January to March 2019 music thread (Title edited by MNHQ)

I just need to know what I’m letting myself in for

So do you have to stay around all day to take them home ?

Busy - it is not residential, well at least not most of the time. The recent Christmas course was 4-5 days rehearsal over 3 weeks in 3 different locations - central Cambridge, just outside and then Saffron Walden. I think sometimes also in Norwich so yes quite spread out. The joys of wide-open East Anglia.

Disorganised ds knows lots of those in britten sinfonia this year . They all love it , though most are older . It’s 8 workshops a year as they are spread out geographically . I can’t work out if they just rehearse for a day or if they stay over ? Or if we’re expected to collect them. I’ll ask, or get ds to.
Ds isn’t auditioning this year as March is too busy and he just couldn’t get his head round that . He’ll says he’ll audition for year 11
It’s very good though

Thanks Hertsessex,that's really good to hear. My worry is that the first stage auditions are Walt March and I'm not sure he could get his pieces upto audition standard by then?😬.

How many of the workshops has your ds done?

Disorganisedmummy - my DS joined Britten Sinfonia Academy for recent course including rehearsals with Sir Mark Elder last weekend which was a great experience (us lucky parents got to watch him in action rehearsing as well). Hard to know but there seemed to be quite a few 13/14 year olds although average age was probably more like 16/17. Also quite a friendly supportive group so he would be ok.

Taggie Wrt the top County Orchestra there are quite a few kids that are younger teenagers. Ds will be 13 in June. I do get what you're saying though. I've had a couple of emails from other orchestras asking for ds to audition for them including the Britten Sinfonia Academy but although he's at standard and it's an amazing opportunity his teacher and I do feel that he needs to spend this year building confidence and improving technique. I'd love for him to audition but I have to think of him.

Disorganised - being consistent with Bowing and fingering is crucial for the learning process. If DS is constantly chopping and changing, he will be much more likely to develop mental blocks and/or fall apart in performance. So it is really important. However, the exact bowing and fingering is less important than being consistent. If he wants to play his own bowing/fingering, that is probably ok, but he needs to stick to it. I would suggest discussing this with the teacher, with the idea that they will together agree and commit to bowing/fingering he is happy with.

Then he needs to practice very very slowly always with the agreed bowing/fingering for a week or two. Once that learning process is complete, he will feel much more comfortable and consistent.

On less technical matters... very sorry to hear he is still struggling with confidence. He has had a rough year. The top county orchestra might be mainly teenagers, and so maybe he would be better to hold back a year or two, and move up with his friends from his current orchestra? Even if he is of the appropriate standard for the top orchestra. The best thing for now might to be to focus on enjoyment and social opportunities? Sympathies. It is tough.

Dd1s teacher has talked to her about things getting pulled apart at a later stage even for very good players. That made some impression.

Is your ds at all competetive disorganised ? He sounds like he has really solid well thought out goals but does he also want to be 'best' or care about where others are? It sounds like there are some pretty overinvested parents around if they are making comments about other kids playing. I can see that that would add a lot of self doubt.

Busyspinning, Love your username by the way!! We are doing exactly that with ds- telling him how great it sounds when he does do it correctly though I'm not musical enough to know when he does if you get me. It all sounds the same to me 😟. Interestingly though,when I went up to kiss him goodnight the other night and he'd done some awesome practice, I said well done to him and that it sounded great and he replied "no it didn't,it was awful." I tried to find out why he thought that but he didn't want to talk anymore 😢.

On a really positive note though, the director/conductor of the local Youth Orchestra he's in gave him a solo on Friday night. He was so chuffed. It's from Jesus Christ Superstar. It's only a few bars long but looks bloody hard to me. I'm so pleased that they gave it to him as surely they must think he's good enough? Otherwise they would have got the whole section to play it? However,I'm slightly terrified that he won't follow fingerings/bowings and it won't sound good 😬. He's determined to do it without his teacher's guidance 😩🔫. Where do you go from here??

That’s tricky disorganised . I think building up his confidence is the way to go plus if he does what he’s supposed to be doing with the bowing etc point out how great it sounds
My only concern would be if he really wants to do this in the future working on him being less rigid in how he likes to do things ( difficult I know and a long term goal I think)
Ds s old teacher always said - and he often pulled apart technique- that he didn’t want to send him to music college and have someone pull his playing apart - so it does happen ( in fact I happens a lot) even when they get older and somehow your ds needs to get to a point where he’ll feel that that’s ok- this isn’t going to happen overnight though and it sounds like his current teacher will be more likely to get him there than one who will just destroy his confidence

Catkind, when I said in my original post that he'd had a bad year last year, one of the things that happened was that he had a teacher for around 3 months who basically ripped him apart and I'm not sure he's recovered from that. His current teacher who he's had for around 6 months is amazing and is working very hard on building his confidence back up. I'd like to think that the directors of the orchestras that he's in wouldn't give him the lead position if they didn't feel he was good enough? He's also had some snotty comments from a parent who's child plays violin and is about to do G7 but didn't get offered the lead in either of the 2 orchestras ds is in. They left one and has now moved up to the top orchestra (County) in the other. All this has added to his feelings of not being good enough.

If I get involved in practice,he just clams up and refuses to do it. It's so hard. It's almost like he is demand avoidant.i keep trying to say to him that he will not progress unless he sticks to fingerings/bowings. 😩.

Hi disorganised
Dd1 is also a violin player and a similar age to your ds. Wrt to bowings and fingerings i simply point out that her teacher knows what shes doing, and its much harder when you have to relearn things because you were sloppy first time round.

Wow, all that and he's still not feeling confident?! Bowing and fingering - higher standard of orchestra should help with bowing at least as they won't let him get away with not matching. One option would be to give him harder music so wrong fingering will make it impossible to play I guess? (That's DC's piano teacher's solution to kids who ignore her fingerings anyway!) Another would be giving him music that is easy in other respects so all he needs to think about is say bowing patterns. I'm sure teacher will have seen it before though, do you need to input anything at this stage or can you just leave them to get on with it? Sounds like he has a lot of momentum going.

Hi Catkind,ds is currently the lead in the County Orchestra and our local youth orchestra plus he also leads a chamber orchestra and did up until Christmas lead a string quartet but the quartet tutor is now on maternity leave so not sure when they will start back up. He also leads the second violins in the other local symphony orchestra that he's in so he's getting lots of experience. He sings in the school choir and in their A Capella group (he has perfect pitch). My concern is that he doesn't seem to follow the bowing and fingerings that his teacher and he agree on. I'm not sure whether it's because he gets so carried away when he's playing that he forgets or what it is but it does have an impact on his sound (from what I'm told,I'm not v musical). I'm not sure how to get him to be more disciplined without ending up in an argument with him 😬. I absolutely do not want to kill his passion and musicality.

Hi disorganised, he sounds very mature thinking ahead like that - sure I wasn't thinking beyond the next concert at that age!

For confidence - sounds like he's well on track clocking up experience and orchestral playing. Does he get to lead a section in any of his orchestras? If not might be worth staying in the lower county orchestra for an extra year if it meant he could lead. (I'd send him to audition for the senior one anyway then discuss options.) Chamber music is great for confidence too as you just get used to having to hold your own independently, anything going on that front?

Hi everyone and a belated happy new year to you all. My ds is 12 and a half and plays violin. He is around G6 level but is now playing G7 pieces. I'm hoping that this year is going to be better for him. He had a horrendous year last year which has really shot his confidence to bits. I won't go into it all now as some of you know much of what's happened and it's very long!!

After a struggle to find "the" teacher, we've finally found someone who can hopefully get ds to his dream of Conservatoire at 18. He auditioned for JGSMD in October but didn't get in and it really upset him. He's decided to leave it until he's done his G8 and he'll see how he feels then but he doesn't want to leave his teacher. She is amazing and I'm so glad we've found her. Ds has Aspergers which really complicates things. His teacher is working on building his confidence back up and getting his theory back upto scratch as he's fallen behind with it due to all the upheaval last year. He's going to spend this year working on his technique- he needs to be more disciplined with his bowing and finger patterns. He also needs to mature a fair bit emotionally too to help achieve all that.

He has a few courses planned with the County Orchestra he's in and will be auditioning for the top orchestra in the summer which is G7 and above. His aim is to get his G8 by the time he goes into year 10 in September 2020. 🤞🏻🙏🏻.

In the meantime if anyone knows of any ways to help build confidence in a young musician,please let me know.

Sorry it's so long!!

Glad you can go neleus !

Playing horn with split lip! Well done to him for getting through it and securing a merit!

DS's main sports are swimming, tennis and football. All of them are a lot safer than, say, rugby. But you never know what happens especially when you have a child clumsy enough to get hurt even by just walking on a flat surface!

I've managed to make myself free to go to both concerts DS will be in next week. Yay!

Hope he’s ok neleus it is a bit of a worry! my DS split his lip playing rugby the day before his horn exam after I’d told him to be careful! He also said how can he play without tackling people which I suppose is true. He still managed a merit, they are suprisingly resilient..

DS has gone to play football this morning. He came back with a finger injury from football last month. Luckily it was on the first day of the winter holiday so he had plenty time to let it get healed. However, he has two performances coming up this week. I told him to be careful, in which he replied 'but how?'. That's true... When it happens it happens, doesn't it? He also swims twice at weekends. It's much more stress free!

Scales are great for bowing practice as there is no complexity to take your focus away from what you like to work on. Some simple and easy pieces are good too.

@Neleus and @catkind, thank you so much for your words.

Hi josamac, viola high five (I play too)! Hope you can find a level of music commitment that feels comfortable for her. 10 is very young to do such a lot. New orchestras are always hard though, specially if she's sat at the back of the section - much harder than sitting in the middle - and when you're reading new music; so you might want to encourage her to try a whole term before deciding.

Hi Queenmabby, sounds like your DD is really taking to it, what fun!

And hi luckyfab! I have still spent whole lessons working on bowing and posture as a grade 8+ adult, so I can sympathise. Good that her teacher is paying attention to technique. Though I think it can be a bit of a balance between having some fun and working on technical stuff. We have made some steps forward with DD and bowing recently by doing brief exercises but then also finding some music that she enjoys but is very easy so she can just think about her bow. And having a checklist to go through before starting rather than try to correct after the fact. I'm probably teaching granny to suck eggs here though, DD's at a much earlier stage!

I have just realise I need to knuckle down to piano practice if I'm going to accompany DS's exam this term. It would seem an awful waste of 10 years of piano lessons if I can't!

Luckyfab, your DD probably understands in her head but her body can't follow it, just yet? It doesn't mean she is not improving - she seems stuck but lots things may be happening inside? Bowing and posture are hard to master, and breaking old habits is even trickier... I would give her time and support her with patience. Do you play cello? I don't play my DS's instruments but I had a go and that experience taught me how hard stuff kids were doing!