theme: rhythm in the body

Entrance
While students come in, playing marimba duo videos.
Tune all violins, check in with students

The more we get together
Sing together once
Name each student who teacher floats hand over

Name chain
Students call on each other. When called, student stands. Keep going until all people are standing

Copy me! Quarter note taps all over the body
Students move to line
Teacher sits in front of class and quietly taps all over body in steady rhythm. Students copy on beat.

Orchestral Clap
Everyone prepares hands, watches teacher, teacher counts 1, 2, 3! And clap together. Attempt to sound like one person.

MTYT Rhythms (define all)
Clapping. Teacher says “My turn ready go,” claps, then “your turn ready go.” Work through all rhythms. Talk about potential names for everything.

VIDEOs
Still in line… Lights dimmed.
Marimba duos
Stomp Brooms
Body percussion performance

Group Rhythm Choreographed Performance
Split into two groups. Each group picks out where MSHD will be on body. Then rehearse each group playing one side then the other. Side A MSHD then Side B MSHD. Do a string of 4 (A, B, A, B).

Bow and parent claps.

Violin play position, rhythm tap
Students back in circle. Go to play position with help of parents as necessary. Stay in play position until teacher taps rhythm on violin where student can’t see students guess the names of rhythms. Parent plays game again with student while teacher goes to all students.

Scale game
Students sit in circle.
Teacher gives one note card with musical alphabet letters on each. Students put in order A-A. Each student has opportunity to be part of the whole. Say the alphabet.

Build another one starting on D. Say the alphabet together starting on D.

Build another A-A. Say the alphabet backwards.

Take cards away so students have to remember letters in order without being able to see them.

Stir the Soup
Stand up. Students build bow hold, with parent help as necessary. Once set land on launch pad.

Put an imaginary fruit loop or cheerio on top of bow. Don’t let it fall off!

Stir the soup. Each student contributes one food to the soup. We stir it in. Change the direction of stirring if you like.

Drink at the end. Eat the fruit loop. Yay.

Up Like a Rocket (parents clap beat)
Build another bow hold. Sing/do once without the beat.

Teacher established steady beat which parents keep. Teacher leads up like a rocket to the steady beat (feeling the song’s rhythm against the backdrop of the beat).

Rest position song.
to the tune of Twinkle
“Rest position, feet in line
Scroll out front, that’s mighty fine
Take a look, your bridge should be
Peaking out at you and me.
Now it’s time to take a bow.
1 and 2 and 3, that’s how.”

I love teaching pre-twinklers! The classes, especially group teaching, require planning, carefully attention to the energy of the group, and equal parts fun and instruction. There isn’t slack for lazy teaching — if you are unprepared or non-dynamic the class will make it obvious.

Here are a few critical pre-twinkle group class principles I’ve picked up in one and a half years of teaching pre-twinkle group classes at Ithaca Talent Education.

1) The activity is the teacher, you are merely the facilitator of the activity.

The class isn’t about you. The class is about the learning happening in your students. We are allowing their sub-conscious mind to teach itself by overwhelming it with a positive and richly musical learning environment. Attempting to access intellect is a waste of time. Instead structure FUN, INFORMATIVE, and INCLUSIVE games. Facilitate the effortless flowing from one game to the next. That is your role in class.

2) Attend to the natural energetic waves of the group.

The goal of a group class is not to entertain 4 year olds for an hour, but rather to pack as much learning as possible within their natural energy cycles. Games are either ‘downers’ or ‘uppers.’ Chain together the downs and ups so they are gradual waves with memorable climatic peaks and troughs. You don’t need more than one peak in a class. Define the climatic moments (high and low) before class, and use them as landmarks while teaching. Knowing whether the activity is building or releasing energy will change the way you introduce, lead, and close the game. In this way teaching can be very similar to performing a musical piece.

3) Set very clear containers.

I’ve discussed before that students want to be held in a safe, very clearly defined container. It is within this container that they will be comfortable to self-express. In the pre-twinkle classroom I go to great lengths to set up the room exactly the same way every time. I also use foot charts and tapes with names on them so students feel they have their ‘spot.’ The group class starts and ends with a bow. There are expectations which hold every week all through the class which we don’t have to discuss but just exist: musical cues for standing/sitting, etc.

4) Move.

Both through the space and within their ‘spot.’

5) Speak as little as possible.

Don’t explain. Don’t repeat yourself. Take advantage of a white-board to communicate logistical information to parents (what to unpack, change of time/location for future classes). Use aural cues for sitting/standing and picking up the instrument/bow. Use visual cues for bathroom/water breaks or in a follow-the-leader situation.

6) Don’t be afraid to change lyrics/words/metaphors so they feel true to you.

We really have a rich repertoire of Suzuki pre-twinkle games and songs which have been passed down to us from the method’s pioneers. Don’t be afraid to modify these games and words to suit your unique values and the values of the students in the room with you. I was struggling for weeks because I couldn’t pull in many of our standard games and songs into class because I thought their messages were problematic. I finally realized I could modify the language to be inclusive of different pronouns, different family structures, and body/emotion positive responses. These games/songs are both deeply impactful and living, so curate and modify them to suit what is important to you.

My Pre-Twinkle class has a tendency to start late. When we were routinely delaying class start by fifteen minutes I knew something needed to change. Not only was the late start limiting our total class time together, those first 15 minutes of class were wasted for the students who did come on time. People were rushing in late and the energy was too scattered to get a clear start to class.

I made the following five shifts to class to make sure we were back on a timely track. If this is an challenge for you I hope you find some ideas below.

1) Class Email

Dear Twinkle class,
The goal in music isn’t to be the fastest or play the loudest, but rather to play in beautiful harmony with each other. Just as we stand together, play together and bow together, we must arrive for class together.

Arriving even one minute late does change the energy of our class and sends a subtle message to your children that they don’t need to harmonize with the rest of the group.

Please help us hone this macro and micro skill of musicianship by prioritizing timely arrival. Our goal is to be unpacked and tuned, ready to take our bow, at 9:05.

I know parking, weather, and room changes slows us all down. I’ll do my best to email you in advance with room change reminders and heads up on tricky parking days.

Many thanks,
drake

2) Routinized the room set up and start
The room is set up the same way every time: door open, tapes on the floor, instructions on the board, my violin unpacked in the front, my shoes next to my case.

I write instructions on the board for where students should go and what they need. No matter when the parents/students walk in, they will see the instructions on the board. If we’ve already started, this makes for a smooth(er) entry into the class.

We start with watching a video (explained below) while I tune all of the instruments. We take a big bow together. Once the first domino has started falling, students know the whole class has started. If families arrive after that domino cascade they know they are late.

3) Non-negotiable start
Don’t wait for everyone to arrive– your start time will be pushed back later and later every week. Instead plan to start when you plan to start. I’ve set the time 9:05 as my official start to class, so I get going at 9:05 even if only one student is sitting in front of me.

4) Video Overture
For ten minutes before the first bow (from 8:55-9:05) I project a video onto the screen at the front of the classroom. I am fortunate enough to have a Mac with internet access, a great projector, and recording technology in the classroom I teach in. I take full advantage!

Projecting a video at the beginning of class allows the students who come in early to have an ‘audience’ experience every Saturday. I also use this opportunity to show a diversity of musical styles and performers of various ethnicities, genders, and backgrounds.

Channeling the attention of the entire group onto one focal point at the beginning of class allows us to all start on the same page.

5) Be on time
I make sure I am always on time. I take the start of group class as seriously as I would a commitment to play a solo recital at Carnegie Hall. If you are ever late it will be difficult for your class to cultivate a sense of punctuality and harmony. Lead by example.

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.

[Read more…]

Listening, Review, and Attention to Tone are the three actions at the heart of the Suzuki Method. Listening is the fundamental and most important of these. If practice or learning is happening without listening, the approach can’t be called ‘Suzuki.’

WHY?
Listening is SO important for two reasons.

LEARNING VS. PLAYING
The first is that intensive listening breaks up the ‘learning’ and the ‘playing’ part of the music making process. In traditional music lessons students learn the piece at exactly the same time they are working out how to play the piece. The architecture and emotional intention of a piece is set up while the student is also building up the techniques and coordination it takes to play the piece.

Overlapping learning and playing can lead to a messy, frustrating time where something, either technique or the accuracy of the notes played, will be out of place. Lessons become a downward spiral of patching up and trying to force student and parent to memorize what is ‘correct’ even is.

Consider, on the other hand, a student and parent who are intimately familiar with a piece before they ever begin working on it. They hum the piece, it gets stuck in their head, they begin to recognize their favorite parts. They ‘learn’ the piece entirely, even though they don’t play it.

Just as nearly everyone ‘knows’ the Happy Birthday song and playground rhymes without ever playing them on an instrument, your student and their parent ‘learn’ Allegro and Gossec Gavotte before you ever begin to talk about it.

CONSCIOUS VS. UNCONSCIOUS
The second important aspect of listening is that it trains the unconscious mind, not the conscious one.

Most learning programs target the conscious intellectual process, but Suzuki acknowledged that masterful artistry happens when violin is performed without conscious effort at all.

Consciousness is not the enemy, but it is a far less powerful tool than the unconscious. By feeding the unconscious a moderately sized, daily dose of Book 1 listening, the unconscious mind absorbs all sorts of information about piece structure and form, pitch, dynamics, tone, flow and countless other things.

Bring to mind the difference between eating a meal with friends and reading a detailed description of that meal. Think of how different the experience of riding on the back of a bicycle and someone describing how to balance a bike while you ride it.

This is the difference between a teacher EXPLAINING a piece, and a student truly, intimately knowing a piece through listening.

What we aim to do as teachers is to allow an architectural understanding of the piece to be downloaded into the students unconscious mind so they become their own teachers. As they later figure out how to play the piece on their instrument they are constantly comparing their playing to the reference structure in their unconscious— and not just the ‘right’ notes, but the intonation, tone, feeling, rhythms and flow.

The student begins to understand, too, the the unconscious mind is a resource to be trusted. It deserves respect and attention. The unconscious mind IS miraculous and magical, when viewed from the perspective of the conscious mind.

In violin lessons and practice we bow to the unconscious mind’s genius, and humble the conscious mind which always (inevitably) thinks it can do better.

—
By listening daily to the CD students learn their pieces by heart before they ever play them and they learn how to harness the power of the unconscious mind.

My life changed when I decided which pocket my every day carry items would always go in.

I only have two pairs of paints. One is my nicer pair of wool dress pants. The other is a pair of REI work pants. Both have two pockets in the front and two in the back.

One day, inspired by Tynan, I picked one pocket for keys (front left– I’m left handed), one for wallet (front right), and one for phone (back right if carrying). My back left pocket is left empty for handkerchief, headphones, or any other miscellaneous item as needed.

This might sound like a ridiculous level of detail to you– or something you already naturally do– but for me it was a game changer.

Before I would root around in my backpack searching for my phone. Then just throw cash in any pocket, but later not be able to find the money when it wasn’t in my wallet. I would search for keys on an entire walk from the front door of school out to my car because I didn’t know exactly where they were.

Now needing something and having something is instantaneous. I have no anxiety moving through a line at the grocery store or walking up to my car with friends. It takes no more effort than just throwing the item in a random pocket, and yet I’m completely saved of the hassle of guessing where anything is. There is zero friction.

In teaching we have (or need) every day carry items as well. [Read more…]

See this post for a definition of elements and their extenders. These are a collection of extenders I’ve picked up from many brilliant Suzuki teachers over the years.

Each line is an extension of the ‘It,’ which is the element: piece, game, exercise, etude, etc.

REPETITIONS
1. Do it X number of times: parent counts aloud while student does
2. Do it X number of times: parent/student drops an object (penny/marble/pebble) in a cup
3. Do it X number of times: parent/student slides beads over on an abacus
4. Do it X number of times: parent/teacher does something silly (face, sound, pose) between each one
5. Do it X number of times: parent/teacher draws part of a picture each repetition, student attempts to guess what the picture is
6. Do it X number of times: parent/teacher spells out one letter of the student’s name for each repetition

CORRECTLY
7. Do it X number of times CORRECTLY: parent slides object over to the student side if correct, or over towards an inanimate object if incorrect
8. Do it X number of times CORRECTLY: student chooses whether it counts or not, parent keeps count
9. Do it X number of times CORRECTLY in a row: teacher/parent chooses low number and keeps count for student. Be careful with this one, can lead to crying. Ask for it only if you are confident the student can do it, and they have a nice reserve of grit.

AT RANDOM
10. Random number of times: roll the dice
11. Random number of times: student picks from a deck of cards (either stack the deck to only have numbers, or the teacher does a rep if student pulls a face card)
12. Random number of times: teacher asks student how many times they think they should practice it for it to feel easy (this is a very revealing question)
13. Random rep: in the middle of another activity, or at a transition, ask the student to do one random repetition of an earlier element practiced

CHALLENGE
14. While standing on one foot
15. While sticking tongue out
16. With eyes closed [Read more…]

I’ve used the following language around ‘elements’ and their ‘extensions’ to help me develop practice strategies, communicate with parents about practice, and spice up group classes. I don’t believe any other Suzuki teachers use the word ‘element,’ I’m just borrowing it from the permaculture community.

I define an element in the violin worlds as a graspable, practicable unit. Any piece would fall under this category. As would a scale or etude or game. A general concept, such as vibrato would not. If the concept of vibrato were distilled into a useful exercise, such as peg knocks, string polishing, or oscillations with a recording, then it would be become an element.

If you assign ‘tone’ to your student, it’s likely they won’t know how to practice it– how to manifest tone. They will even have a subtle resistance against practicing tone because the work of sorting vague technique into a coherent set of things to DO is effortful.

Ask students to play Dr. Suzuki’s tonalization, and suddenly the effort of tone practice is only the effort of producing great tone. Not figuring out what to play.

The other beautiful aspect of an element, versus a vague concept, is that it can be manipulated and twisted and grafted and painted a different color while retaining its structure. I call this transmutation ‘extension.’

Challenge, creativity, and fun go hand in hand. Extension is what brings challenge and creativity into the lesson. [Read more…]

Permaculture names two of the following as core design principles
1) Each element performs many functions
2) Each function is supported by many elements

In a homestead we could see this exemplified easily in a fruit tree. The fruit tree (an element) provides (the functions of) shade, food production, nutrient concentration, and soil creation.

Each function, shade, food production, nutrient concentration, and soil creation, depends on far more than just the fruit tree. For shade we might depend on other trees, the sides of buildings, and fences, and natural slope. For food production we have a wide variety of other fruit trees, nut trees, and perennial vegetables, herbs and medicinals. Nutrients are concentrated by cover crops and animal droppings. Soil creation is performed by the fruit tree, but also all other trees, green manure, and composting.

It would be extremely risky to depend on the fruit tree for all food production. It would also be extremely risky if the fruit tree’s only function was to make fruit.

This is why beautiful, bountiful, resilient gardens are full of a wide variety of elements, which all serve a host of functions.

Suzuki encouraged teachers to study natural patterns. It makes far more sense to teach which nature, not against it.

When moving through the repertoire with students, we should keep these principles in mind. [Read more…]