November Music Thread

DS1 has gone to school in very good mood as it's his birthday and he has a new laptop! And a Mr Men Bass guitarist T shirt that I couldn't resist.
He has terrible handwriting and I am surprised he's even allowed a pen at secondary school, although DS2 has rather nice writing.
I'm a case study for your book Drummers - I love stationery! I have to be a bit careful going into Paperchase etc.

I didn't know pen licences existed either greenleave, although to be fair, both the DDs have pretty bad handwriting so if such a thing exists here I fully expect not to see one until DS gets to that stage
no 11+ or music schools here, and no school choice either for that matter, so all my 3 are at the local (tiny) primary school, it certainly means we avoid the stress of exams etc. but at the same time I wonder if we are limiting the kids opportunities. Although they get plenty of opportunity to take center stage, there's not much chance of being a tree or the back end of a cow in the Christmas production when the whole school has less than 30 kids......

Drummers - by DD would be a very good character for you book...obsessions are paper, paper, books, and paper....

Shakey - wonderful and well done!

Prada - whats next for your DD? ours is tomorrow.....and its dd's favourite so the pressure is on...

Disorganised - when is the audition? sometimes we put pieces away for a month or two if there is time (not often the case) and dd comes back with a new spark/perspective

Waffle - you are going to be busy!

Gillybeanz - does you DD do the NYJC? DD did a 'girls' day with them recently and was excellent; we will return at some point

Gosh waffle - I assumed all year 4/5/6 teachers had a side deal with the makers of Lamy or Frixon pens (the bane of my life, I think I am the supplier of refills to the whole class). She'll do well at big school anyway, so who cares?!

Shaky - what a score! Wow!

Green/fleur thanks for the good wishes, sadly on a diet as I have had too much lately!!

Orchestra tonight, music festival next week, some pieces aren't ready in my opinion so we might reduce our 6 violin and 6 piano entries....have a great weekend everyone!

Lively to hear about the music successes. Music wise the kids are all happy. Ds played in a halloween drum concert at the park, which went very well, dd2 is practising like crazy for Christmas 😁 and to a slightly lesser degree for a concert in a weeks time! Dd1 is thrilled that her teacher has said she will let her start learning fight of the bumblebee next weekends (she has been asking for ages) i suspect this is a teacher tactic to force her to SLOW DOWN but i havent told dd1 this 😁

drummers your DS sounds just like mine, he wasn't interested in pen licence or any rewards as such. DD can shout about it at the top of her voice. She became a free reader and got a pen licence in year 3 and she still has moments now in year 5 when she is looking for her pen licence to show it to us. Again!

I'll let the piano teacher know that she has got an admirer drummers. When I want to mention something I found about here I start with: "I have a friend who's DD/DS does music and they do..."

Oh gosh, it's been a long day and lots to catch up on here! But must quickly say congratulations to both Shaky's DDs - fantastic result and fantastic both exams are out the way!
Fleur have totally been there regarding practice!

Shaky: amazing score, many congratulations!

Prada , we need many wines for the coming months dont we, until the 11+ madness is over!

Just google and it says it varies, every school has their own policy and eventually everyone writes by whatever they like. She was the first in the class so it was a massive grin, could never thought of her as a competitive child(or I have been ovetaken all the competitiveness of this household).

Memorising things too fast becomes our problem now(speaking of a photographic memory child). In the past it helps greatly(Eg. maths, theory in 2 months from Zero with much less effort than usual). Now when she grows up she needs to slowdown, absorbs and thinks in deep, for music...to feel it...(thats why we were told we murdered the 2 pieces we studied too fast, it could be a pass but that was it). For maths to understand the intuition, go beyond the concept and exploring different solutions. She could easily get frustrated if she doesnt "get" things as fast as in the past as she relies too much on her memory rather than "learn" thing.
Anyway, then come to our second child who is kinda opposite then I moan about her to my mom too(just today). I think I am just a moaner!

Shaky - amazing score!

Green - ahh yes the ink pen. Exciting times! At our school you can then progress to the heady heights of the fountain pen!

weeks no weels

Oh nice minigreen! I didn't hear about DS' pen license till weels after he had been given it. Forgot to mention I want to write a book about girls and women's relationship with stationary.

Fleur I am so in love with your piano teacher!!!!!!

Waffle Goo is a clever girl saying no to exams. And well done to her memorising her pieces, DD is the same, memorises everything first time she plays it therefore she needs lots of separate sight reading practice, she is behind on that, grade 4 practice book at the beginning.

DD's "fun piece" is basically given to her to manage independently, her teacher has no input except telling her at the beginning when she would consider the piece performance ready. Then DD takes over and plays it to her when ready. This was assigned last week, she keeps them short so she can get satisfaction out of them as the other pieces are long term ones by the time they are perfect. The exam pieces and the other ones except the fun one do get scrutinised every lesson.

Well done to minigreen! I remember when DD got hers, she was ecstatic!

Someone had a big day today and so excited and happy that she is now (finally) allowed to use ink pen...and there was an hour solid and focused practice. Well, I dont even know such thing exist!

Well done to your DD Shakey. Hope you don't have to wait long for the other.

Still a bargain Waffle, compared to exam fees. Our Festival syllabus is just out so DS2 is planning entries.

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Well done to your dd Shaky!

Shaky well done to your DD, that is a fantastic result.

Prada good luck with the next selection part!

Thank you ladies for your support, much better tonight, in fact I put all the books she needed to do in front of her, went at the opposite corner of the room and left her to it. She could see I am trying to detach from her practice but she asked me to please sit next to her for her sight reading practice to tell her if she's playing them correctly. I did and all went well.

Green today it was 7:45 when I thought "we should start music practice" and all I could think was "can I just forget about it? Shall I leave it and have an early night?" But then luckily DD asked what time it is and decided it was music practice time.

She played one of her pieces so beautiful, now I understand what it means when people say "you can play a grade 2 piece at grade 5 level". She has a very easy piece, around grade 2-3 level (Bartok) that is just assigned for her to find it really easy but interpret all the dynamics, put her own interpretation on it, feel it and make it her own. It is her "fun piece". And she did. She plays all the markings beautifully and added her own fingerprint to it. It made me very proud to listen to it.

Hello Gherkins,

I'm not sure about the one your teacher will mean but this is the one that we go to most years, although dd doesn't compete.
I would imagine the format would probably be the same, maybe not international and huge, but gives an idea.

international-eisteddfod.co.uk/

Well worth a vist folks, we love it.

Shakey

Congratulations to your dd, she's done really well.