Lee Hom's " Forever 1st Day " Album Diary

89/08/04~89/08/11 @Part 9

Dear Friends,

Today, I am writing from my hotel room in Hong Kong.

I haven't slept yet and it's already 8 a.m. Uh Oh. I have a magazine interview and photo session in three hours. You'll understand if I look tired though, right? After all, I'm a musician, and we're allowed to look tired! This week I have an anecdote to share with you all that is very special to me.

Endless neurological research has been done on the effects that music has on brain activity. Supposedly, children show an increase in overall IQ, memory, and spatial-relation/visualization capabilities. I personally, don't think there is any absolute way to measure a person's intelligence, so I don't know how much those studies mean to me, but I do know that music has taught me about myself and most importantly, has taught me quite a lot about how I learn.

Learning how to learn can be the most difficult lesson of all. Everyone learns differently. Just ask your friends how they prepare for a test, and you'll be amazed how many means there can be to the same end. To memorize information, some students will prepare flash cards with the questions on the front, the answers on the back. Some prefer to take advantage of a short-term memory and cram the night before a test. Some people have to eat a big breakfast before a test, and still others have to stay up all night in order to perform well the next day. Everyone is different.

At the age of six, I began studying violin under the Suzuki method, founded by Japanese educator and violinist, Dr. Shinichi Suzuki. Under the Suzuki method, children are taught how to learn songs quickly and play them accurately, eventually committing them to memory. Suzuki believed that all children are born with talent and are a product of their environment. Therefore, if well nurtured, any child should be able to realize his talents. The Suzuki method consists of ten books, generally learned one year at a time, and is designed to provide children (under a Suzuki method teacher) with just the environment to let their talents mature.

In elementary school, I can remember attending large group lessons and master classes in which 10 other kids and I would dress up in suit and tie and simultaneously play "Minuet in G" from one of Suzuki's beginning books. We looked like baby ducks following their mother. It was cute, and the parents of these kids always took a lot of pictures. I think it gave the parents some feeling of reassurance, like they weren't wasting their money on all these violin lessons, because at least they had these adorable pictures. In my opinion, these group lessons did more for them, than for us!

When I was 15, I finished the Suzuki method and started with a new teacher at the Eastman School of Music. His name was Oliver Steiner, and studying with him changed my whole approach to being a musician. He also changed my whole approach to learning. I wish I could share with you what it was like studying with him, who was a student of Dorothy DeLay, the world's most famous living violin teacher. Although I cannot document on a weekly basis every lesson with Oliver Steiner, I can share with you the one lesson that impacted me the greatest, and give you insight into how his mind worked...

It was a beautiful autumn afternoon in Rochester NY, the leaves had mostly fallen from the trees in as many colors as there are in nature's pallet. Like every week, I was to enter Professor Steiner's house from around the backyard, excited to share with him what I had practiced and learned in the last six days. This week, however, as I approached the house, he was standing in the window, motioning for me to be quiet. My eyes followed the direction of his index finger across the grass and the piles of raked leaves in his yard. There stood a young deer, with a clean coat and a handsome body.

Professor Steiner motioned for me to come inside; I did ever so carefully so as not to disturb the deer, who still stood there motionless. His profile smiled as he gazed out the window fondly at the animal before him. "These are the best violin lessons", he said. He was talking about the deer.

"See how effortlessly he stands. He is strong, yet at the same time, so relaxed that it looks like a breeze could come and lift him away." And then, as if the deer had heard what Professor Steiner just said, he began to dance. It was more like a jumping around in small circles across the lawn, and finally breaking into a free and proud run, which carried the deer far away and out of our sight. It disappeared without a trace, like fine red wine in crystal. "Just like when you are holding the violin under your chin, there needs to be the same ease. When you are playing the most difficult passages in Paganini, I should be able to imagine a breeze come by and lifting the instrument out of your arms." Mr. Steiner was right. To this day, I believe that watching that deer dance was the most valuable and unforgettable violin lesson that I have ever had. In that week's lesson, Oliver Steiner had showed me just how connected different aspects of our life can be. Seemingly unrelated subjects often contain the same principles, and it is only up to us as to how we make sense of them.

After this lesson, I began using the Suzuki method again, but this time I applied it to my schoolwork. I was so happy to be able to connect two areas of my life that I had never thought shared common thread! Like I said, everyone learns differently. But at the crux of my learning process, I have learned, is the technique of repetition. The technique of repetition can be divided into two main categories: tempo (including rhythm), and technical difficulty.

For example, I used to play new violin pieces from top to bottom and play them flawlessly, but at half the final tempo. Every day, I would play the piece one notch faster, until it was up to the speed that I wanted it. That way I never made mistakes, only tempo adjustments. Other times, technical difficulty would demand a different approach, I would take a new piece and first work on hard chunks, section by section, sometimes drawing the dividing lines at strange and counter-intuitive places. Finally, after all the toughest section were under control, I would join the sections together. There are countless variations on these two methods that I still use when I am memorizing lines in a movie, learning dance moves for a pop song, or trying to learn new phrases in Japanese.

However, sometimes my brain doesn't work this way. After all, we are not machines. And as I get older, I try to appreciate the lessons we can learn from nature and our surroundings. I have found that some of the greatest and most profound knowledge can be found in the most unobvious places. Who would have known that my greatest violin lesson was taught by a deer? Since then, I have learned that I need only to open my mind as a student to be surrounded by great teachers

That's all for this week, I'll be going to Shanghai for a day tomorrow and then returning to Taiwan for a concert on the weekend! I hope you're all having a great summer, all the best to you and thanks for your support!

Very truly yours,
Lee-hom