1,000 Days of Music - Day 19: STOP-PREPARE (1)

STOP-PREPARE is a learning technique that seems to be at the heart of the Suzuki teaching philosophy. In this technique, the student physically stops after playing the notes already learned and mentally prepares to play the new notes. This bridges the gap between what the student has mastered and what she is learning. It is not unlike the way I teach and learn, often crossing the bar line to prepare for learning the next measure. It is very different in that STOP-PREPARE appears to be executed at tempo.

Learning a piece at tempo is completely alien to me. After more thirty years of teaching one way, I am about to learn another. I decided to experiment on myself and learn the anonymously composed Minuet in G from J.S. Bach’s Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach using STOP-PREPARE. I started with the first sixteen measures. It felt like learning how to ice skate for the first time—wobbly and uncertain. Yet, it felt oddly familiar. Not being a strong sight-reader in my youth, I used to apply my reading ability to memorizing new music right away, one measure at a time. I’ve spent my adulthood practicing reading to the point of needing to have the music in front of me whether I’d memorized a piece or not. Now I’m coming full-circle with STOP-PREPARE. Oh, I’ll continue to practice my reading. But I’ll undoubtedly find a way to use STOP-PREPARE as a metaphor for life.