What’s The Best Way To Teach Violin?

My brother Jimmy, in response to my post about the Winfield music festival that we went to, made this comment and raised an interesting question:

A great time was had by all. I enjoyed visiting and picking with Fred, and you can count me in on your suggestion to have a Cranach campfire and jam session next year.

One of the things I would like to talk about is the O’Connor
Method of teaching violin. I started playing violin about five year ago. For the first year I took private lessons from a violin teacher using the Suzuki method. It was probably a good idea to learn the basic techniques and principles with private lessons. However, in the process I did learn something about the Suzuki method and I too share in the criticisms of this method voiced by Mark O’Connor.

I could not find a teacher in my area that focused on fiddle
technique so after my first year, I quit the private lessons and started taking lessons on-line and have had some moderate success. However, after much research (and after talking to Mark O’Connor at Winfield), I decided to go ahead and purchase the O’Connor Method books and start working on them. Also, I intend to recommend to my daughter who lives in Houston Texas, that when my 3 year old granddaughter becomes old enough to start violin lessons, that she seek out a teacher that uses the O’Connor Method.

What I would like to know is what experiences you or your children have had with various violin instructional methods? Is the O’Connor Method superior to the Suzuki Method? I believe that it is, but I would like to hear from people with actual experience.

For the O’Connor method, which focuses on traditional fiddle tunes, go here.

For the Suzuki method, go here and here.

To give you can example of the difference, the first tune taught in Suzuki is ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” The first tune taught in O’Connor is “Boil Them Cabbage Down.”