Mumsnet Talk

Anyone done one of these?

My dd wants to go in for the local one playing clarinet. She's been playing since september and is working towards Grade 1.

Does she go into the beginner group or the Grade 1 class?

What type of music do people play, their Grade pieces or own choices? If own choice, is the standard of music normally higher or lower than their grade?

Any other info gratefully received

Beginners and ,assuming it is a free choice, any piece they can play is fine. You will find huge variation in ability, choice, polish and parental pushiness. Make sure she can announce the piece and composer clearly. Good experience though.

Music Festivals are great for experience and confidence but do not get your hopes up. There is a lot of nepotism and bias, for and against some pupils or instruments. I've seen performers who outstripped the competition gain nothing and vice versa. We will do them for performance experience only.

Thanks for the heads up re results.

That may be the tricky bit for my dd - not wanting to win, although she is competitive, but if the best player doesn't win, by god she'll moan about it, she's a stickler for fairness and justice. Right I will warn her in advance.

I'll let her choose which piece then, and just get her to do whichever feels right for her.

nepotism, bias and blatantly unfair judging sounds seriously bad. If that is commonly the case, I really wouldn't put my dc through that

Dd's teacher says she sometimes wonders at how judges arrive at result but all in all it sounds like a positive experience. Teacher asked Dd if she wanted to enter competitive or non -competitive and I put her in for non so she could enjoy the first time experience.

Has her teacher suggested she enter?

Her teacher has done a general music festival is now open for entrys. Rather than I think x should do the music festival.

We do our local one and as it is the only one I have been too I can only comment on ours.

My DCs enjoy it tremendously. We have no 'pull' with anyone, but DS won a trophy last year. School also enters choir and orchestra, plus a recorder group too. The comments from the adjudicator are generally very encouraging and they learn a lot from doing it. Plus they get a day away from school.

Last year's adjudicator here was quite controversial in some of her decisions, however having been to most of the sessions during the week she was very consistent in her controversialness, IYSWIM.

If your DD wants to do it I'd let her try the beginner class.

I grew up and regularly played in the local annual music festival - from memory my experience was nothing like that described by Colleger. It was an extensive affair run over a week (maybe 2), with sections for individual instruments/voice, groups, speech and dance. Within each section there were then classes for different instruments. I played cello and piano, both of which had their own classes - I didn't see so much of the wind/brass, but they may have been merged in which case a bias towards a given instrument may have become more apparent. I certainly wasn't aware of a huge amount of nepotism. I had teachers who were well respected in the area and I often did well, but then my teachers were regularly taking students to grade 8 standard - and they certainly weren't the only teachers with successful pupils. I had many friends with other teachers, many of whom also took part, and I never got the feeling they felt it was a waste of time.

At the festival I played in the class descriptions tended to be pretty clear on what pieces were suitable for what classes - so there would be the grade 1 piano class (any piece from a standard grade 1 syllabus), the Beethoven piano class (the first movement from any Beethoven piano sonata), a set piece (probably a few classes aimed at different standards), adult and child piano duet (free choice, adult may not be an instrumental teacher), etc.

My personal experience of the local music festival was very positive. I learned quite a few performance skills and got a nice stash of book tokens, which payed for a fair chunk of my books at university

Have you talked to your DD's teacher? She should be best placed to advise on which class would be most appropriate and what piece would be most suitable for that class.

We entered ours for a few festivals and it was a case of win some, lose some. I certainly don't think that we lost because of nepotism. Music is a subjective thing. That is why even Maxim Vengerov have people divided.

We've done few of them, usually going for age cat. (under 9,under 11 etc).
I remember adjudicator beginning the feedback session saying that they judge not the skill level but quality of performing a particular piece , no matter how easy/advanced it was .

However I did feel sorry for some kids who were beginners when they had to listen to someone few grades ahead !

If you DD is playing Grade 1 piece from the syllabus , that would be a great preparation for the exam and she won't be intimidated by other performers playing at higher level .

It is always interesting to bring adjudicators comments back to the teacher - that's where the real competition begins