Evan Mook

Hi, and thank you so much for visiting the new Suzuki Piano School website. It’s still in its infant stage, having been born in the Fall of 2011. Great thanks to the designers at Turn 2 Interactive for doing such a great job. Now we’ve got our work cut out for us editing it and getting some content up, and we seem to mess something up every time we do – after all, we’re musicians, not web designers, so please bear with us, read what we’ve got so far, and come back later, and later after that, as we will continue adding lots of good stuff for you to read about and listen to. For the moment, we hope you will enjoy some of our student videos below.

Thanks again, and we hope to talk to you, meet you, play for you, and/or teach you or yours soon,
Evan Mook, owner/instructor, Suzuki Piano School

What’s your child playing?

Over the past decade, the students that have come to me after taking years of traditional lessons have all been playing what one recent email described as “ridiculous songs like ‘the quiet spring’ or ‘doll house theme song.’” One told me that after three years of lessons, she could play Yankee Doodle Dandy. Interspersed amongst never-ending nursery rhymes and other “ridiculous songs” would be the occasional classical piece, say a Minuet by Bach, “arranged by” some American publisher of today, a simplified version of the original great work. I’ve had other teachers say, “Whoa!” when I mention that my students are playing the real thing (see the third video below.) The Suzuki books (starting with Volume 2) have nothing but these authentic works, as written by the great classical composers, never any simplified arrangements. My students would never describe Bach Minuets and Beethoven Sonatas as “ridiculous songs.” One new student who had studied for ten years with another, now in Volume 2 of Suzuki (Suzuki beginners get there in the first or second year) told me that she much preferred these pieces to the “jazz” that she was playing in the other book. This was not real jazz, which is heavily improvisation-oriented, requiring a mastery of music theory, and which I teach as well.

How do their hands look?

None of the students that I’ve seen over the past decade, after years of traditional lessons, have learned the proper technique required, not only to develop greater facility later, but absolutely necessary for playing the very first pieces musically. Suzuki focuses on this before anything else. Before we can string a series of notes together to create a melody, we must be able to play one note beautifully, to get a strong, warm, singing tone rather than a harsh, banging, or weak sound out of the piano. Then, when learning to put one note to others, we must understand phrasing, legato, staccato, when to lift our hands between phrases and when we must not. Suzuki teaches the technique required for musicality, and musicality itself, before anything else. These areas seem to go completely neglected in traditional method books, in favor of mere button-pushing.

When I moved back home from the road to take over for my childhood teacher, still the only Suzuki piano teacher in the area that either of us knew about, she explained to me that the prevailing attitude amongst teachers is that these are just kids (did she even say “stupid” kids, or am I just remembering it that way?) and they’ll never be able to do it right anyway, so why try? From everything I’ve seen, this appears to be very true. At a Fall ’11 reception for area music teachers, one teacher who said she taught “beginner piano” as well as music classes at a school told me that she didn’t even bother trying to make sure the hands were being held correctly, that it was either too difficult, or that she didn’t think they were even capable of doing so. I explained that it takes patience, but that it can be done, must be done, and will be done relatively quickly as long as you make sure this is done right from the beginning, and then it becomes habit, automatic, and they never have to think about it again. She said that it just depends on what you choose to focus on. Anything else, to me, can only be described as button-pushing, bad habit-making, and they will never be able to play anything musically. It is much more difficult to teach these kids to do it right after years of practicing it wrong. I recently had a boy who had played for eight years break into tears after several weeks of working on fixing his fingers so his knuckles wouldn’t collapse and have his fingers bend backwards (this is the most common mistake I see.) He was starting to get it, but was convinced that it would never feel natural. Imagine how frustrating this must be, along with having to start all over again in the beginner book!

They say practice makes perfect. This could not be more wrong. Practice makes habits, and it will make bad habits much more easily than good ones. It is difficult to do something right. It is extremely easy to do it wrong.

Take a closer look:

A fellow teacher gave me a tour of her books. Unfortunately, I wasn’t videotaping when I showed her the Suzuki books and she said that if she showed that to her students she would have a mutiny because it’s so hard. Traditional methods say you can start kids as young as 5. Suzuki says you can start them at 3. If Suzuki is your norm, as it is for me, how do you think the rest of this looks?

Please note: If there is no sound, please come back later. There seems to be some confusion, a lot of it, about copyright laws recently going overboard on youtube:

http://www.google.com/search?q=Music+Publishing+Rights+Collecting+Society&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

“I want to make good citizens. If a child hears fine music from the day of his birth and learns to play it himself, he develops sensitivity, discipline and endurance. He gets a beautiful heart.”

—Shin’ichi Suzuki

Learn it right, from the start

Nothing but authentic classical music, as written by the composers, never any simplified arrangements. Also jazz improvisation for all instruments. All Western music, European and American, only as it was meant to be played. In your home or new downtown location. All levels & styles, specializing in beginners of all ages 3 and up.

Member: Charlottesville Music Teachers Association