I didn't know people still used cassette tapes

It's odd to be in (arguably) the land of technology and yet see so much outdated equipment. Is that just a statement about American consumerism? Although Mrs. Ishii has a very sexy flat screen T.V., she doesn't have a DVD player! (she does, however, have a VCR) The only stereo I've seen in her house is in my room and it has a single tape deck and a record player (there are also some of what I can only guess to be her daughter's records, but I stopped looking after seeing Songs in the Key of Life because I was afraid that I would be too tempted to take something!)

Anyway, Joe and Mayuko also only had a VCR, but that could be chalked up to the fact that they weren't planning on staying forever and they each have computers. The school has a DVD player and a sound system that plays CDs, cassettes, and DAT tapes, but when Mr. Takahashi moved the class to the concert hall the other day he also brought a little Sony tape deck for playing his musical examples.

There's been kind of a big controversy in the Suzuki flute world over the rerecording of our repertoire CDs, but I only now understand Mr. Takahashi's side of it. I'm sure he first heard Moyse's "enchanting" flute tone from a brand new record (they had great sound quality for classical music when new) and a decent system for the time. Unfortunately the recordings that remain from Moyse have not aged well (static-y, etc.), but it was obvious from watching Mr. T react to the degraded recording of Enrico Caruso that he still hears it in his head the way it sounded whenever he first heard it. That's why he's been known to make statements like, "kids don't care about fidelity." Everyone here is just too respectful of him (with good reason) to point out that he could get a Caruso CD with reasonable fidelity for his examples. (This would also eliminate his constant rewinding of the tape which I'm sure is not helping it's condition!)

Confession: I don't listen to the Suzuki CDs much. I did when I first started to help me learn Books 1 & 2 (& a little bit of 3)... but there's a lot of fairly standard repertoire in the method and when I need a recording I can usually find one by a "big name" flutist. A few months ago I wanted a student to hear a Book 1 piece with the accompaniment so I popped in the CD and was a bit shocked to hear that it didn't sound that great. What's even more shocking is that in my lessons Mr. T has a beautiful, rich and flexible tone (and you would never guess that it was coming from a man of his age) How can this be the same person? I can only conclude that it's a technological problem.

The Japanese are notorious for being rooted in tradition and I think these examples of their use of technology proves that. Unfortunately, North American ears demand more and I'm not sure how a compromise will be made. (of course, the real issue will be deciding who the player will be for any new recordings!)

Here's the view from the room where I have lessons: