I write these posts for myself. For my past, future, and current self. Sometimes insights bubble up, and they beg to be explored. To be understood. To be real-ized.

The teaching matrix idea feels like an important one–one of the most original and important ideas which has bubbled up in my own mind.

The internet defines a matrix as: an environment or material in which something develops; a surrounding medium or structure. To be a teacher is to weave together a matrix for a student to develop within. The more tightly woven the matrix, the more supportive the structure. There won’t be any cracks for students to slip through.

I see the matrix developing in three directions.
Repertoire (x-axis)
Technique (y-axis)
Learning principles (z-axis)

The teacher is in a unique position of both developing their matrix, and then guiding students through it. Each time you guide a student through the process you chart a path through the three dimensional structure. The number of times you chart that same course, the more familiar you become with it. It becomes reflexive and second nature to MOVE through the material in a particular way.

Those grooved paths can be efficient and safe, but they can also be dangerously disjointed. Like skills on the violin, you only make permanent, not perfect, what you do many times: healthy habits or otherwise.

We never know where a student will join us on their path. A transfer student might come to us from a completely different matrix. Age, interests, and temperaments will make certain tacks for certain students easier than others.

Our job as responsible teachers is to develop our own incredibly dense matrix, so that we may meet any student wherever they are at any time.

DEVELOPING YOUR MATRIX
Development is the first step. If you don’t have a sequence of repertoire, an understanding of basic technique on your instrument, and a way to communicate HOW to practice, then you don’t have anything to teach. You aren’t really a teacher.

THE AXES
To develop a matrix, you must determine all of the points on all of your axes.
Start with the X-axis. Can you name all of the repertoire you teach, in order? This is usually easy for Suzuki teachers. Just visit the table of contents of each Suzuki volume.

Now focus on the Y-axis. Can you name all of the techniques you teach, in order? This one is harder. It will require some head scratching and decision making. But this is essential: get down on paper what technique you are teaching and when.

Next focus on the Z-axis. HOW do you bring repertoire and technique together in your students’ playing. Luckily, the Suzuki method hands us many answers here as well. We use private lessons, group lessons, parent involvement, listening, and a lot of fun ‘element extension’ in lessons and at home. The Z axis is where we insert practicing strategies and strategies to cope with performance anxiety. This is where you make decisions about how to prepare technique and repertoire for recitals, how to use your mind effectively while playing, and how to organize practice thematically. The Z-axis is where magic happens. Suzuki was on the Z-axis when he suggested the following to Koji Toyoda. “No matter where or when you play, it will be a good idea always to assume you are playing for Christ.”

Suzuki discusses the Z-axis in Nurtured By Love when he says, “[The Suzuki Method’s] approach generates results on a higher plane. It is no longer a matter of technique but enters the realm of the spirit… The elongation [at the end of the piece] corresponds to a vital moment and attitude of stillness in a person who quietly remains kneeling at the end of prayer. That is the realm to which one must ascend.” (NBL 55-56).

In fact, all of Nurtured By Love is a discussion about the Z-axis. Not what it takes to play the violin, but how one must go about integrating the violin into their being in order to play it beautifully. Or, perhaps more appropriately, how to integrate beautiful violin playing into their being in order to BE more beautifully.

The strength of the Suzuki Method, I believe, is in establishing a clear(er) and more ambitious Z-axis than any other method. To maintain the legacy of Shin’ichi Suzuki’s teaching we must fully understand the scope and sequence of the Z-axis.

THE GRIDS
Now comes perhaps the most tedious aspect of developing a dense matrix: to connect all of the dots. Solidify these planes by holding every point in relationship with every other point.

Start by creating the X and Y grid. Discover the way in which every technique is present in Twinkle, then Lightly Row, then Song of the Wind, et. cetera. Then look into the way each technique is manifest through all repertoire. For example, trace bow landings from Twinkle all the way to Mozart.

Instances where a technique collides with a piece in a juicy way are critical. You already know these X,Y coordinates as ‘previews.’ But now you can see WHY that moment is a preview, and see it in relationship to all of the groundwork which could be laid in all of the pieces before that landmark.

Then hold the X and the Z axes together. What is the nature of the parent student relationship while working on Twinkle? And while working on Mozart? What does ‘focus’ during Book 1 look like? And how can it be pulled into a lesson on La Folia? When you hold together repetition and repertoire together, what is born? Do the same with the X and Z axes.

The points which arise, the (x,y) or (x,z) or (y,z) coordinates, are not to be confused with the repertoire or the technique itself. The point is its own entity– it stands alone! The ‘previews,’ as we’ve come to understand them in Suzuki language, are neither pure technique nor really the piece. They are a hybrid. They are a child of both. They contain both the essence of the piece, and the essence of the technique, but are practiced in isolation because it is a rich network of points which make up this grid, not the axes.

Students and parents don’t move through their journey with the violin on a magical carpet in the form of an axis– that would tear them apart in three directions. No, they hop from point to point in the direction you encourage, on the points that YOU (or some brilliant Suzuki teacher before you) created.

In my language, a point on the grid is the same thing as an element: a practicable unit. The more you are able to decorate that point, to have a name and a color and a recognizable flavor associated with the point, the easier it is for the student and parent to comprehend it, and therefore practice it.

So the work of grid making is more than just identifying intersecting points, it is really fabricating them. Dive into their essence and resurface with something graspable. You need a buoy, a landmark, a beacon for each one.

THE CUBE
Once the grids are developed, you hold all of the grids together (X,Y), (X,Z), and (Y,Z) to birth the (X, Y, Z) cube. To do so is to peer into folds of your consciousness which have probably never been tapped before. This work feels a bit like seeing the future, or studying the galaxy.

Try holding together Allegro, independent fingers, and center-of-body awareness work. This is a point which a student and parent could pass through. Do you know what it looks like? Do you know what it feels like? Do you have a name for the exercise you could do with this?

The more matrix work you do, the more and more relaxed you will be as you move through ‘new’ lesson moments in your teaching. You will realize you’ve been there before. You’ve visited this place in your mind. You’ve already connected the dots.

By doing matrix work– by fleshing out the backbone of the Suzuki method to its complete form– you come alive in lessons in ways you couldn’t before. What was fuzzy becomes clear. What was inarticulate becomes profound.

The student and the parent only experience one path on their journey through the matrix, but you are not on that path with them. No, you are holding/creating/existing as the three dimensional teaching form you created. That structure, solid or not, is you. A responsible teacher cannot relax into one dimensional (on the path) or two dimensional (merely aware of repertoire and technique) work. Neither can they only ‘master’ the efficient trajectory from beginner to virtuoso which slices the cube right down the middle. A responsible teacher is the substance of every path, and every potential path, which each unique parent/student pair travels down. A masterful teacher IS the environment or material in which their students develop. They are the surrounding medium and structure that makes violin learning possible.

To be the teacher is to be the complete matrix. To chart out and identify every point possible. And to travel there, to live there, before a student ever comes close.

It’s time to start filling in your gaps.