September Music Thread

Hi Greenleave, 10 minute tests are your friend for the 11 plus not taking over your life. Scholfield and Sims do good ones for non verbal reasoning. If you start with the Year 5 ones they will build confidence.

Oh wow mini very impressive! 👍

Centre for Advanced Training. One of the music & drama scheme funded centres, but not one of the London colleges. All day music school, JD basically but this one isn't attached to a conservatory. Young musicians is their sole "business"

I don't know either! And a quick Google came up with the musical..

Mini good luck to your one today! I’m not sure what CATs are, going to have educate myself in the ways of the music parent!

Ah for feck’s sake, thought I had the music book and very specific shoulder rest pegged, but the music shop is closed today! Bloody Belfast

Interesting about the free clarinet lessons for a year. In DS’ school it’s straight off c. £100 a term for music lessons which I thought was super expensive and unfair on low income families. I know school budgets are pressured, but you would think kids on FSM would be subsidised, even. To be fair, I don’t know if paying for music lessons in schools is policy across NI or just happens to be in DS’ school though...

Hi fedup! Welcome! I have a 7year old wee musician and we have always found the benefits of stickers and a practice chart wth happy pictures on it disproportionately helpful!

I'm sat in the city centre macdonalds with a cuppa having dropped her off for her first day of CATs. She looked very small and quite nervous but trotted off before long for her first ensemble class. I'll be antsy til she's out grinning I think. Irritatingly, her first clarinet lesson is with a substitute teacher so we will have to go through the whole first lesson shenanigans again next week. But she's there, she's ok (if slightly weighed down with having to tow all her stuff around all day!)

I didn't let me = I didn't let him

Hello, FedUp! Mine goes to a state primary, and children there receive free clarinet lesson for a year, but for the rest (piano, violin, clarinet after a year) are all arranged privately so will be charged by the teachers accordingly.

DS really enjoyed the free clarinet lessons and wanted to continue after the programme finished. But he never practised at home and anyway was a way too busy already, so I didn't let me! Now he is saying he likes to try flute, trombone and guitar. I told him if his interest hasn't been faded when he starts secondary school, then he can pick one (but not all!).

Guys, thanks for the responses - music to my ears!

Out of curiosity, do schools in Eng/Sco/Wal charge for music lessons?

Hi Fedup I think just encouraging him to practice ( a bit) and getting him to tell you what he should be doing with bow hold etc will be fine . Ds ( as my name suggests) plays trumpet I have no clue about brass instruments but getting him to tell me what he should be doing is usually enough of a reminder for him . Dd just likes me to listen to her playing- my input for her is mostly nagging her to practice!!

Hello Fedup this sounds like an exciting time!
With a 7 year old the practice sessions are likely to be pretty short so I would say the most important thing is to get into a routine with it. if the teacher writes things in the practice book just remind him of those when he starts the practice and see how he gets on at the next lesson. If you can talk to the teacher every so often that really helps.
Ha! To the guitar! At his age I don't think it would interfere at all - mine used to pick up a little guitar occasionally at that age and put it down again pretty fast. It's the teenage years that seem to produce obsessive guitar playing!

Hi all! DS(7) was picked for violin at school last week, so we are right at the start of our journey! We are really happy he’s taking music lessons - he’s a creative and artistic kid, and I can see him doing quite well (no pressure though!)

He came home last Tues with a shopping list for a music book, a particular shoulder rest (that is proving difficult to source - but I think I have found in a music shop in nearest city!) and a couple of other sundries, and also some posture/arm exercises to be practiced for 5-10 mins a day. I think the violin is coming home next Tues.

A couple of questions: as non (orchestral) musical people, how do we support him? Do we just let him get on with the practicing? We would have no clue if he was holding his arms/fingers wrong! Is there something we should be doing? Instructions from the violin tutor, but we are relying on DS to interpret them (happy pinky, chicken arms etc).

Also, would DH (informally) teaching DS the guitar interfere with his violin practice? We are thinking of holding off on that until he’s established his violin practice.

Thanks all, sorry for the long post!

Im feeling rather gratefull for the lack of school choice here! Dd1 would have left primary school in the uk but she's in her final year here at her tichy tiny school (30 primary pupils) next year she will transfer to the 6-16 school in the nearest 'large village' to do her lower secondary years. No tests, no exams , no choice, no nothing 😁.

Music wise, we're back in full swing. Dd1 has started piano in addition to violin and is steaming ahead. Her teacher knows her from before and her violin playing and appears to be throwing stuff at her to see when she hits a wall. Anyway she's loving the challenge. Dd2 joined dd1 on the talent development program and is loving that til. Ds also had 2 very happy teachers after the summer break so all is good.

Aw bless her nigglenotes, it's a hard instrument to start isn't it.

Niggle: thanks for asking, we likes her, hopefully she will stay! We will need couple of lessons to get to know each other and plan ahead, for now she asks us to play the 2 pieces we choose for the audition in a week time.

Since last year we didnt do any activity at weekends, not even school home work, absolutely nothing, only family activities, family social life catch up. When we had dinner with our neighbor and we talked about their year 6 by then 11+ plan, my daughter was asking "what was 11+". Now she knows, every children in her class knows, they talk about it. The reason I joined mumsnet because I couldnt talk to anyone in real life about it. Now its time and I still dont know what I need to do, too much or too little are both not good. Anyway I gave her 2 NVR tests today and she scores 30%, she panics, it crushed her confidence/arrogance. I think we need to go back to the practise books to learn the technique before jumping straight to a test. I plan to give her a little of each every weekend. Couples of schools in our list still have VR and NVR, we are worst at these.

Cat, I'm also in beginners corner with younger DD, 7. 7 days in, 15 mins a day on Violin Star One book. When I introduced putting a first finger on D string, after playing only open strings for a few days, she burst into tears and was horrified that she had to do that and bow at the same time!

Hi all,

I have been advised by violin teacher to get some Bond vr books etc, just in case DD goes for a music scholarship somewhere. I don't think we would be able to afford it anyway.

Saturday afternoon theory practice here - chord progressions. Five weeks to go before g5 exam. DD not pleased. So she is noisily eating chewy sweets beside me as she know I find this unbearable. The chewing noise that is - read something a while ago that says it is a proper disorder..

How is your new violin teacher Green?

Good luck with all the auditions and entrance exams. All sounds very complicated. We don't have much choice here, unless they wanted to do boarding or something. Guess that makes decision making easier!

Here in beginners' corner, DS got grade 1 piano music last week. I thought it looked quite hard, but he had the first piece learned (memorised) after one 20 minute lesson and 10 minutes practice. So maybe this term after all.

DD had her first piano lesson too. She said she played through one of the pieces she was doing at home, and tried some other things from a book that was "too hard". Will be interesting to see where that one goes. DD is a grafter, DS is laid back to the point of horizontal, catching up may be a risk.

And my possible teacher has surfaced too, hopefully will get a lesson at half term. Need to stop slacking on the practice now!

How’s everyone doing ? I hear talk of 11plus and send you all good vibes. It must be awful now. It was bad enough 8yrs ago!

Youngest busy auditioning for uni stuff. At wind sinfonia it was suggested she audition of symphony orchestra - which was confidence boosting but eh can’t do it as clashes with Cathedral.

A moment of “ it’s a small world “ as one lecturer knows her 2 school music teachers and another choir master knows grandad 😂 . Not to mention everyone knows Ben who is dh godson and a “ nearly brother “ who did music there.

I still think she should be majoring in music not English.

[dc enjoyed entrance exam as they got hot hot chocolate and cookies]

Last piano lesson before the audition done, dd's piece has been pulled to pieces as there is always room for improvement.

Can't wait for Tuesday to come and go so we can move on.

Copying the message below in case anybody has or knows a young bassoon or oboe player reasonably near to Saffron Walden? Great opportunity tomorrow.

_

Saffron Centre for Young Musicians

Tomorrow SCYM students are side by side with the Britten Sinfonia and Tim Redmond. We're playing a Ten Pieces arrangement of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor. We still have a couple of spaces for oboes and bassoons, so if there are any out there you're more than welcome!

We were blissfully unaware of (secondary) schools when we moved house. We live in an area where DH was born and there wasn't (to his knowledge) a selection method when he went to school, everybody went to their catchment school. Which I doubt seeing that two of the schools have grammar in their names but he went to his catchment school and did well.

Then secondary school time came with my DS and I quickly realised that our catchment school was one of the worse possible (at the time, in the meantime it got better but it still needs some more work).

So 11+ started and DS is a boy who is naturally bright and stress is a word not very common in his vocabulary. I've only seen him stressed during his GCSEs and not without being able to manage it.

Dd on the other hand is a stress ball. She is stressing about everything in her life. Therefore having the sibling rule made me make the decision that if the gets into a better school on music (which doesn't stress her as much) is fine otherwise DS's school is really good so need to aim much higher than that. I suppose if we didn't have the sibling rule I would have had to put more pressure which makes me sad as kids like her but without a good school in their pocket already must go through a horrible stress at the moment.

I found it very sad when on academic exam day there was a little girl crying so badly surrounded by a sea of people before going in.

Let me correct my previous post as I was being a bit ignorant. I happen to have a child who is OK with being nervous (once I asked him if he ever got nervous, and he said 'many times!', then he said he got familiar with 'the feeling', so he could handle it. According to DS, it's easier to get to know it and familiar with it than trying to stop feeling nervous). But there are those who get painfully nervous just to talk to a stranger. For those sensitive souls, 11+ could be a horrendous experience no matter how hard the parents try to play it as low-key. So, making the 11+ experience 'stress-free' is not avoidable..., then it's not your choice at all...