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A musician, a pedagog and a philosopher - also, the founder of the worldwide famous Suzuki Method. As musiconline we are taking a closer look at who Shinichi Suzuki is.

Born and raised in Nagoya, Japan, Suzuki spent his childhood in his father’s violin factory. Interestingly, even though he was basically living right next to this beautiful musical instrument he has never played violin until he was 18.

His father is known to be an important factor on this. Father Suzuki considered young Shinichi as “not talented enough” to be a good violin player and expressed this idea to his son. Luckily, after hearing a record of the German violinist Mischa Elman, Suzuki started learning playing violin by himself.

At the age of 26, Suzuki moved to Germany to level up his violin game and work with Klingler. After successfully completing his violin training in Germany and coming back home, Suzuki formed a band of stringed instruments with his brothers.

Suzuki was not only interested in making music - he was also teaching it. While teaching to little kids, Suzuki formed his unique method of teaching.

His main inspiration is known to be the process of learning a language by kids. He carefully examined how children learn a new language in both Germany and Japan and adapted this scheme to his teaching technique.

Suzuki Method is a philosophy rather than a simple music training technique. It is based on the following idea: “Character first, talent next.”

The basic principles of the Suzuki Method are:

He further specified that this is not simply a “Learn Music Fast” technique with the following statement:

This is not a teaching method. You can’t simply read Suzuki books and become a certified Suzuki teacher - because there is no such thing.

As of today, there are above 8,000 certified Suzuki instructors and hundreds of thousands of students are being raised with his method. musiconline is one of those academies where you can start your music training with the help of Suzuki teachers.