November Music Thread

Obviously actually earning a living is high on ds’s agenda !!

Ds is only in year 9 but has now announced he plans to do music history maths and physics a levels definitely can’t help with the last 2 but I can see that they sort of go together though if you had asked me 6 months ago I would have thought he would go for music history and politics ( or philosophy- philosopher is his second career choice !! Though it might now be something to do with astronomy instead !!)

BMus, validated by a university - e.g. Leeds College of Music degrees are validated by the University of Hull.

Those are DS's 3 A2s (his school still does 4ASs followed by 3A2s)

cantkeepawayforever - thank you for explaining! That confirmed exactly what I thought but wasn't sure about. One last question - do you get a degree from a conservatoire? Or if not, what qualification is it?

By coincidence, ds2 (my very very musical one) is planning to take History, Politics and Music A levels so sounds very similar! We went to a 6th form open day this morning and visited all three of those departments!

Was the audition (nosebleedboy) for conservatoire? I am interested what the difference is between that and doing music at Uni?

Nosebleed Boy is applying for jazz performance at conservatoires, yes.

For him, the difference is about performance - ie learning to be a performing jazz musician - rather than studying 'music as a subject'. I think if he had been a classical musician, the two are potentially more closely intertwined, but as a jazz musician he wants to 'do jazz' [and possibly in the future teach it] rather than 'learn about music, especially not about all types of music'. He does do music A-level, but that is as far as he wants to take that side of music.

If he does academic university applications - will be post A-levels - he will in fact not apply to study music at all, but instead follow the [equally unlikely to earn him a living] Modern History / Politics.

Sometimes you just need time ( and a change? ) . Ds wasn’t in a great place a few weeks ago , but a new teacher seems to have rekindled his love of playing. Hope she feels better about it all soon

Waffle, would she maybe want to pick up a different instrument like sax that she could explore a different style of music with - and keep learning?

Thanks for the clarinet advice Waffle and sorry for blundering in - on reading up now I realise that things are a bit tough. Didn’t mean to be insensitive

I am sorry Waffle, it must be hard for you knowing what she could do if she wanted. Music will still be there for her later in life, it's not something that is forever denied to you if you give up as a child. She could tootle now and go back to it later, you never know what the future will hold.

Oh waffle that’s tough . As long as she’s happy that’s the main thing and keeps playing at school then she’s done so well she’s keeping the door open .

Oh that sounds tough waffle
Good luck to NBB for the next audition.

Things are a little fraught here, dd1 joined dd2 in her bass lesson so they could work on some Christmas duets (which went well), unfortunatly the (slightly less than tolerant) 12 year old decided that it was completely unreasonable that the (quirky) 10 year old spent so much of her lesson chatting to her teacher about barely tangentially related stuff and still manages to make decent progress..... i think im just going to have to ride this one out. Ds is at least peaceful and harmonious but i dont think we should prsctise his Christmas duet eith dd1 until she's feeling a bit more harmonious too.....

Delurking to ask advice from people what know about clarinets....

One of my DCs would like to play clarinet but is still small and still has all her baby teeth. We are in no rush; they do Kodaly and might start the piano. Anyway, how does one approach the clarinet when you are small? I take it we have to wait until top teeth are through? Do most people start on the E-flat before moving up to the Bflat? And is a B flat clarinet the normal one you see in an orchestra?

In the meantime I am hoping the music centre where she does Kodaly will start a recorder group, as that seems a good way to get started on wind instruments without waiting for teeth. Thanks in advance:)

That sounds hard waffle. Is this still a fallout from last year's NCO audition or has anything else happened? Maybe she just needs to have a break but keep the door open should she want to return?

Fair point on Guildhall which would bump up the numbers especially for jazz. Not sure if anywhere else major is missing.

Druidsong - maybe I am reading it wrong or got the wrong table but in in the acceptances table for 2017 I see 25 for jazz drums, 5 for jazz percussion (maybe the vibes players?), 10 for non-jazz drums and 30 for orchestral percussion/timpani. For applications looks like 95 for jazz drums, 20 for jazz percussion, 55 for drums and 115 for orch perc/timps.

Just wanted to says congrats and very best of luck for Friday for Nosebleed Boy! I'm sure he'll do well.
It turns out DS2 has been playing a grade 7 cello piece these past weeks rather than a grade 6 as intended! It looks like he's going to skip grade 6 and work on G7 instead but I have pointed out there is no skipping G5 theory! I think someone could be spending his Christmas on practise papers...

Thank you for the interesting link knitting - we are a few years away from this but the 1 in 7 stat pointed out by herts should help to keep ds focused.

It's worth noting that The Guildhall School has a bespoke application procedure outside UCAS and so it's numbers don't feature in the stats. Don't know if there are others?

Well done to NBB and good luck for the big one.