A history of the Suzuki Method's use of sound recordings in the USA and Japan

What is it about?

How did Suzuki Method teachers actually teach using Suzuki's model recordings? The article explores the network of philosophical ideas, pedagogical practices, and cultural values that emerged in using sound recordings to teach violin. Beginning in the 1940s, teachers, parents, and students together found ways to regard recordings as a kind of teacher, using them to learn complicated pieces at a young age. The Suzuki Method's use of recordings also made reading sheet music something that came later in the learning process than was previously the case. In the 1970s, cassette recorders were used to record students, greatly expanding the ways that recordings contributed to learning. And the article explores how recordings were embraced in the Japanese context, but resisted in the USA, in part due to differing cultural and educational values. There are many fascinating anecdotes and examples, too, such as Suzuki's practice of listening to over five thousand individual graduation recital tapes a year, and a mother's innovative and controversial idea to strap a tape recorder with a looping tape on her child's back (so he could play with toys while listening to the same piece over and over).

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Why is it important?

This article is one of the first to explicitly examine the actual pedagogical use of recordings in music learning—the ways that teachers changed how they taught to best take advantage of recordings as a resource for learning. Because nearly a half million students participate in the Suzuki Method, this approach's mediated pedagogy deserves to be understood. Additionally, given today's abundant mediated and technological contexts, many of the ideas pioneered by Suzuki have spread (for instance, in the use of supplemental recordings for method books). The piece is also an example of the application of approaches from the field of sound studies to music education.

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