I've been playing the violin since I was five, but I haven't really played since college. However, every now and then I get the urge to play and so I take my violin out of its case and play.
I learned to play via the Suzuki method for the first five years which means I learned to play by ear before I learned to sight-read music. To this day, I'm an average sight-reader and can fumble through music with a little practice, but I can actually play the music the first time I read it if I've heard it first. When I was asked to play last-minute in the pit orchestra for Hello, Dolly! in high school, instead of asking for the sheet music to review I asked for soundtrack on CD. The conductor looked at me strangely, shook his head, and said, "Suzuki, right?"
Learning via the Suzuki method also means that I memorized every song I learned. This serves me well when I get the urge to play. I don't need my books or sheet music - my brain tells my fingers what to do and I'm barely conscious of them as the press the strings against the fingerboard. In fact, when I do try to slow down and think about what I'm doing, I tend to fumble a bit so I've learned to just trust the muscle memory of my hands and enjoy how easy it is to play the songs I learned when I was five or eight or ten.
The Suzuki method also encourages immersion in music and the musical community. We had regular group lessons and concerts from the beginning. One of my teachers took me to see an opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors, when I was eight or nine years old. Because of these early experiences, I've always felt a sense of community around my own violin playing and felt the most enthusiastic about playing when I was performing with others - the school orchestra, the pit for musicals, the church choirs, etc.
The problem with this type of learning is that I struggled to learn or play individually. I thrived in the group setting, but I never engaged with unfamiliar music that I had to learn on my own. When I stopped playing Suzuki, I felt uncomfortable because I was expected to sight-read and I wasn't very good at it. I wasn't required to memorize the music either, which meant that my fingers never developed muscle memory and my brain would interfere and cause me to fumble around as I processed how the note on the page translated to fingering on the strings. The music itself didn't get more difficult, but playing the music seemed more challenging, and I simply didn't enjoy it as much.
My struggles with playing didn't diminish my love of music or the music community - Quite the opposite, actually. I have a deep love and appreciation of musicals that I am lucky enough to be able to share with my husband. (How many couples are equally happy at both a Broadway show and the Big East basketball tournament on vacation?) I also love classical music and find myself fingering along whenever I hear my favorites - Pachelbel's Canon in D, Bach's Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring, and Bach's Air on the G String. Music is meant to be shared and experienced with others.
I picked up my violin a few weeks ago to play for fun. Even after all these years, my fingers knew just what to do. There's something very comforting in knowing that no matter how many years pass, or how many other things I learn and forget, I'll always know how to play Bach's Govotte in G Minor.
I wonder if there are any adult Suzuki group lessons out there.
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