Have you ever felt stuck in a pre-twinkle group class because every student is in a different place in their instrument set up and there is no way to fill up a class with entirely playing games? Or you notice that you’ve already used all of your ‘exciting’ games and you are only a quarter of the way into class? Or you find yourself in a lesson where the student and parent forgot their instrument at home and you have none on hand to lend?

Knowing a few fun, instructive games which don’t require the violin or bow will help you in all of these situations.

Here are ten of my favorites…

1) Chant the musical alphabet forward and backwards.
Extension: chant at different speeds and dynamics, make certain notes ‘blanks,’
Extension: same game with counting numbers up to 8

2) Sing Twinkle, use body parts to represent different notes.
Extension: sing at different speeds and dynamics, do the motions without singing, if I sit down you sit down

3) “Where is Thumbkin?” with all of the violin fingers (first finger, second finger, etc.)
Extension: scramble fingers behind back. Make a circle with _ finger. Bring it to front. Look through the circle glasses at each other.

4) Rhythms. My turn your turn (MTYT) on knees. MTYT all over body. To each student. Guess the rhythm (at varying dynamics).

5) Violin doctor. Teacher sets themselves up with poor posture. Students suggest appropriate changes to the posture.
Extension: student makes silly posture and is corrected

6) Pass the ______. Students sit in a circle. Have them pass an object (ball, roll of tape, marker, anything) around the circle while you play or sing a piece. If you stop playing they stop passing.
Extension: if you do something silly (harmonic, tremolo, glissando) they reverse and pass the other direction.

7) Planting. Students stand on in play position. You instruct them to root their foot into the ground. Plant the feet so they are covered with soil (you can go at pat each students feet down with soil). Grow the roots down so they reach all the way to the molten center of the earth.
Extension: Sway back and forth like there is a breeze. Sway fast with a wind storm. Really fast with a tornado! The roots never come up because they are so deep.
Extension: Sway the whole tree- trunk, branches, leaves. Now the tree is growing older and stronger. The trunk stays ‘grounded’ and just the branches and leaves sway. Now the tree is growing even older and stronger. The trunk and branches stay ‘grounded’ and now just the leaves sway.

8) Conducting. Teach simple down, up, up pattern (using gravity to whoosh the hands down, and lightness to float the hands back up). Have them conduct you on the Minuets (Book 1) or any other pieces in 3.
Extension: have them change their speed so you play along with them at a different speed. Super fast and super slow are informative and fun!
Extension: one person conducts the whole class.
Extension: teach 2 and 4 patterns. Teach compound meter.
Extension: “Rhythm Master” adaptation. Stand in a circle. Send one person out of the room. Determine a student to be the Rhythm Master. They will slightly speed up or slow down the whole group. Everyone in the group watches them for the tempo. Bring the person outside back in. They participate but also try to guess who the Rhythm Master is.

9) Phrase Arcing. Define destination points in a phrase as “HERE.” Then improv sing up to those points with words like, “Then it goes to Here.” “And we go to here.” “Then we go all the way to here.” Use the rhythm and pitch of the original. Most important thing is they are implying direction/intention in the music with their made up words.
Extension: Use the left hand as a conductor would to indicate phrasing. Moving away from the body means growing in intensity, towards the body tapering away in intensity. The climax (HERE) should be the moment they get furthest away from the body.
Extension: Change the scale. Determine phrase arcs for a measure, a passage, and the whole piece.

10) Name game. I can’t believe it when I come into a class of 16 year olds and they don’t know each others’ names. The social fabric of the class, especially for older students, is a vitally important foundation on which the class environment is built. Play the following game to help develop it. It works beautifully with 4 year olds and 35 year olds alike.
All students sit. A student stands and calls out the name of another student. That student stands and calls the name of a student still sitting. Repeat until all students are standing. If they don’t know the name of anyone sitting they can simply ask, “What is your name?”
Extension: add a body gesture or signature sung rhythm after they stand up but before they call someone’s name.
Extension: memorize the order they called on each other. Next time stand up in that order silently. Use the order to run through a sequence of technique. For example, everyone plays a Song of the Wind bow circle at their turn in the sequence.

11) Play an imaginary violin. You will learn so much from watching students do this. Look for points of tension to release. Recognize fundamentals mapped out in the wrong place or wrong direction. See what they remember to do without the kinesthetic object in front of them. See if they can play an entire piece within their mind, not through their body. This is amazing preparation before a concert to put the music into different parts of the consciousness so it is more reliable on stage. Can it be entirely in the mind? Music in the mind but body going through the motions? Sing the music and play with the motions? Just sing but do the body motions in the mind?

Written in April 2019. Submitted as a journal reflection to my professor of Suzuki Violin pedagogy, Carrie Reuning-Hummel. Some important insights which now guide my life– worth sharing!

WOW. What a week. 

As you read in my last reflection, I set out to do some drastic reduction of activity this week. I set out to focus all of my effort and energy on energy completion of single projects at a time rather than small steps forward on a million different projects. 

The idea was to manifest Suzuki’s ‘one point lesson’ concept into a ‘one point life.’ We can only really work on one thing at a time. The key is to keep sustained work on a project so we enact tangible change. The key is to cut through the noise produced by pinging between projects and to just reside within one until it is finished/understood/integrated.

By taking a few steps closer to the ‘one point life’ this week I feel like a different person.

The difference between completion based project work and small-task, to-do work with frequent context switching is the difference between being intoxicated and sober. I can’t tell you what it does to regulate emotion and anxiety, boost creative output, and ultimately (I think) get more done. It feels just as huge as (perhaps even more?) than the discoveries I made about sleep at the beginning of the year.

This is something I will continue doing because I can feel the ripples of difference it is making in my life. I can feel it. This is the way. 
So, after a week, here are my actionable thoughts about how to bring ‘one point life’ to life. 

ONE POINT LANDSCAPE. Anything that you come into contact with, should be reduced to a singular option. Or a non-option. Where you sleep, what you wear, what you eat, where you drive, what you drive, when you drive, what you see, what devices you use, what you watch/read/listen to should be determined to be only one thing. 

[Read more…]

I have a beautiful friend who creates time in her life for deep thinking and, more importantly, deep questioning.

She and I had an open conversation about the sort of countercultural concepts I’ve picked up in order to make a teaching a radical method like the Suzuki approach in our society realistic. When economic, social, and political pressures are pushing you down a particular stream, how do you buoy yourself? Where is shore? How did you get a grip and begin to work, slowly, in the other direction.

I think the key is in what Suzuki suggested: the environment.

We have the power, especially in the 21st century, to cultivate micro-environments which make normal to us what our over-arching society doesn’t.

By tailoring our information diet and our circle of closest friends we actual make ‘counter-cultural’ just ‘culture.’

Just like Suzuki parents, we as teachers don’t have control of the macro environment, but we do have control over the radio station, and the podcast app, and the friends we invite out to coffee.

[Read more…]

** Note ** This post was written at the beginning of 2020, well before it was announced that Hilary Hahn is recording the new Suzuki recordings. I considered deleting this post as it might not be relevant, but then realized as I read through it again, that we have overcome certain hurdles but certainly not all of them. Hillary Hahn is a consummate musician, has pioneered innovative work in the classical music world, and appears to be a genuinely warm-hearted human being. Nevertheless, she still doesn’t represent all of us. No grammy-winning musician could. Consider reading to the bottom of this post to see what I suggest instead.

Historically there has only been one ‘correct’ reference recording to listen to. Now, we have a few more options.

Following the sexual allegations and confirmed sexual misconduct of William Preucil, the artist who most recently recorded all Book 1-8 of the Suzuki Violin School, I stopped listening to any Alfred recordings of the Suzuki repertoire.

I had heard rumors of Preucil’s misconduct for years, and could barely bring myself to listen to the recordings before the scandal broke. But once it was clear that multiple investigations into his character determined he was guilty, I stopped entirely. It sickened me to know that a sexual predator’s music was lulling Suzuki students to sleep at night.

Alfred music was silent about the issue for months. After the direct prompting of a concerned Suzuki teacher and SAA board member, Alfred responded with the following…

“We take the allegations of sexual misconduct that have been made against violinist William Preucil, Jr. extremely seriously. We understand how important our Suzuki Violin School recordings are to you as an educator. We are in the process of working with the ISA on commissioning and releasing new recordings with a new artist in 2019. As you can imagine, this process will take time and we want to ensure that we provide you with the highest quality recordings as you have come to expect from us….During this transition period, if you wish to purchase recordings by artists other than Mr. Preucil you can access the Alfred.com website. We appreciate you reaching out during this difficult time and sharing your concerns with us.”

2019 has passed and we have no new recordings. If you visit the alternative recordings web page on Alfred.com (here), you’ll also find that EVERY SINGLE recording made of the Suzuki Books is performed by a cis-gendered male.

So what do I do as a teacher?

First, I explain the situation to the parents of our families. They need to know that the classical music world has allowed— and used!— sexual harassment to shape itself for centuries. They also need to know that many Suzuki teachers are addressing the issue face on, and holding predators accountable.

I point my students to the Suzuki Evergreens recordings played by Suzuki raised violinist Takako Nishizaki for several reasons.

First, it is a performance by a non cis- male. That sort of representation I feel is desperately needed at this time.

Second, it includes, within each album, recordings of the pieces as they were traditionally played along with the pieces performed in the formal Suzuki style.

Third, it is available on Spotify— the platform I, and many of my students, happen to use.

I also like to point families to this resource guide for recordings of Suzuki pieces by independent professional artists.

I dream of a grassroots movement of teachers at the intersection of many identities creating a giant reference library of recordings for all Suzuki students. It would include multiple recordings (audio and video) of each piece which would span nationality, ethnicity, gender expression, age and class, and would be posted for free consumption on a platform like YouTube and Spotify.

Now, because the copyright of the Suzuki sequence is held so firmly by Alfred I doubt this is possible for teachers to organize before the next expensive recording and publishing of the books is made. But I feel so inspired to TRY.

I want you to consider how tragic it is that a multi-national, humanist movement such as Suzuki’s has traveled so far, and yet is represented, exclusively, by one white, cisgendered, sexual predator.

We must do better. And if you are looking to open up the Suzuki Method to the people who have been historically barred from participating in classical music, diverse representation and fair distribution of the reference recordings is a worthwhile place to start.

If you are interested in making a recording with me please send a message via the contact form here.