Spring/ Summer Music and Musicians Thread

fleur,
A full service may include a repad and cork too.
My dh services his students instruments and prices vary as to what needs doing and any repairs that are required.
Things like rods and screws can add to the cost.
As a general a complete overhaul is around the £120 mark, but not sure if this is because they are students and giving him business anyway iyswim.
They still come back to him postgrad which always amuses him.

He is teaching dd how to do her instruments, they are quite often operating on instruments There's lots of brasso and silver cleaner I know that much.

n0ne you will get better answers from the proper musical types in this thread - however a few things I try to do to inject a bit of musicality into the proceedings...

• sing everything - a little song for dinner, for coming home, for seeing a cow etc (?)
• go to a music group, I loved Kindermusik because there are all kinds of different styles played
• listen lots of different types of music - we have kind of cheated at this in that we listen to quite a lot of Zingzillas and Kindermusik CDs, so still kids' music - Backyardigans has some lovely songs too
• get plenty of good quality instruments for kids, ie not the ones that are plasticky and don't make viable sounds (ELC guitar is a particular bugbear of mine) - eg recorder, tin whistle, bongos, swanny whistle, etc
• get a cheapo keyboard that allows you to play at least three keys at the same time and let her go mad with the different sounds
• when listening to music ask her to pick out the instruments, if it's 4/4 or 3/4 etc
• something we do a lot - set up a simple repeated riff with a bit of a beat, and let her sing/play/improvise whatever she wants with it
• when she sings, harmonise (v.quietly) with her (I try this with DS but of course he always tries to join in with my note :)
• learn an instrument of your own/join a choir - I have recently joined a choir again (barbershop) and my kids are fascinated by it

At 3 she may not be too young for Suzuki but people have different opinions on that...! HTH

waffle I think the teacher said it is slightly lighter but it isn't a huge difference and if choosing between the two to let DD have a feel of them and let her decide as she doesn't mind (as a teacher) which one.

No way I'd look at a wooden one, DD will be 9 in August but she is petite and I want her to be as enthusiastic as possible about it, not to be put off by how heavy it is.

I'll put the clarinet away once we get it or maybe pop into the local music shop to give it a service and ask them to show us how to handle it. What does a service consist of? And how often is it done normally? Is it like piano, do you need to have a specialist looking at it every 6-12 months?

This reminds me...I need to get the piano tuner in.

Thank you Waffle I texted the teacher also to ensure she's happy with it as previously she did say Buffet B12 or Yamaha saying that the Yamaha one is slightly lighter (a beginners model) and as I was going to rent initially we'll go with whatever DD liked more in the music shop. She confirmed that it is perfect for beginners and as I know the current owner it shouldn't be a problem.

DD will be excited so I'll have to decide if I should hide it before she officially starts lessons, is there anything really breakable if she fiddles with it before her teacher tells her how to use it properly?

Really interesting discussion about sight reading- I have learned quite a few interesting things here!

Noteventhebestdrummer I was talking specifically about exam's aural, perhaps I didn't express it clearly. I think our teachers do teach some aural during the lessons, but you see they tend to think that dd will be fine without excessive practicing and put more effort into other areas and she lost marks because of that in the past. Since I have started to use app she had full score in aural test for the last two exams

My DD is just 3 and definitely has a musical bent (sings in tune, makes up songs, loves to bang away on the piano, ukelele, drum etc) but I have no idea how to hone this. I think she's too little for proper lessons. How can I encourage her?

I can't play any instruments myself but come from a musical family and sing in a band/have been a chorister in the past. DH can play the harmonica and has a decent tenor voice (though he denies it).

Thanks trout re music centres - haha!

I am pretty good at sightreading on the piano (but cannot memorize for toffee) but when I try to read music on the recorder (which I normally play - badly - by ear), I am thinking hmm that's a G that's a C etc. So for me it is v. closely linked the instrument, to where my hands are on the piano, where they go next, the note in context of the lot (will automatically put fingering where it roughly should go etc), and which bits I can fudge without people noticing :)

trout no marks at all, no cracks, in fact it looks untouched as her DD gave up literally 2-3 months after starting lessons, never took it out of the box since then. I would have bought new, in fact that was the plan but the friend heard me talking about lessons and said she has one that she keeps moving around the house in it's case and she'd like to get rid of it. Glad to hear the age of it shouldn't matter.

So many people learning Fur Elise, I think we should have our own performance concert by posting videos once finished.

trout I can't learn scales using the books either - glad it's not just me.

I think piano is the best instrument to learn to read music on because having learned strings first I tend to look at notes and see fingers and finger patterns rather than note names. I am also very wedded to the treble clef.

The DDs both learned piano first and find changing clefs and transposing much more second nature. DD2 even finds it easier to switch between alto clef and tenor clef on her viola than I do.

I am off to play my Fur Elise before everyone else gets ahead of me - I have only just cracked the chord section, so not at the manic bit yet.

Thanks for your thoughts on sight reading... Makes perfect sense

Does it look ok fleur? No splits or cracks? What are the joints/corks like?
I reckon it would be fine. I also think clarinets sometimes sit in a shop for longer than 6 years!
We don't do an awful lot to dd's clarinet apart from clean it . The corks get greased and we've oiled it once with doctors product grenad oil. You could get it serviced?
Sounds good to me anyway

Waffle ignore me, I just realised "Crampton" is not the model (I thought it was another model by Buffet, as in B12, Crampton, etc) I looked at the pictures my friend sent and it is a B12 so a beginner clarinet. I am quite excited as it is barely used, my friend's DD gave up after 3 months of using it and it was bought new.

The only question would be does it matter if the instrument is 6 years old? It was kept in its case and never used after three months as I said.

trout with regards to sight reading it sounds like your DD is doing it right, she knows where her fingers go even if she doesn't know the note name immediately. I was told sight reading is like reading, when we read we don't take time to think what the letter name is but we automatically know what is the sound that the letter makes and blend them together to make the word.

Never what a beautiful way to describe Fur Elise.

trout glad to hear your DD also plays it and it is coming along well, in all honesty I think DD is probably a bit young to seat the emotional side of it but she wanted to learn it so I assume it must trigger some feelings in her.

Waffle is a Buffet Crampton clarinet too heavy for a beginner? A friend has one for sale but not sure if it is a beginner clarinet.

Never ... Thanks for that quote. I shall pass that on to Dd.. She will love that!

Für Elise is coming along very nicely here too Fleur.. It's very romantic but yes I know what you mean about the manic moment !

Thanks for answering my sight reading question. Dd sometimes has to think if I ask her what a note is but her fingers automatically go there. So it's like she doesn't think of them as notes but as a finger shape or something that is located in a certain place iykwim.
Maybe it's a bit like touch typing
She does a few things which (to a non- musical person like myself) seem odd .Another one is that she can't learn a scale by looking at written notes.. (I got her a book of scales a few years back which she couldn't use)
She has to think of the key signature and then find the scale "otherwise it's too confusing"

I would have thought this makes it harder but what do I know .

Fleurdelise I heard Alice Sara Ott play it on the radio once. She said she resisted playing it for years but finally succumbed. It was very beautifully done. She said it was to be played as a gift, a present, to come from nowhere and finally to disappear into nowhere.

Green so pleased about the stickers! Well done MiniGreen!
Fleur well done to DD and I am sure she will soon get the hang of the fast bits. It sounds like amazing progress!

The aural app IS good but I don't think it's a separate skill that should only be practiced for an exam, I teach it in every single lesson I ever teach.

*the stickers not the bloody sockets

I don't know NeverEver looking at the score it looks hard, like he suddenly went hyper after such a sad moment, but I'll keep you all posted. Once that is learnt then the end seems easy (says me who can barely play a Christmas song for preschoolers ).

Green I am so happy to hear the sockets reward works!

onlymusic we had the cd from the abrsm aural book so we could practice a bit at home during the last couple of weeks. There are quite a few samples so unless you play it every day there is no way they can really memorise them.

onlymusic I played them myself, which sometimes caused great hilarity. If they are doing another exam I will bloody practise the stuff when they are not around....