All Systems Go, Part Two

A week ago Saturday was the Suzuki Association of Minnesota Graduation for all instruments except piano. Five upper level piano soloists were selected by audition to perform as well. Lena and Calvin were included and all the pianists performed very musically. I'm proud of all the teaching going on at this level.

The guitars, harps and flutes perform in groups for their graduations. Two upper level flute soloists performed as well.  It was a very lovely concert.

Here is a link to Lena's Beethoven, Op. 13, Adagio Cantabile: Lena's Beethoven
Here is a link to Calvin's Mozart Fantasy in D Minor, K. 397: Calvin's Mozart

Next year, I'll be president and we will have a new graduation chairperson. I hope that things will continue to go smoothly and that the graduation day system will just pass into the next hands. Thank you, Andrea, for all your work getting the system in place and to all the other volunteers, Kamini and Meredith and Beatriz, Ellen and Paula--who am I forgetting--who put in hundreds of hours to make this special day for our students.

On a different note, last week at out SPTG meeting, we had a guest speaker presenting curriculums about sight-reading. It was a great program--she brought a table full of materials for us to peruse. There is no shortage of high quality systems. The knee jerk reaction, at least for me, is always, wow, I need to do that. We need to have a testing system and a grading system and a system to measure our progress. WE NEED A SYSTEM. . . .

. . . for sight-reading. . . for scales. . . for theory. . . for ear training. . . for technique. . . for rhythm.

Help. It's true that you could spend 30-60 minutes each week with each child on any of these subjects. But before you go clicking buy now on Amazon for the next curriculum. . . maybe we already have a system.

I love to quote Amanda Vick-Lethco, co-author of the Alfred piano books, because I was lucky enough have a year of pedagogy with her at UT. She even let me perform a tryout of my junior recital in her lovely home overlooking Mount Bonnell. She always said, you have to dog'um. You only have 30-60 minutes.

How are we gonna spend that time? In book one, foundations. Tone, technique, listening. We use the repertoire to build the foundations of tempo, articulation, and rhythm, balance, all of which should be smooth sailing because they are learning with the same ease they learn language. No one ever criticizes the four year old because they forgot some of the words they learned when they were three.  Success leads to success. We just keep adding more sprinkles to our musical cupcakes.

Beyond that--in books two through four we are adding reading, scales and theory. That is why we must have more time. At least 45 minutes. An hour is even better. My goal is to spend one third to one half of the lesson time with those "music education" tasks. The rest? Repertoire.

Beyond book four? We still have theory and technique but it has to serve the repertoire. The music.

At the extreme, if we take a child from three-years-old to graduation, that's fifteen years of about 40 lessons a years. Six hundred lessons. We have to dog'um, but if I'm gonna put a line in the sand I'm leaning on the repertoire side.

There is the famous quote, "perhaps it is music that will save the world" from Pablo Casals. Notice he didn't say music theory might save the world, or scales, or sight-reading. It is after music that we are studying. Music. All that other is important, very important, but it has to serve the repertoire.

That's my system, and I'm sticking to it.