Ice skating: Suzuki books as metaphor

Most Sundays this winter, we’ve gone ice skating at a local high school’s hockey rink. M has gotten pretty good at skating forwards, but she hasn’t been interested in trying to skate backwards.

But today, she decided — with no prompting — to try it. As I was cheering her on and admiring how well she was skating backwards, she said: “I’m doing Book 2 skating!”

As a Suzuki parent, I loved this: M is organically taking on the identity of a Suzuki student.

Now, this didn’t come out of nowhere: I’ve used Suzuki books as metaphors in other areas (swimming and handwriting come to mind) and described certain skills as “Book 2” or “Book 3” skills. I’ve done so quite deliberately, to try to naturalize the idea that M is a Suzuki student — to make it a background fact, beyond dispute. And today, the metaphor came from M, not me.

I should note that although I use the books as metaphors for levels of skill, we are not trying to race through them. In fact, we probably move more slowly than most similarly situated families would, because I spend much of our home-practice time on review and on exercises from group class, rather than on M’s newest piece in the repertoire.

Every time I see a kid with worse technique play a song further ahead in the repertoire, I try to remind myself that our approach makes the most sense in the long run. (And it is the approach Suzuki himself advocated.)

Group class: mindful scales, note reading

At M’s group class, the teacher led the students through two mindfulness-enhancing scale exercises plus a note-reading exercise. All three help build key mental skills.

Exercise 1: G-scale with knocks

The G-scale with knocks is hard even for adults.  It’s kind of like the B-I-N-G-O song, but in reverse: you repeat the G scale, saying the note names as you play, but dropping one more note from the end each time and knocking on the back of the guitar neck instead. The final repetition is all knocks, and then you shout “Hey!” in time, on the beat that follows the last imaginary note. So it goes like this:

  • G-A-B-C-D-E-F#-G (played and spoken or sung)
  • G-A-B-C-D-E-F#-knock (each played note spoken or sung, silent on knock)
  • G-A-B-C-D-E-knock-knock
  • G-A-B-C-D-knock-knock-knock
  • G-A-B-C-knockknock-knock-knock
  • G-A-B-knock-knockknock-knock-knock
  • G-A-knock-knock-knockknock-knock-knock
  • G-knock-knockknock-knockknock-knock-knock
  • knock-knock-knockknock-knockknock-knock-knock-HEY!

To be successful, you have to hear in your head the notes you’re not playing, which helps kids strengthen their imaging skills. You also have to remember what you just played (“Did I just play G-A-B, or was it G-A-B-C?”) so you know when to start knocking, which helps kids (and adults!) build concentration.

Exercise 2: D scale, “prepare in the air”

This second exercise gives kids practice at explicitly preparing themselves to play what comes next — i.e., at “imaging ahead.” They played a D scale, but they played each note 4 times (if I recall correctly). As they played, the teacher told them to “prepare in the air” for what comes next. So while the student is playing a D, he is “preparing in the air” to fret the upcoming E, and the multiple repetitions of the D give the student the time she needs to think ahead.

This exercise also helps kids learn to focus on good left-hand shape — fingers curled in evenly toward the fingerboard, rather than splayed out wildly. (The teacher demonstrated this shape in a way I hadn’t seen before. He placed a pen on the left thumb, then curled the fingers in to meet the pen, forming the optimal shape.)

I’m luck that M already has good left-hand shape, because I made it a priority early on — I would sit in front of her and hold my hand flat in front of hers, gently adjusting her fingers if they started poking out.

Exercise 3: Note reading

The teacher handed out the page below and discussed two uses for it (other than the obvious one of asking your kid to read the notes).

First, he picked an arbitrary note — say, A — and asked a student to start with the first one and race his finger along the line until he came to the next one, saying the number under each one he encountered. The goal here is to move as quickly as possible, thus developing the ability to track along the staff.

Second, he suggested we practice with a metronome, and ask our kid to stay with the metronome, skipping any unknown notes and maintaining forward progress. In effect, he suggested that we teach our kids to “read through their mistakes” in the same way we usually teach them to play through their mistakes.
See-Say note page – treble clef

Almost all of the Twinkles

Today we recorded some more of the Twinkles in preparation for the Suzuki Association of Minnesota graduations in March. We forgot Ice Cream Cone, but we got most of the rest pretty well. And apart from a brief meltdown at the end of the lesson (at almost 6:45, when I asked M to run through Wish I Had a Little Pony a second time), M was cooperative and paid good attention.

It probably helped that I explained up front:

  • we would practice as long — or as short — as it took to get a good recording of each variation; and
  • if we had enough time after finishing, we would be able to have some ice cream — but whether we would have enough time was up to her, because it depended on how she cooperated.

Sadly, as I listen to these again, I notice that I forgot to turn off the furnace for at least two recordings (Strawberry Popsicle and Theme). Dang it!

Update 25 January 2011: It’s taken three more days of trying, but we finally got a good take of Ice Cream Cone and a much-improved, furnace-free take of Theme. We also got an improved take of  Strawberry Popsicle, but I think M can do better.

Update 28 January 2011: Now we’ve got a decent Strawberry Popsicle. The player below has the best recording of each variation. All done!

The threat of raspberries

Great lesson today. Only one aspect of M’s behavior was even a small problem: her tendency to dawdle when asked to begin any activity. It’s a habit of hers, and sometimes (especially in her private lessons) I find it very annoying, but I got her moving quickly (and smilingly) when I threatened to give her a raspberry if she didn’t get moving. (It beats threatening to give away her toys.)

Today we did:

  1. Note reading. M read some sheet music to herself while I tuned, then we sight read one of the two songs (Cuckoo, in Read This First.)
  2. Steady Hands.
  3. Free stroke and Book 2 Twinkle.
  4. Wish I Had a Little Pony Twinkle.

During the sight reading, I again had M play the last measure of each line and the first measure of the next, to help her practice looking forward. She got a little frustrated when she felt we were playing too fast, but she stayed with it.

As for Steady Hands, she seems to have the structure down now. She remembered to play the 3rd and 4th A1 sections tosto, and she also knew exactly where she was through the whole song. She made a few note mistakes (C for C#), but she knew exactly what they had been when I asked her. The listening is paying off, and her attention is improving.

She also did much better free strokes today, and we got through all of Book 2 Twinkle twice.

In working on Book 2 Twinkle, I returned to a technical right-hand point that I haven’t emphasized for a while: the need to shift the arm and hand toward the higher strings as you move up, rather than just reaching with the fingers. It is simply impossible to play a clean free stroke if you reach with your fingers — the tips get out in front of your knuckles, and you lose the “swing space” your fingertips need.

Her Twinkles are coming along great. Now if only my Sony PCM-M10 would get her so I can start recording!

Free stroke, or, the problem with repetition targets

This is just a brief lesson recap. We did:

  1. A scales, some with single notes and others with i-m-a on each string
  2. Steady Hands
  3. Free stroke — tried to start Book 2 Twinkle, but it didn’t work out
  4. Two Twinkle variations (Run Kitty and Strawberry Popsicle) at 60 bpm (but not with metronome)

I tried out having her pick her own rewards (blank cards or little sticker dolls she made). Didn’t seem to make much difference. Continue reading Free stroke, or, the problem with repetition targets

Listening; small rewards

Listening

This month, I’m taking an SAA online course of sorts for Suzuki parents (“Parents as Partners Online“). It’s a series of short videos.

One video was notable. Michele Horner, a Suzuki guitar teacher/violin parent, advocated “listening like a maniac” — listening to a student’s working piece and upcoming pieces over and over again. (A summary of the same talk is in this SAA newsletter.) Specifically, she talked about getting great results from creating CDs containing:

  • 10 x working piece
  • 10 x next piece
  • 10 x next piece.

Her supporting anecdotes were convincing, as was a testimonial by her 14-year-old daughter. And given how insecure M’s mental image seems to be of many of her pieces — including pieces that she has played in recitals — I decided to give this a try. So I created 4 identical CDs, each containing Steady Hands (working), Meadow Minuet (next), the Führmann Tanz (two pieces ago), and the Bach Tanz (previous piece).

Review; small rewards

M and I haven’t been reviewing her past repertoire broadly enough. We  do some review songs in each lesson, but we don’t have any method for ensuring that they all get covered regularly.

So I decided to follow a suggestion I saw on a teacher’s site: write song names on slips of paper, place them in a bag, and pick out a few to practice every lesson. (Some teachers suggest practicing every review song every lesson, which strikes me as nuts. Our teacher hasn’t given us explicit instructions about how much to review.) M wrote half of the slips (and thus worked on her handwriting), and I wrote the other half. For slips of paper, we used business-card-sized blank punch cards from a coffeeshop I used to own.

These were a great choice for two reasons. First, they have ten boxes on the printed side on which I can record when, and how many times, we practice a song. Second — and more importantly — M thought they were cool. So cool that she wanted to earn them in her lesson, as “money” that she could then decorate. What better way to motivate your kid?

“Play through that song, and I’ll give you a piece of scrap paper! Do a great job, and maybe you’ll get more than one!”

On a more-serious note, it occurred to me later that I should give her the chance to decide how many pieces of paper she should get, to continue to develop her self-evaluation skills. Continue reading Listening; small rewards

Watch where you’re going!

At group class yesterday, the teacher discussed the key to shifting one’s left hand around the neck: looking at the fret you are aiming for, not the fret you are coming from (nor at the moving hand). It struck me that this is the concrete manifestation of the importance, as you’re playing, of keeping in mind what’s coming next, or “imaging ahead.”

“Eyes on the target” is a universal principle, governing not just sports and pastimes (golf, basketball, tennis, pool, archery, fencing) but even something as simple as driving, as I explained to M as we were driving around yesterday afternoon.

So today in our home lesson, when M was playing wrong notes and shifting her right hand toward tosto at the wrong time in Huckleberry Apple Twinkle, I paused to do a fret-jumping exercise in which we broke down every step:

  • fret and play a note at the 5th fret;
  • look at the 12th fret;
  • pause;
  • fret and play a note at the 12th fret;
  • look at the 5th fret;
  • pause;
  • fret and play a note at the 5th fret; etc.

It took several repetitions to get her to look at the target fret before moving her hand — she naturally wanted to watch her hand as it moved, rather than looking ahead. But she did get the hang of it.

I then tried to explain that just as she looked ahead to see where she was going physically, she needed, when playing a song, to look ahead mentally and know what was coming next.  Continue reading Watch where you’re going!

Effort, not outcome

Today was a busy day for M and me: first a group guitar lesson, then a swim lesson, then a private guitar lesson, then an extra private guitar lesson with the new teacher our school is looking at.

As I reflect on the day, I’m struck by how hard it is to have the right goals. A bedrock principle of sane living is to focus on effort, not on outcomes. After all, you can control your own effort (usually!), but you cannot control outcomes. To be sure, you can learn from outcomes, and they provide valuable feedback. But if your ego is invested in getting a particular outcome, your ego’s in for some regular bruising.

But during the group lesson, I couldn’t help but compare M’s performance (an outcome) with that of other kids. And I noticed myself feeling envious and competitive — even though I simultaneously know that M’s performance is, in most ways, better than the very same kids that arouse feelings of envy! Specifically, I found myself thinking, “I can’t believe [Girl X] is already on that Book 2 song and we’re still in Book 1! We’re behind!”

But I have made a conscious choice to embrace the Suzuki principle of mastery before progress, and I have deliberately resisted advancing faster through Book 1. Further, M has markedly better technique than Girl X, so what sense does it make to be envious when Girl X hacks her way through a song that she can’t even really play? I don’t even want M to do that — and yet my competitive, reptilian brain thinks, “We should be further than we are!”

Then, after the group lesson, I had a funny conversation in which M showed herself to be focused on an outcome in an unhelpful way. Several weeks earlier, she had shared the “killer tone award” in group class, but she hadn’t taken the trophy home because the student who previously had it didn’t bring it to class. So today, she got her chance to take custody of the award for a week. As we walked home, she was holding the trophy. We had this exchange: Continue reading Effort, not outcome

Asking vs. telling, performance anxiety, and gender

Today, our studio teacher asked if M would be available for a short lesson with a new guitar  teacher MacPhail is considering hiring. I was inclined to say yes, but I gave myself time to think about it.

I decided to ask M what she thought. She said no pretty emphatically. And I realized that I probably shouldn’t have phrased it as a question, because (as it turned out) I didn’t really want to give M the freedom to say no. I wanted to insist that she do it.

Why did I ask instead of tell? Because (I think) although I wanted to insist, I felt conflicted about it. M already has long days on Saturday, with a group lesson in the morning and a private one at lunchtime (and swimming in between), and this proposed new lesson would happen close to her normal rest time. And at the end of the long day, M’s not likely to have a great time in a lesson with a new teacher.

Still, I didn’t immediately accept or reject M’s “no.” Instead, I asked about why she didn’t want to do it.
Continue reading Asking vs. telling, performance anxiety, and gender