Helpful Resources
Recordings
Listening to professional quality sound and video recordings are important to use because whatever quality you listen to will determine what quality your playing will be!
Other Resources
- Required Reading for Parents:
- Nurtured by Love, by Shinichi Suzuki
- Recommended Reading for parents:
- Ability Development from Age Zero, by Shinichi Suzuki
- The Music Practice Makeover, by Christine Goodner
- Positive Practice: 5 Steps to Help Your Child Develop a Love of Music, by Christine Goodner
- Beyond the Music Lesson: Habits of Successful Suzuki Families, by Christine Goodner
- Building Violin Skills, by Edmund Sprunger
- Helping Parents Practice: Ideas for Making It Easier, Volume 1, by Edmund Sprunger
- The Practice Revolution, by Philip Johnston
- Suzuki Triangle, blog and email newsletter (super helpful resources for practice issues and motivation - sign up for emails!) https://www.suzukitriangle.com/starthere/
- The Heart of America Suzuki Association (Northeast Kansas)
- https://hasasuzuki.wildapricot.org/
- Sign up for HASA's emails to get info on upcoming events and opportunities! HASA Newsletter Sign-up
- The Suzuki Association of the Americas website
How to Practice Scales, Etudes, and Pieces
- Practice only on the days you eat! - Shinichi Suzuki
- If you can play it slow, you can play it fast! -TwoSet Violin
- Beautiful tone, beautiful heart. - Shinichi Suzuki
- How to Practice a Musical Instrument by Peter Spitzer
- Scales & Arpeggios
- Focus on being precisely in-tune and having beautiful tone
- Start by practicing at a slow tempo and speed up the tempo of the whole scale
- If there is a spot you continually miss or is out of tune, isolate that section and practice only those few notes
- Use a tuner, piano, or drone the first note of the scale to help you stay in tune
- Etudes
- Etudes build technique, so focus on whatever technique that etude is meant to work on. If you are unsure of what technique to work on, think of one left hand and one right hand technique to improve, or ask your teacher.
- Stay aware of your intonation and tone
- Don’t fall asleep! Etudes can have misleading accidentals or repetitions that sound the same as before, but are slightly different.
- Pieces
- Finger first, then bow
- Focus on whatever aspect of the piece your teacher instructed you to
- Instead of playing the whole piece from beginning to end, find the most challenging measure or small section to practice on its own
- Chunk small sections of the piece together and then chunk those small sections into larger groups to finally put together a whole piece or big section of a piece
- If you get frustrated, take a break!
- If you can play a section of a piece (or a short piece) perfectly three times in a row, you have mastered it!
- If you are having trouble learning or memorizing a piece, listen to it a lot
- Think about how you learned a previous piece or skill, and see if that method will work again.
- Try out new ideas, and don’t always practice the same way!
- Ask your teacher to help you know how to practice at home!
- Read The Practice Revolution by Philip Johnston for lots of helpful tools to help you succeed while practicing.