ABSTRACT
In the early 1930s, as Japanese violin teacher Shinichi Suzuki was starting his teaching career, he had a simple but consequential revelation; he noticed that children learn their native languages, regardless of complexity, just by listening and imitating what they hear. Suzuki was the first to recognize and articulate practical application of this simple epiphany to violin teaching. Suzuki’s basic view on tone production was that the bow must be drawn perpendicular to the string and that the bow hair should always remain completely flat on the string. This allows “the tiny ‘hooks’ or ‘teeth’ of the horsehair to catch the string securely and allows it to resonate freely.” The Suzuki method emphasizes the importance of the right thumb in tone production. He developed several exercises including the “thumbnail power” exercise in which the right thumbnail firmly presses into the wood of the stick, counterbalanced by the weight of the hand on the bow.
