January Music Thread

Wow congrats on u10’s!
Congrats to all receiving exam results too

Have name changed because this really is outing! For those of you who are not up with your Jilly Cooper cultural references, it's Taggie...

Just had a phone call from the NCO. Apparently they made a clerical error and DS2 should have been offered a place in the U10s. They said he was high on their list .

Of course being the paranoid pessimist that I am, my attitude is that if they made one clerical error, they can make another. I won't believe it until I drop him off at the course in August...

Yay to miniDouble! Good luck with her exam today!

Aw lovely news Double!! Congratulations to your DD x

japanese - if the cello and bow are new, it may just be that the bow needs LOTS of rosin and the strings playing in....

133 this time so DD1's comment was that it was a proper distinction, rather than a 'pity' one at 130 last time

Good luck Double! And congrats on the fab exam result

Well done minihorsey and that is a fantastic result Double - really amazing to get that for sight-reading!
Japanese well done on the new cello! I'm pleased to say DS2's scales now sound plausible - at last. Will have to maintain practice, though.
DS1's GCSE music compositions are going well now and he's allowed to miss a couple of lessons today to do something whizzy with the second one!

Well done to horsey's DD on the festival & double's DD on a fab exam result!

We have a cello in the house which is very exciting. I went to the shop at the Barbican yesterday to pick it up, it's a half-size Stentor 2. DD seems quite taken with it although is struggling to get a decent sound out of the strings with the bow. She's used to just hitting a piano key and it all happening . I know next to nothing about strings so am not much help. DP is a bass guitarist so he has been plucking away at the cello for a bit of fun but is also clueless about the bow. It will be a learning curve for us all!

Awesome result double; and best of luck on the exam today!

Finally got DD1's Grade 6 sax result after she sat it at the end of November - Distinction to match her oboe result last spring . She is very pleased. Apparently she got 20/21 for her sight reading!

DD2 has her last day of entrance tests tomorrow. We are all looking forward to it being over.

We need a scales boot camp again. Dd did one over the holidays. Scales were good. Teacher was pleased. Dd clearly got complacent as tonight they were dire.

She is so excited in her own quiet way. She has done recorder for a couple of years so to be honest the oboe has been relatively easy for her to pick up as only the actual note production to work on as the fingering is very similar and she can read music, but am still proud of her. it will be nice for her to meet some other young oboe players as the only others she see are in the amatuer orchestra I play in, who are helpful and encouraging to her but not children.

to minihorsey for being invited to play in a festival just after 4 months of learning!

I second woodwind being tricky to fix - dd's oboe was gurgling today and her teacher calmly unsrewed various bits and sorted it - I wouldn't know where to start as recorder is pretty easy to sort gurgling out. She got asked to play in a music festival which is exciting after 4 months playing! It is miles away so really hope she enjoys the experience and isn't too daunted. Most of the other double reed players will be his pupils though so hopefully it will be friendly. Now changing mandolin strings is tricky, as a former classical guitarist i thought it would be easy to do DH's but it is very fiddly and wire strings really do hurt when they break and ping you!

Just catching up! Regarding scales - as DS2 hasn't done any exams, we have never done exam scales as such. He plays all the keys (scale arpeggio, Dom 7th) going up in fourths, at a rate of about 3 a day. We did one octave for ages (years!), and Are now doing two and three octaves (one octave per bow). The main objective at his level, I think, is to develop a feel and ear for the different keys, which is why we stuck at one octave for so long. Essential for good intonation! It was pretty easy to stack the higher octaves on top once he was completely solid on the one octave finger patterns. Not sure what absrm require though... probably 3 octaves for everything. I'd definitely be up for scale boot camp! By the sound of it my approach to teaching scales is a bit idiosyncratic and not ideal for auditions and exams.

kutik sopranos well done on the string changing! I once put up DS2's bridge in his 1/8th size after he dropped it. My crowning achievement. Now he has quite a nice violin, I think I'll leave it to the professionals. You're right about the sense of achievement. Thank you youtube! I do think though that wind instruments are a whole new level of complex, with all their keys and valves!

Well done all the DC's on getting through auditions and entrance exams! Good luck to mini-Kutik and mini-Python!

Not much going on here music-wise. DS2 is going ahead with our local festival in a couple of weeks. We can just about get him to evensong, I reckon. He loves his two pieces, especially now that he has license to mess around with the rhythm in the Elgar (I said he had to be able to play it straight first!).

A violin teacher friend recommended Pirastro to me over Dominant, they make some really good quality strings in little sizes now. Enjoy!

2nd, well done!! It's scary beforehand, but it's satisfying as if you achieved something great, isn't it? I only did re-string DS's violin a couple of times. But I felt like I'd completed apprenticeship (certificated by youtube...).

I wrapped up tiny gifts and lined them up on the piano. DS picked one after each 11+ exam. He got a mini basketball set for the first exam, which he plays in the bathroom everyday ever since. He got an amiibo figure for the second exam. The last one is a new music book for violin which he can open this Wednesday after a music scholarship audition. They are a reward for his positive attitude to the challenges.

I haven't forgotten about myself neither. I've got a bottle in the fridge, which I am going to open this Wednesday. But DH said opening a bottle would be rather boring as a reward, and told me to go shopping and get something more exciting for myself. Really? Seriously?!

..... I got a new vacuum. Not a handbag nor shoes, but a vacuum!! Not sure if DH thinks it's any more exciting than a bottle....

I bought a 3/4 Stentor 2 for DD when she started lessons in Y7. I was told renting wasn't an option as the school didn't use music service teachers (though I've since found out it probably would have been an option). She stopped in Y9 and it's still in the loft. She did say this week she hadn't given up .......

Anyway, the Stentor was fine for DD. I bought a fabric covered harder case for it as it was travelling in by school bus every week, and the school music cupboard probably wasn't the gentlest environment. And stacked in our car we sometimes had cello, Bari sax, tuba, 2 trombones and a clarinet, so a more secure case was wiser. DD also said it stayed in tune better than being lifted in and out of the soft case.

Japanese I definitely would hire. I nearly bought a 3/4 for DS2 but he was growing so quickly I held off and carried on with a hire one. Good job I did because he needed a full sized cello in Year 7! That was the point where I finally bought one.
The 3/4 size we rented was a Stentor 2 and it was good - with better strings it definitely would have lasted through the grades.
We have a fibreglass case for school - it's good but a soft bag would be easier to carry!

Others might have better knowledge on the recorder front but I run a group at my children's school and we have a variety of tenors from positively ancient Dolmetsch ones ( very heavy) to Aulos and Yamaha, I think all the 10 year olds have managed any of them, but a thumb rest seems to help. The only one we don't have is the keyless Aulos which I believe is the least stretch. We have Aulos ones with one and two keys, both are nice. However, one child did break the single key on one which is quite brittle plastic and probably not repairable. Glad to hear of other recorder enthusiasts, it is a desert here. Quite a few adults play, some fairly seriously but no young people.