Learn to read piano and keyboard music in 20 minutes

Should your little sport learn to play the piano?

Only if he or she would benefit from better concentration, relaxation, discipline, focus, self esteem, a more cooperative nature, a better batting average and a higher IQ! Learning to play the piano or violin very well in the shortest possible time with the Suzuki Talent Education Method has been credited with developing all of these qualities and more...

Playing the piano very well is really fun. It's very easy -- you can use all ten of your fingers. (Playing poorly is not easy and it's not much fun either.)

What is the Suzuki Talent Education Method?

Here is a way to teach children to play the piano based on the way all ordinary children successfully learn to speak their mother tongue. The method was developed for teaching violin by Shinichi Suzuki (1898-1998) and adapted for teaching piano by the late Dr. Haruko Kataoka (1927-2004) of Matsumoto Japan over 50 years ago, in collaboration with Dr. Suzuki and his sister-in-law.

This was a shocking and very beneficial change from the way piano was usually taught at the time. Now however, many of Suzuki's ideas have been accepted and even adapted to teaching other musical instruments and other subjects.

Dr. Suzuki believed that every child, if properly taught, was capable of a good level of musical achievement. He emphasized playing from a very young age. With young beginners, a Suzuki piano teacher will encourage learning music by ear more than reading musical notation. They also encourage playing in the presence of others at lessons and at home. As a result, Suzuki students tend to enjoy performing in public.

In the words of Dr. Kataoka:

Teaching children -- not just teaching them piano -- is such a very special thing. It is totally different from teaching adults. We need to understand what is important -- what requires the most care and attention. Dr. Suzuki was the first person to realize that childhood education is the most important education. The education received in childhood determines the child's future... conventional wisdom told us that it is all right to have a mediocre teacher for small children, and that students should go to better teachers as they progress. Dr. Suzuki realized the error of this kind of thinking.

Who is Shinichi Suzuki?

Dr. Shinichi Suzuki was born on October 17, 1898 in Nagoya, Japan. One of twelve children, he was called an itazurako, which in Japanese, means mischief maker. His father owned the largest violin factory in the world. After he graduated from high school, when he was seventeen he heard a recording of Schubert's Ave Maria, played by Mischa Elman. He was amazed that a violin could make such a beautiful tone. He brought a violin home from the factory and by trying to imitate a recording of Elman playing a Haydn Minuet, taught himself to play. A few years later he took violin lessons from a teacher in Tokyo.

When he was 22 years old, he went to Germany, where he studied with a famous violin teacher, Karl Klinger. In Germany he also met his wife, Waltraud. After Shinichi and his wife moved back to Japan, he began to teach violin.

Dr. Suzuki believed that all children had the talent to play music if they had loving parents and teachers to guide them. He believed and demonstrated that young children could learn to play a violin or piano just as they had learned to speak, to standup, and to walk. This was considered a very strange idea at the time, however his young students learned to play very well.

For many years. Dr. Suzuki worked on his method. He chose music that would help children learn how to play. He even wrote pieces himself, such as the Twinkle variations, and Allegro. Teachers from around the world came to learn from him.

On January 26, 1998 Shinichi Suzuki died at the age of 99. Though Dr. Suzuki was very old, he was always happy and full of energy. While Shinichi died before he turned 100 years old, many children in Japan celebrated his 100th birthday.

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Reading Piano Music

You can learn to read piano or keyboard music in minutes instead of months! Free!

Should your little sport learn to play the piano?

What is the Suzuki Talent Education Method?

Who is Shinichi Suzuki?