Spring/ Summer Music and Musicians Thread

Fleur: She did learnt all grade 2 scales and played well 2 grade2 pieces and only started grade 3 pieces and scales 6 weeks ago. I have never had him feeling frustrated with her for the last 2 years and a half, he is a very patient and good teacher. The only thing I am thinking of is he might be better with piano rather than violin.
(by the way, after telling her that mini Fleur was learning "fur Elise" then last night I heard 2 pages of fur Elise(mostly sight reading only) from her. So surprise, she might got the motivation to lean it herself from learning that miniFleur is learning it too.

waffle good to hear Goo is enjoying her piano playing. You have got very musical kids.

We are also quietly progressing, DD is working on about 5 different areas weekly, fur Elise is her main(ish) piece and it will probably be work in progress for a few good weeks, then burgmuller, Czerny, bartok, scales and the all times hated sight reading exercises daily. Her practice now increased to about 45 min to an hour solid but she doesn't complain, in fact she doesn't realise when the time passes which is good.

Nice to hear Goo is keen on piano, I am sure she will progress well,

Yes, the 2 terms at school didnt progress well at all( almost none was learnt). She has only started properly from March 2015 so its a year ago( she is now in year 3). I am also much worried that he felt so frustrated and not being able to correct her(fix the position, get the technique understood) so much that he offered to come on weekends for free( we pay £50/hour). I know he has been so kind and would like her to progress and we are so much appreciated for it, at the same time, she is a very bright girl, she has hardly ever had an issue with not understand her teacher, tutor. She didnt complain about not understood him either however I could feel her frustration recently compare to grade 1 last year.

Green I have no experience with violin (except that Dd's piano teacher is also a violin teacher and she tells me stuff sometimes) but I would say the view in terms of skipping grades needs to be adjusted. From what you said it sounds to me that the teacher said he'll skip grade 2 and do grade 3 by a certain moment in time and now he wants to do grade 2 exam because of slow progress and position. What I would say is that grade 2 exam would not change her posture or her progress.

What I mean by that is that even when skipping grades the syllabus for that grade needs to be covered otherwise it would leave a gap in knowledge.

So when DD skipped from grade 1 to 3 piano the only thing she skipped was the actual exam preparation, the actual pieces and the exam itself. But she still covered grade 2 scales, grade 2 level pieces (from old syllabus and one from the current syllabus) technical exercises and studies at grade 2 level. Once these were covered she moved onto grade 3 requirements.

So while I understand her teacher feels like there is a big jump between grade 1 and 3 and some work is required I still don't see the benefit of actually sitting the grade 2 exam unless he feels there will be a very long gap between exams and wants to keep your DD motivated by having a goal to achieve.

DD is now skipping grade 4 piano for example (at least that is the plan but the teacher may change her mind) but she did say she has no clue of when DD will be ready for grade 5, maybe next year or in a couple of years. She is doing grade 4 scales and her teacher has a rather long list of repertoire and studies she needs to play before actually looking at exam prep.

Hi everyone, it has been very quiet here, hope everyone is having a lovely quiet time. Please can I ask a question on violin teacher. My daughter started her violin lesson at beg of y2 when the school had the club openned. After 2 terms there isnt any progress so I pulled her out as our existing piano tutor is also a violin tutor and he said he could help. She then had the grade 1 violin merit( high merit of 127) end of Nov 2015, she learnt the pieces well so both myself and our tutor think we could move straight to grade 3. My tutor recently saying he feels her progressing too slowly, her position is wrong, he cant get it corrected( he even kindly offers to come for extra lesson for free as he feels frustrated too). My questions are: is there that much a big jump between 2 grades for violin? Is having a very good violin tutor is a key to violin playing( I can play violin a little and I could tell our tutor is good but might not be of the best)( the reason for this question was we went to couple of violin concerts and understood that its very important to have an excellent tutor for violin, actually its the key to have an excellent tutor for violin).

Newlife4me congratulations, it will be a confidence builder for her won't it?

This morning I was delighted to find that there were no speed restrictions on the motorway for the first time since DS started county wind band three years ago. That is going to save me forty minutes travelling time each rehearsal. See my happy smiling face.

We are supposed to be focussing less on music until the GCSEs are out of the way except that these things never work out the way that you plan. The token reduction looks to be dropping a couple of music lessons to offset the three full Sundays that have somehow worked their way onto the calendar.

at posh shed.

We have no room for a drum kit. As it is there are already more instruments than people in the house. I don't know where DS2 is going with drums. Perhaps trying out jazz is not a bad thing. Thanks for the posts on this!

Misti - that sounds brilliant (musicians and support)

New life - well done to DD; we are still waiting....

Waffle - DD is also starting piano this week

Never - DD does 45 min jazz plus a jazz group. it def gives her a different perspective and a lot of fun (and no exams!)

This term is so busy all ready - lots of extra rehearsals for concerts and festivals; we already have 10'concerts in the diary. Need to get concert clothes checked for size as DD is growing again....black long skirts or dresses with enough room for cello-playing are really hard to find for a 10yr old!

Misti: its sounds lovely, they must see the potential in her, hope she will get the support she needs
Fleur: I feel the excitement too, hope she will love it!
Newlife: congratulations, a distinction, wow!!!
Loose: I am chocked with envy, we had our garden redone last year and I had even a smaller shed to have more room for the lawn awggg!

Well done Newlife DD! That must be a huge boost!

Well done misti, sounds like she had a great time.

Thanks, I know gr2 isn't a huge level, but for her it was a huge challenge.
Mostly mental as she wouldn't play from choice.
I think she has confidence now though.

I'd love a posh shed but have a small enough garden as it is.
The sound isn't too bad but it's constant, even when dd not here, dh still has students and his practice of at least 2 hours a day.

There's still no time/room for me to practice and my lovely clarinet is still in the flaming box. Arghhhhhh!

Well done NewLife's DD

Fantastic result NewLife! Congrats to your DD!

Misti that sounds really good, I bet it makes you proud to see your DD involved with all the musicians.

Dd is home with a certificate for Distinction 136 grade 2 Piano.
I'm so proud as I know what it took for her to achieve this. It has given her a lot of confidence to practice and she actually wants to play now, and awaiting the never ending transition to jazz Piano.
They need to be a consolidated 3 or practically gr4 standard, she started her grade 3 pieces today and has done some scales

We have excellent neighbours and 2 flippin music rooms now.
Dh has upstairs spare bedroom and dd has downstairs teaching room with Piano and instruments on stands when she's here.

I had to build a conservatory to move some furniture from the living room in order to make sure the piano fits in the living room. In reality there was a piece of furniture that my husband would not get rid of to fit the piano in so we moved it in the conservatory. Gosh, I should now suggest a musical shed and get a drum kit. That would "please" our neighbours so much I am sure. I think they are already "happy" when DD does her piano practice, specially when she was practising stormy coast they must have been over the moon.

Most of the stuff down there is DH's! The drum kit gets used about the same as if it were in the house. But the boys' other instruments are in the house for exactly the reasons you say. It's definitely true that if it's just there they are much more likely to play. However, the bass guitar goes down to the shed if it wants to be noisy! Especially if other friends are involved!

loose thank you. We'll see, I don't want to encourage her too much because 99.99% of the time there is no money or career in it and I don't want her to harbour illusions (she jokes that going to university is plan B).

Do you find that having the instruments in the shed makes your kids less likely to play? DD's guitar pretty much lives on her bed (it goes on a stand only when she is sleeping) and she picks it up whenever a musical thought passes through her head.

Everyone should have a posh shed! I used to have a patio down there and a soft fruit patch, but this is more practical and less chance of tripping over a guitar or two!
Mistigri that sounds like a fantastic opportunity for your DD! Well done to her, all the hard work is paying off.

I ignore all hints about a music shed, if it's too much effort to practice when the instrument is in the dining room then there's no chance at all if involves stepping through the back door.

mistigiri that sounds exciting.
fleur I hear you. We had to sacrifice having a dinning table in the living room and have a few guests cramped in the kitchen when I want to be social . And then the xylophone arrived ! Clearly what we all need is loose 's posh shed!!

Never DD is not a big jazz buff, but her jazz workshop plays jazz-influenced interpretations of different genres and she loves it - we were at an end-of-term music school get-together last night, and they played songs by Whitney Houston, Marvin Gaye and Dizzy Gillespie. It's more a "jazz approach", in terms of the arrangements, than pure jazz - they use a lot of weird chords (ie ones that as a more traditional guitarist I can't identify by sight) and jazzy rhythms.

The drummer in my guitar class uses an electronic drum kit and it's very practical and portable and not at all space-hogging. It takes him about five minutes to carry it upstairs to our practice room and set it up.

Saw DD's old guitar teacher last night and he is talking about getting some proper musicians together to work on arrangements for DD's songs, probably at the start of the summer holidays. She failed to make the final three in the competition she entered (this was completely unsurprising and not a disappointment at all) but she has been invited to a meeting with the people in charge of cultural activities at the town hall, to discuss what they can do to help her. Good to see a bit of money and effort being spent on developing cultural activities at grass-roots levels.