What is a credit?

I give a student their credit for a piece when they can play it all the way through with pretty much all of the things we have been working on coming together for the performance.  So at a Twinkle level, this is basically playing the right notes with a reasonable sound and the fingers on the tapes.  By the time they reach Gossec Gavotte, I expect all the intonation to be good, the notes to be solid and the tone to be beautiful. 

While it is important for the children to be able to play the piece solidly before moving on, the beauty of using the review method of teaching book one lessons is that even though the child has their credit for the piece, you will still hear it every week.  So we can afford to ignore small mistakes if it feels like it’s a good time to move on, because you can expect them to be fixed in review.  In the same way I don’t make too much of a fuss about dynamics for a credit until about the Minuets (late book one) as they can be introduced in review. 

How does the credit system work?

During the Twinkles, I will show the student and their parent everything they need to know, and not expect them to work any of it out on their own, just to practice it properly.  So once they have learnt rest position I ask them if they’d like to try for a credit, and explain that at this stage that means they just have to get themselves from concert position into rest position without help.  They do this, I give them a sticker, and the sticker goes next to the picture of the child in rest position in the book, with that day’s date underneath it.  I explain that this means they are ‘perfect’ at this and ready to learn the next thing, and practice their rest position only as review.

I give credits for rest position, playing position feet, violin playing position, a bowhold, and placing the bow correctly on the E string before the child has made any sound on their violin with the bow.  For each credit they start in concert position (ie the instrument on the floor in front of them) and they are not given any help during their attempt at a credit.  So by the time they try for the credit for placing the bow on the E string, they have to get into rest position, put their feet in playing position, make a bowhold with the violin in rest position, put their violin up, and land the bow on the right contact point all by themselves for that credit.

Once the child is playing the rhythms on E they are used to getting credits quite frequently, at least one per lesson, so it’s useful to explain that they may slow down a little bit but we should still be aiming to get at least one per lesson until Twinkle.  This can really speed up the Twinkle rhythm learning!  Mostly they just keep getting these pretty easily, until we get to I’m a Little Monkey.

Tick boxes before Credits

Once the child is playing I’m a LIttle Monkey, there is often the need to draw their attention to more than one thing while they play.  So at this point I will start to write the teaching points above the music, with a tick box after them.  So for I’m a Little Monkey, I may require my student to think about getting a good tone, getting their fingers on the tapes, and keeping their rhythm steady.  So I will write Tone, Intonation and Rhythm above the music, with a box after each.  In their lesson I will ask them which one they are going to try for a tick on (one point lesson - meaning one point at a time) and they play it for me thinking about that thing in particular.  Once they have all their ticks they are ready to try for the credit, and they must get all of the things that they had tick boxes for right at once.  Obviously there is much more leniency here with a pre-Twinkler than with a book three student, so don’t be too perfectionist at this stage!

Song of the Wind and onwards...

Up to Lightly Row, I have shown the child and their parent everything they need to know about how to play the piece.  Once they can play at least one Twinkle variation fairly well, we start to learn how to play by ear.  Once they get the hang of this, I will only teach in the lessons the things I don’t expect them to work out by themselves at home.  For example, while they are still on Lightly Row, I will show them the hopping three and how to do the retakes in Song of the Wind.  Then I will tell them they can get on with learning it at home, doing the box ten times before they try to work out the rest of the piece.  They will work out how the song goes using the techniques I have taught them about how to play by ear. 

Once they are able to learn how the songs go by themselves, I avoid teaching notes and fingerings as much as I can.  If you are teaching how to play by ear correctly, and you have taught the parent basic music reading skills, they can work out pretty much all of their pieces, and you only need to show them things that are not self-explanatory, such as hopping fingers, retakes, or up up bowings.  Once you are free from teaching notes and fingerings, you can teach music - after all the parent cannot teach their child this, but almost all parents can manage working out the Suzuki tunes at home.  Learning by ear also means you won’t have a whole book full of A0 A1 A2 A3 E0 E0 E0 E0 etc, as the child is working out the piece from their inner ear, not being told what comes next by their parent.

To this end, I will only hear a piece (or part of a piece) that the child can play already.  So if a child on Go Tell Aunt Rhody wants to play it to me, but only knows the first two bars, I say that’s fine, and work on the first two bars with them.  I resist teaching them the next bit, because they can do that at home.  And if they can’t, I need to go back to how to learn by ear, not just spoon-feed them the next line of music (although this can be very tempting!).  Teaching like this means many of my students learn a new piece each week or two in early book one, and I am able to spend their lessons helping them with their technique and musicality in review rather than showing them the bowings and fingerings of the next piece.  It also means that spending five minutes on the top piece at the end of the lesson doesn’t mean they never get a credit, because often the top piece just needs a very slight adjustment before it’s good enough for a credit.  So the student has happy lessons playing tunes they are sure of, and being praised all the time, rather than struggling at the next piece feeling that achievement is far-off and slow to get to.  And you get to spend your lessons teaching phrasing and dynamics, even to a five year old, rather than wondering when your teaching is going to go from teaching notes to teaching music.

Kate Conway, Suzuki Hub Music Director