During the Ithaca Suzuki Institute this year I had my second opportunity to present a parent talk on the philosophy and mechanics of listening.

One of my biggest frustrations today, in this era of technology and digital overwhelm, is that listening is easy or straightforward. The trouble is that most parents think it will be easy, so it is therefore given less attention and is actually challenging.

I named a couple reasons for our resistance to listening in this era.

1. Other elements of the violin life are scheduled and physical. You GO to a lesson You attend group class on Saturday mornings. You practice right before dinner in the living room. Listening however could happen almost any time, any where, and there is a subliminal message that it should.
2. Wrestling with the technology isn’t easy. Parents already manage distance learning and parental controls on all the devices. We pay for a million subscriptions and have a home for the music we want to listen to– why isn’t the Suzuki recording available on our regular streaming services? Which edition should I get? Does it need to be downloaded to my phone? What I if I don’t have space on my phone? Though the digital files weigh nothing, there is still a burden to moving them especially if you already have a resistance to tech.
3. We are already overwhelmed by digital media. Our cup is full. To listen to the ‘CD’ now means not doing (watching, listening, reading, binging, scrolling) something else.

So we can all acknowledge that listening is a challenge. But here I inserted this stark quote from John Kendall.
“The success of the teaching would be greatly weakened by eliminating or minimizing the use of recordings. There may be situations where extensive use of recordings is difficult… Such teaching, however, could hardly be called the ‘Suzuki Method.'”

We jumped back to the foundations of the method in order to understand our time more clearly.
I brought up how Suzuki himself first learned to play from gramophone recordings. He also designed the method around the way we learn language, in which immersion is critical. So immersing ourselves in a musical language would mean absorbing as much music as possible.

We have a real life version of this. Mozart and his family. But if you needed to have a parent who was a master pedagogue, older siblings who were exemplary musicians, and to be toured around Europe listening to extraordinary concerts in order to be a virtuoso, then virtuosity would be limited to a very elite, small group. Indeed it was for most of musics’ history. But it was Suzuki’s insight to use technology to bring the musical environment to every child that opened up music to vastly wider populations.

Listening is inherent to the method, and the method’s accessibility came from the intentional use of technology to do that listening.

Though when we see Suzuki images of strapping a tape player on a child’s back we might conjure the horrifying image of a toddler staring at an iPad, the intentions are totally different. Suzuki aimed to gift every child, from any background, the art forms and beauty of generations before us. He wanted to empower and expand. He wanted to give autonomy, not take it away.

By allowing the child to be the expert on the recording, not the parent, not the teacher, the child is the expert on their own future. They vision themselves as accomplished learners. And they self diagnose excellence and opportunity for growth.

Here I quoted Dr. Suzuki
“When Suzuki greeted Casals, he told him that he had been his pupil for a long time. Casals looked at him in surprise and said, ‘I do not know you.’ Then Suzuki, with a twinkle in his eyes, said, ‘I have been your pupil through your records which I listen to daily.'”

Once we’d underscored the function of technology in the method, we turned to how to manage listening in the 21st century. I laid out a mental framework for categorizing our different modes of listening and our technological philosophies to support those modes.

There are three different types of listening we need to do.

1. Background. A rich tapestry of artistic playing that the child accesses daily, but doesn’t necessarily sort through or engage with. It just happens. An example could be the classical radio station, a Spotify playlist of favorites, or a tiny desk concert hosted by Yo-Yo Ma.
2. Passive intensive. Music that is selected, but not actively engaged with. This might be the current Suzuki reference recording. Or you might be assigned to listen to the same piece 10x in a row every day, but you could do your homework or wash dishes while you listen.
3. Active intensive. Music that is selected AND actively engaged with. You are seeking something out in the music. Perhaps you are dancing along with the music to feel the time signature, or tracing your finger along in the music while you listen. Maybe you are trying to listen for the map of the piece or the way a particular artists shapes the phrase.

I believe every violinist needs a dose of each, and I think of each one is a little vitamin that needs to be taken daily. In Suzuki’s early days, the landscape of input was sparse. To listen at all was just to add a small something to an empty cup. A treat. But now that every moment could be filled with digital input, we have to be selective and make sure we are getting the nutrients we need. That means that parents and children need lay sound boundaries. Just as you wouldn’t eat 100 lollipops before you’ve had breakfast, perhaps YouTube videos and reddit need to wait until after a dose of passive intensive listening.

Now each of these doses can be taken by different technological mediums. In the way you can get similar vitamins from a kale salad, kale in your smoothie, or kale chips. Your philosophy of technology will determine what tools you use to listen.

I presented three philosophies of technology: low-tech, mid-tech, high-tech.

1. Low-tech. Buy an old fashioned CD player boombox! Allow your child to press the play button. Allow them to adjust the volume. Rent CDs from the library, explore different genres and artists.
2. Mid-tech. Pick iTunes or Amazon Music as your digital music platform. Use this site (https://www.alfred.com/suzuki-method/suzuki-audio-downloads/) to navigate which one to purchase. The newer the recording the better, except in the case of William Preucil, Jr. recordings. The newest recordings (Hilary Hahn) match the most recent revisions of the books. You can also find wonderful recordings and accompaniments to play with at (https://www.imtex-online.com/mediathek/about-us/) DO NOT use YouTube as your primary listening source. If you want to watch music on YouTube I would recommend seeking out the Sphinx Organization and Detroit Youth Volume. YouTube is the place to come to supplement the standard reference recordings, and a great place to find performers who your child sees themselves in. Use the repeat button! At this level you could also invest in a simple, cheap MP3 player so that your child has some ownership of their listening.
3. High-tech. Here you are biting off a certain level of complexity. I would recommend making very specific intensive playlists. It is helpful to know what the minimum viable dose is. It isn’t ‘listen all the time!’ It is ‘Listen 10x in a row every day.’ Parents and students need to know when to stop, not just when to start, in order to know if a day was successful or if something needs to change. At this level you could also buy Home pods and use Alexa/Siri/Google to play your preferred music. You could even use home automation software such as Habitat or Home Assistant to play certain music playlists when you are in certain parts of the house, or right when you get home.

I foresee some interesting futures where VR is used to augment the musical environment, and perhaps children could walk around and study the musicians whom they admire while they are playing. Or the music could be mapped onto extraordinary visuals, like listening to Gavotte in g minor while on a rocking boat in the Atlantic.

For now we have the tech we have, let’s use it–listen to it–wisely.