Suzuki Method Everywhere

"Layered learning" is far more enjoyable than more traditional methods where you do a lot of "exercises" before you learn the whole process

My violin

I learnt to play the violin twice in my life. The first was when I was a child, when I went to Vijaya College of Music, where, HK Ganesh, who later went to jail for murdering is wife (I’m told he’s out on bail now; he also happens to be my father-in-law’s third cousin), taught me to play in the Carnatic classical style.

This was classic south indian style teaching, where they first teach you the scales, and different kinds of rhythms, and so on, and it is years before you can competently play a song. Krish Ashok has this hilarious post about the travails of learning to play the violin in the traditional Carnatic style.

It takes years of training before you learn the first tune that sounds remotely interesting. Guitarists play the chords to Hotel California in a few months. Here’s a reason many people give up on Indian classical music. They don’t teach you interesting things till you get your basics right. That sounds like a good idea per se, but it does little to motivate any student. No one wants to be playing Varnams and Geethams for years. Why couldn’t they teach students who can play geethams, simple film songs?

In any case, I didn’t enjoy the learning then, but my mother didn’t allow me to quit (now, Andy Murray has made it fashionable to admit that you didn’t enjoy something but did it only because your mother pushed you into it), so I went on for some six years till I cleared some “junior” exam (whose certificate I didn’t bother to collect).

For whatever reason I took my violin to Madras when I went there for undergrad, and proceeded to annoy enough people with it that it resulted in my getting my official nickname. And then I abandoned it.

Until 2011, when, as part of “project thirty”, I decided to learn to play the violin once again, this time in the Western classical style. And what a world of difference this made (as it happened, three months later, I got a hairline fracture in my last right metacarpal, which made it impossible to grip the bow, and I soon abandoned the classes).

Mr. Peter Appaji, a railwayman who taught me this time round, used the Suzuki method. Which meant that in the very second class (since I didn’t need much coaching to be taught how to hold the violin and the bow) I learnt to play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

Fairly basic stuff, but it was amazing how quickly I had learnt to play a song! Instant gratification. And the Suzuki method teaches you by layering - you learn one simple song first, and then learn everything through that. I learnt different ways of bowing with this song. I learnt to play it in different scales. I learnt everything, while still knowing this song.

And Western Classical is far more rigorous and exacting than Indian classical (where the violinist is either the main accompanist or a virtuoso - and is never part of a large orchestra), but the way I was taught meant that my interest had been captured and sustained from the first week itself. If not for my injury, I might have learnt for much longer.

My daughter

My daughter goes to a Montessori school, where learning is again “layered”. The way I understand it, you don’t need to master one concept before you move on to another - you are taught everything at a basic level, and then the details keep getting added “in layers”.

You can think of it as being similar to the Suzuki method - you learn a framework, and then things keep getting added. Like how you start by learning to play Twinkle Twinkle, and use that to learn everything.

My daughter loves her school, and learning there, but the downside is that, having gotten used to this fantastic method of learning, she struggles elsewhere. Twice, we’ve put her in formal music lessons (neither of which used the Suzuki method), and she has lost interest each time (and if I were her, I would’ve lost interest as well!). Among other things, the teaching seemed too regimented.

Snatch

I have sort of hit a plateau in terms of my lifting at the gym, and so decided to shake things up by teaching myself how to snatch. Now, it is a complex movement, and I have some physiological difficulties, given my long arms and short torso.

I’m holding the bar at the maximum possible width, and it still doesn’t sit in my hip!

I’ve been watching a bunch of YouTube videos about it (fitness is one discipline YouTube is very good at), and for the last month or so, every time I go to the gym, I spend 10-15 minutes doing a “snatch progression” before getting on to other lifting.

For the first few sessions, I just did the “prep work”. Overhead squats. Behind the neck snatch grip presses. Snatch grip deadlifts. Etc. But it wasn’t enjoyable.

Then I saw this video from Garage Strength:

Towards the end, he says “let them do the full lift the first day. They are not going to be perfect at it, but they will be far more interested in it”. And something went off in my head - yes the snatch is a technical lift requiring insane mobility and coordination. But, when I learnt to squat or deadlift or overhead press, I clearly remember doing the full lift on the first day.

Suzuki everywhere

And now that ties in well with my music learning - again it is “layered learning”. If you were to learn to snatch like they teach you Indian classical music, you would spend a year perfecting your overhead squat and behind the neck press and snatch grip deadlift and all that. And if you’ve already been lifting heavy, none of that is likely to excite you.

However, if you’re doing it like the Suzuki method, you start small - by doing a full snatch of an empty bar (or a PVC pipe) the first day! And then layer your learning and build up from there, as you simultaneously improve your technique and lift heavier (the latter won’t happen without the former)!

And so over the last two weeks, I’ve started snatching, even if my technique may not be great. It’s still very early days, and I’ve worked my way up to being able to snatch 30kg, but this is so much enjoyable than just doing the auxiliary stuff. Of course, I start every workout with warmups such as the overhead squat, but I make sure I snatch.

This has got me thinking - Suzuki (or other “layered”) technique should be far more ubiquitous, to teach and learn all sorts of things! Programming, for example, need not start with a Hello World, but with something that can be iteratively layered upon. Similarly with everything else.

What has your experience been with respect to learning? And am I alone in saying that this kind of layered learning is superior?