Producing Scotch's future musicians - Scotch College

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Producing Scotch's future musicians

MR JOHN OFFICER – TEACHER-IN-CHARGE, SCOTCH SUZUKI PROGRAMME

Every Tuesday morning before school about 25 boys meet in the James Forbes Academy to play music together. All of these boys, together with another 13 boys from Prep to Year 2, are learning the violin or the cello by the Suzuki method.

This is a way of learning music that was originally developed in Japan just after the war by Dr Shinichi Suzuki. When one of his colleagues asked Dr Suzuki to teach his three-year-old son, he realised that conventional methods of teaching a pre-literate child would not work, and that he would have to think of something else.

He developed a way of learning music based on the same process by which children learn language. Students listen to recordings each day, and one of their parents attends the weekly lesson and supervises home practice. All students study a set repertoire list that begins with Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and progresses in logical steps through to the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto and beyond. All pieces are played from memory, which allows the student to focus on holding the bow and the instrument correctly, listening to their tuning and to the quality of theirtone.

From its beginning at Scotch in 1997 with five boys, the Scotch Suzuki programme has grown so that this year we have 42 boys in the Junior School learning the violin or the cello.

All students have a weekly individual lesson as well as a weekly group class, where they play pieces and play games designed to improve their posture and their musicianship. The boys enjoy these classes very much, although as we move into the colder part of the year it does get harder to get up on Tuesday mornings!

This programme has produced some fine players who have gone on to play with the Scotch Symphony Orchestra, and has played a significant part in giving many boys a deep and lasting appreciation of great music. I feel very proud to be part ofit.