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.

Let’s take Perpetual Motion, for example. This is a beloved element in Suzuki literature because it may be ‘extended’ in so many directions. Students could play it with their eyes closed, they could vibrate every note, they could drop all of the open strings, the could do all down bows, they could do a giant crescendo, they could stomp to the beat, they could pass the piece around in a circle (each student playing one note). The options are endless!

We can do the same with games. For example, Ring of Fire (where parent creates a circle with their hands and the student travels up and down in the circle without touching the edges) can happen while the Johny Cash “Ring of Fire” song plays in the background. If the parent stops the track, the student must stop moving. They can only move again once the music starts playing. You could also use different objects, like open frisbees and mason jar lids and headbands for the ring. You could set up multiple rings at different angles which the student must pass through. You could put a cap on their bow and work not to let it fall off. You could put a cap on the bow AND have them close their eyes. You could put a cap on the bow AND have them close their eyes AND start/stop with the music. Extensions may be piled on top of extensions.

The most special moments of a lesson or group class is not when the teacher jumps from one game to another, but when a teacher extends a basic game to meet the exact challenge level of the group in front of them.

Element extension is the all the spice you need to teach the same 10 games in group class all year long. Every class will end up being different, not because you changed the games, but you changed how they were extended, upping the ante each time.

This distinction between an element and extension can be very helpful when parents and teachers are observing another teacher work.

Am I watching the teacher teach Go Tell Aunt Rhody? Or am I watching them teach musical phrasing? Or am I watching them make playing Go Tell Aunt Rhody increasingly difficult in a lesson context, so when they perform it it will be effortless?

The answer is probably all of them, but the teacher’s decision about which the element is and which the extensions is CRITICAL for how to execute practice.

Perhaps the element is Go Tell Aunt Rhody, and we are spicing it up with the extensions ‘musical phasing in sentences (stop at the end of each sentence).’ Then at home you may work on Go Tell Aunt Rhody all week, picking a different extension for each day.

But perhaps the element is the musical phrasing game (aiming to teach phrase structure), and we applied it to Go Tell Aunt Rhody as an extension of that skill. Then the key is not necessarily to practice Go Tell Aunt Rhody– it is to extend the musical phrasing technique to as many different pieces as possible.

In one case the parent and student will practice Go Tell Aunt Rhody every day. In one case they will practice musical phrasing every day. The language around element and extension is the difference. I hope this post has clarified what each word can mean, and how useful that clarification can be.

Next week I will post 50 of my favorite element extenders.