Noah's Suzuki Lesson #1

Noah has started the Suzuki method of violin. He was really excited about getting a violin his size and really excited about playing with me, but Grace wants to only do it the way the teacher said it and so I have sort of removed myself from the process and am only observing.

So far what I saw Grace and Noah practice was holding the violin with the chin and your left arm on your shoulder right shoulder. Noah is going to have to work on this alone for about week before he does anything else. Basically holding your violin with your chin is the horse stance of violin.

The next exercise was a game where you tap out the beat  on your things and sing the melody of Twinkle Twinkle little star, to the lyrics of multi-syllabic words like Mississippi, Tennessee. Mississippi Tennessee.....
or Blueberries, strawberries, blueberries strawberries...


Jonah had fallen asleep already.But I have a feeling that Jonah would pickthis little exercise up faster than Noah.

Noah couldn't get it and just started cracking up.

The point of this exercise, I could see right away. You are playing violin in your mind. You are learning that your fingers can move to one bow stroke or your bow and move to one note and then both of these things. That was very clever.

Then Noah wanted to use his bow.

 But was not allowed to.

 He flipped out. Real bad.


Well, I can completely see the point of all this, because although I didn't learn violin or Kung Fu this way, I can see the benefits of learning violin or Kung Fu this way.

A lot of people talk about learning martial arts similarly. i.e. doing horse stance for a week, or in my Sifu's case three months. But most of the old people that tell me these stories, quit. Or went on to do Kung Fu their own way outside of a particular school I.e. even though I didn't do three months of horse stance to begin with, but instead started with basics,  I can see right away that my stance is better than theirs, because I did hours of horse stance later.

Although as I right this, I do realize I did the Wushu version of stance work as a child with Bo Sim Mark. And as a child I used to do minutes of Horse Stance by myself a la TVB Kung Fu training sequences. So I guess I did go through this initial stage. But by choice rather than by force. But only superficially.

I suppose somewhere in Japan or China there could very well be 1,000 four year olds lined up holding violins with their shoulder and chin right now for two hours at a time. I mean if you wanted to teach 1,000 kids to play violin how else would you do it?

Then again, when folk music was more popular, thousands of poor farmer Americans used to come in out of the fields and play music together. They probably had a similar beginning stance exercise type thing. But maybe the approach was different. I wouldn't know. I do know that in Irish fiddle you hold the violin against your side. It would b cool to learn that style too. But I have only seen teachers and students of that style on Youtube.

Well I think I might just start practicing Suzuki method with Noah. I.e. I will only work on what he is working on too. And create Kung Fu Violin. Why not?
So there will be more Suzuki posts for sure.