January Music Thread

Ds has always been good at maths and apparently he has the potential to be good at languages though he never attempts to speak in French when we are on holiday dd is much less confident in music ( and maths) but great at languages and really loves to have a go they are all just so different I think. But I do agree that learning an instrument is so beneficial to all areas of learning as well as being fun though ds would probably have disagreed with this today as he struggled with his arranging/ composition homework though he got there in the end

We are rubbish in languages as the whole household. Both of my daughters were late talker(even walker). Both are very socialise or more of socially friendly however not great at "responding"/"making speech"/"smart talk". I have been sending our 9 yrs old to a weekend French lesson for a year and for the 2 weeks skiing on the Alps I didnt hear 1 French sentence. Its kinda very frustrated so if you have any good tip in foreign language studying please share. To me learning languages is equally as important as music. I just dont know what else I can do yet. I am hoping for her to be able to speak 1-2 more languages, even only speaking.

wafle

I am very interested in your findings.
I can remember the look on dd face when people used to ask if she was good at Maths, a few times it really upset her.
She struggles so much and when younger felt she had to tell people, and she felt stupid.
I was always surprised how many people had heard of this and even more surprised how many commented.
She is quite good at languages though and has asked if I'll pay for an extra language GCSE, she wants to do Italian, German and French.

I haven't posted since last year! We have two learners (three, including me) on cello, violin, flute, drums and piano. It's a bit of a mad house here ...

Late to this thread this time, a happy new year to all!

I have dd 10 who is doing grade 3 clarinet this term, she has been playing over the holidays but no exam stuff so we started back on that yesterday. all sounding pretty good apart from we have lost the music for one piece!

She is also a beginner on bassoon, it gets less practice as its a bit of a pain to put together, we will push it a bit more once the above grade 3 is out of the way. Possibly grade 1 in the summer term, we shall see. If not it will have to wait a while. Next school year is one where we will be concentrating on school entry.

Dd has started having a ten minute theory lesson every week with her clarinet teacher. She has worked through book one quickly and book 2 is on order. The aim being to get to grade 5 before she needs it for her clarinet grades so plenty of time.

We are still hunting for additional ensemble opportunities, and hopefully a summer course.

Greenleave, Wafflenose and Mistigri, thanks for replying.
Very interesting to hear your experiences and thoughts.
I suppose all children are different but I think the main thing is for children to be happy at school and to have a lovely for music.

cantkeepawayforever DS did GCSEs last year and pulled his finger out in the final stages when he found out that he could take music technology as a fourth A level if he had a straight A average at GCSE. Up until then B's were good enough but then he had an incentive to aim higher.

Well done MiniPetra, and good luck with the next exams!
I think I read somewhere that music ability can correlate with maths or languages or both. i actually think the concentration you need for music helps the brain develop skills in other areas of study anyway. However, there's another pattern suggested by Fleur and Waffle - DS1 was totally uninterested in maths until about Y5 and only found it interesting from Year 9. So, it's hard to tell if it's the curriculum or learning music that makes the difference with maths!

Thanks for the bari information! The site herts (I think) linked to is the first one I have seen where they do supply baris for hire at a non-prohibitive rate. The more local shop where we bought his alto sax has the bari hite option hidden in its fine print as well, I have now discovered, so I think we have a possible way forward.... possible GCSE bribery...

('If you get good grades in your GCSEs we will hire you a bari sax' possibly one of the more obscure bribes-for-results out there!)

Yes similar experience but I am not sure if it is music related or maturity related if that makes sense. DD was on another planet till about Year 3 compared to her peers. She loved reading on and on but maths wasn't her thing. Now the penny dropped and she's in the high ability group at school we also need to work on her confidence as she's had years of thinking she's rubbish at maths.

I think it's to do with maturity, but also that some kids with natural aptitude for maths find very little of interest in the primary maths curriculum.

DD disliked maths and considered herself to be bad at it right through till Y10 (final year of French middle school). Mainly she's just not that good at arithmetic because she has problems with being meticulous when doing boring things. Now in equivalent Y12 (in France this is the year that maths is finally supposed to get a bit harder), she is finding the maths curriculum disappointingly easy. She even wants to continue maths in some form after school.

No idea about link with music, but the two students who are best at maths in DD's year are both musicians and also both very good at foreign languages (I think there is a definite music link when it comes to listening to language sounds).

DD has her first piano lesson of the year on Friday. She's playing the Schubert impromptu at a concert in three weeks - hmmm!!! We have the three pieces for the competition, Debussy arabesque no 1, Chopin nocturne op 72 no 1 and a John Cage piece which sounds very flashy but apparently is technically easy (harder rhythmically and to memorise but these are DD's strong points whereas technique is her weakness).

She also has another invitation to play the support slot at a local concert, no details yet though as the person approached DD directly via her FB music page, and she didn't think to ask any information lol.

Thanks for the advice on baris but wired crossed - I was just replying to somebody else about instrument hire rather than for myself. I have enough problems choosing between marimbas and cars :)

Petra: miniPetra will do well xx

Love your post Fleur.

I had no idea about her ability in reception, to me by then they were too young to judge their ability. We are in a 3 forms state primary, the school is outstanding according to Ofsted. She has been in a top set for maths since from beginning. Its really nothing though as everything is still super relaxed and easy, she is (very) bored and doesnt have to put any effort at school for maths(she is now considered better with her writting comparing to maths and finds it more challenging where her imagination can go wild and expensive/difficult new words/sentences are endless. To be honest, top table or top in the top table of the 3 forms doesnt say much. She still could fail 11+ and it doesnt inspire her in terms of how intuitive and meaningful maths is. I am hoping for secondary where children loves maths and are naturally good at it and are willing to put effort into it will have more opportunity(ukmt or all sorts of challenges/exams)

My DD isn't doing the Feb one I'm pretty sure. I don't actually know which ones she's doing but she isn't doing ones until later in the year; she hasn't had leadership training yet and she won't until spring/summer.

I think there's a few of us with Festivals this term Ours is in March, I don't think DS2 will do quite as many individual classes this year, so will probably be 9 or 10 in total.

Is your DD doing any helping with Inspire? DS2 is doing the first residential in February!

Forgot to add we are probably auditioning for all the junior departments too, which will be VERY stressful. It's going to be a tiring term.......

Hi all: sorry for not being active as we went on a short holiday after xmas. I have one DD (14) who plays violin, piano, and a bit of guitar, and composes. She also sings and is doing grade 8 this term. She has just got back from NYO, and she LOVED it. She said it was amazing and has made so many friends.
Anyone else got music festivals this term? DD has 2, in one class for one and about 9 classes for the other one Its going to be very stressful......

Yes similar experience but I am not sure if it is music related or maturity related if that makes sense. DD was on another planet till about Year 3 compared to her peers. She loved reading on and on but maths wasn't her thing. Now the penny dropped and she's in the high ability group at school we also need to work on her confidence as she's had years of thinking she's rubbish at maths.

Thanks for the reply Fleurdelise

I've been reading up about it and I wanted to ask parents who's children already play music.
We are in Birmingham so will be trying for the Birmingham Grammar School Consortium and the Walsall and Shropshire one.
We are no longer in a good school catchment areas either so it is quite worrying.
Sorry back to the question, my ds end of June born has always been very laid back, dislikes writing and not to fond of reading, and again like your ds learns better visually.
Even in year 3 he was still not using capital letters and full stops properly.
But that considering he always achieved higher than expected levels at the end of the school yr.
Since learning the piano steadily gone up from middle maths sets to top maths table in the top set maths group.

Goodbye DD is the same age as your DS and taking the exam in September also.

Not sure if music/maths correlation in our case but it appeared so. DD is August born and was the youngest in her class when she started school. Her school journey was not the most straight forward one, she was behind her peers in reception and started catching up with the national curriculum somewhere in Year 1. This is mainly in maths, she always loved reading. She caught up and was getting slightly ahead when the curriculum changed in year 3. That threw her so she spent Year 4 on a catching game. She started music at 6 so just as she started Year 2. As she becomes better and better at music her maths skills seem to be improving and we've been told at the last parents meeting (now in Year 5) that she is top 5 in her class in maths, she has the same teacher as last year who knows her well and he asked us what have we done over the summer as she went from middle (average) of the class to top 5.

I think is a mixture of things really that help, one was formalising academic practice at home and spending more time trying to identify and descovering DD is actually really good at maths but her learning is visual. So when explaining fractions for example it helps if you associate the notion with an example in real life.

Music plays a role in all this as it fits right in even if only for the work ethic example she gets out of it, she now knows that if you want to be really good at something you work and the results are proportional with the work put in, her resilience compared to 2 years ago for example is fantastic.

Sorry for the long post.

Herts - we had same issue with bass clarinet; her JD now lends her one - there is no way i will be buying one anytime soon!

Prada - good luck! so glad we are finished; we were due to sit a boarding school one last friday after pre-auditioning, but decided that one is a good 6th form choice (rubbish for london travel for me and we are not interested full time boarding at this point). good luck if the same one as it is an amazing school, and the music programme is excellent!

Thank you Greenleave and AlexandraLeaving.
Good luck to all dc's taking exams and the 11+.
Ds 9 is taking his 11+ this Sept.
Just want to ask a question, have any of you lovely ladies noticed a correlation between learning music and maths?
TIA.

Sorry it was to Can'tKeep