My kids played for her, I thought very well, but she was disdainful : “This is not the road to fine violin playing,” she said in a voice that I thought was snobbish. She even held up their scale book with two fingers, as if it were infected. She brought out the Carol Flesch scale book and talked about how superior it was. Then she had one of her own students play the Book V Vivaldi concerto that my oldest was learning, as if a rebuke to us.

Needless to say, I was put off by her behavior, and my kids were confused and upset–we did not go back. But I started to realize that we were investing a lot of time and energy into what was perhaps not, er, not “the road to fine violin playing.” And perhaps I needed to rethink what we were doing. It was very hard to leave the Suzuki community, but it was necessary and important, and I’m glad we did not wait.

Suzuki taught my kids a valuable lesson at an early age, and all of them have often expressed gratitude. They learned that daily practice, even in small increments, leads to progress. They learned that it pays to isolate problems and fixe them one by one. Each of them has gone into the arts (one has two degrees from Juilliard; the others are not professional musicians, but the Suzuki lessons transferred to their other endeavors.)

But: it was time to get out. Their traditional teachers corrected a slew of technical and musical issues and brought them much further than they would have ever traveled in Suzuki, allowing them to participate in chamber music and other types of playing that would have not been possible had they stayed on the original path. They still play and perform together, often on alternative instruments, as well as on strings, and those early years cemented their love of music.

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Not all Suzuki teachers are the same. As @MusakParent noted, some will provide the same attention to detail and foundational technique as the best traditional instructors.

My personal experience was with a conservatory-trained classical guitar teacher who used the Suzuki method. When she accepted continuing students from other Suzuki programs (i.e. when the family moved from another part of the country), she often had to do exactly what @glassharmonica describes - slow down or halt the student’s progress through the books, and correct a “slew of technical and musical issues.” But she did not have to be a traditional instructor to do this - she just had to be a perfectionist who understood how much these issues would limit her students in the future. The thing with the Suzuki books is that talented kids progress quickly at first, and then they get into a mindset of always wanting to get on to the next piece. It’s a teacher’s job to put the brakes on, make sure the technique is refined, and use supplemental material at the same level when “progressing” isn’t in the student’s best interests. Some Suzuki teachers really will do this. (And some traditional instructors won’t!) The other consideration for the long haul is ergonomics. Just as in youth sports, just because a student can do something at a young age doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good for his/her body. Not every top-notch traditional instructor pays as much attention to this as they should, and repetitive stress injuries can derail young musicians as they become more serious and devote more hours to practice. Otherwise high-quality training won’t help, if this happens.

One peer of my daughter’s in the Suzuki studio arrived with bad habits, and spent quite a few unhappy months laying a better foundation before being allowed to take on new repertoire. She transitioned to a pre-college conservatory program without difficulty a few years later, when she started high school, and ultimately earned a music performance degree from USC. Another young man from the same studio did the same. The transition to high school can be a good time to make this shift, since their schedules and routines are shifting anyway.

Point being, the method is just a vehicle. You have to assess the individual instructor. Look at the options you have in your area and decide who will lay the best foundation for your child, irrespective of method.

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^^There is a good deal of truth and good advice in this post, but you must also remember that the Suzuki editions (well, I can’t speak for guitar, but for bowed strings and piano) are not respected outside of the method. In other words, you don’t want to show up at an audition or competition playing Suzuki editions. Also, without supplementary repertoire, Suzuki strings are tilted too heavily towards baroque and early classical rep.