Summer term 2019 music

Hope your DH has fun Neleus!

Arrived!!

@Pythonesque thanks for the glimpse into the future!

The cathedral is kind of in a bad way, but there are people around who have previously been in the children's choir, who definitely have the skills to re-start something, at least...

Lots of practicing going on here for Grade VI double bass exam.Fingers crossed. Practical this week. Theory next week.
End of music year after that. Hoping DS1 will do summer school abroad, we'll see.

DS2 preparing for concert then he will be on hols music wise too. Would like to enroll him in a summer school too but not in the budget at the moment.

letsgooutstiiiiiiide your son sounds absolutely fascinating. There might be more outdoor music making you can explore through the summer months - perhaps looking at drums, build boxes or pipes or find logs to tap and listen to?

Your description of your local cathedral sounds sad - have you / your group of acquaintances potentially got the skills to plan for restarting some sort of children's choir? Or can you plan to move in a few years' time to be in range of better opportunities? Mind you if you've got access to a decent Suzuki teacher that's a great start (doi Suzuki trained / teaching myself).

To what extent can you get him access to explore the organ further - I imagine he would be fascinated by the mutation stops.

I am intrigued by your descriptions partly because I have a what may be an older (age 13) version of your son - fell in love with the organ by the age of 4, fascinated by maths and harmony, instinctively understands the harmonic series, and when he's improvising at a keyboard clearly follows the whole harmonic structure of what he's doing. I can make up a tune easily enough but, talking with him over the years to try to understand how he tickes, his brain seems to work on an entirely different level! A large part of this holiday has been taken up working on a deeply contrapuntal composition that has evolved from a two piano draft through string quartet to chamber orchestra scoring.

By the way, when ours were little there's no way we would have considered boarding school appropriate. But the eldest wanted to sing in a "proper" choir from the age of 5 and we ended up letting her board age 10 in order to do so. So don't completely rule out the possibility that that may be in your son's future.

Enjoy the ride!

Thanks letsgoout. It's actually DH, not DS, who wants to have a go. He isn't musical at all - can't even read music. So I guess something simpler may be good, at least as a starter. Perhaps fife? They seem to have only 6 holes (info from google searching!). Thinking of getting Yamaha plastic fife as it seems to have good sound and playability for the price. Once he proves he can handle it, then we may think of a fancier one...?

@Neleus maybe it's a baroque flute? Try finding youtube clips of e.g. Barthold Kuijken or Konrad Hünteler to clarify if this is what mini-Neleus means?

Thank you Se13! Saturdays are normally our family days, but I’ll need to accompany him to JD hence why we are trying to enjoy our remaining Saturdays!

I think it's called folk flute...?

Hello, letsgoout. I don't have any advice to share (sorry) but just want to say how lucky your DS is to have a mother who observes him so closely and is so interested to find a way to encourage his interest/talent.

I have someone who is begging me to get a wooden flute (don't know how it's called...). I did quick research but there were loads (bamboo, Indian, etc) with the wide price range (from a couple of pounds to £££). It's just for fun so we don't need top end quality but at the same time, I don't like to buy something too rubbish as it can discourage the player to have a go.

Any idea/advice, please...?

ooh - water flutes! yes!
I've been so sleep deprived (he's a terrible sleeper) that all these things are only just occurring to me.

And yes brass would be good, and there are still several brass bands round here too.

Cool! I should have thought of the tuning fork set and metronome. He loves having the 415 and 440 ones playing together (my violin is at 415). I am slightly embarrassed to say that it's a very long time since i've played anything complex enough to actually need a metronome so have never owned one!

Because my violin is delicate and has gut strings, I try to make both pizzicato and tuning something we do very carefully, even though his 1/8 is probably robust enough to have him do all sorts of stuff with both fine tuners and pegs. So mostly i ask him to tell me if the string needs to go up or down and then we check the intervals again with the tuning fork, and then against the piano - hence his knowledge of beats.

It will be interesting to see where he ends up musically. I am hoping he ends up liking other children enough that the Saturday music classes/ youth orchestra here will be fun rather than an ordeal, when he's 5 and older. Social aspects of probable ASD aside, he's shaping up to be precisely the kind of geek that (if he could sing, and cope with the schedule) would be a good fit for a choristership in a cathedral, singing Byrd and Tallis, but there's nothing of that sort here (and boarding wouldn't suit him, or us as his doting parents). Actually I can think of his ideal job - the harpsichord tuner who comes out at interval in early music concerts. Or an apprentice at Goetze and Gwynn, enthusing about meantone tuning of C17th northern Italian organs while hammering little bits of metal very precisely.

How interesting @letsgooutstiiiiiiide ! I wonder where music will take your DS. First, the violin will not come to any harm by being tuned, so letting the adjusters (little screws at the end of the strings) up or down and allowing him to tune it is fine. It is a good exercise of fine motor skills actually. I would leave the pegs alone though because they can be quite tricky on little violins and you may not be able to retune it if they slip.

For additional activity, if you are happy with screen time, he would love garage band. But personally, I would be cautious about introducing him to it because DCs with asd can easily become fixated on this type of software, and he is very young (have experience of this!)

How about a tuning fork set? Like the one below? You can also buy an electronic tuner but again, caution advised, because it will drive you nuts!

www.amazon.co.uk/Tuning-Fork-Aluminium-Instruments-Vibration/dp/B07JHBJ3MP/ref=sr_1_45?s=gateway&keywords=Tuning+fork+set&tag=mumsnetforu03-21&qid=1556430831&sr=8-45

I would also consider getting a metronome, as an interest in pitch may go with an interest in rhythm

www.amazon.co.uk/CANTUS-Mechanical-Metronome-Precision-Instruments/dp/B01JLKPNAG/ref=asc_df_B01JLKPNAG/?hvlocphy=1006677&linkCode=df0&hvptwo&psc=1&hvnetw=g&hvadid=310891358575&hvpone&hvlocint&hvpos=1o2&hvdev=t&hvdvcmdl&hvqmt&tag=mumsnetforu03-21&hvtargid=pla-421992989026&hvrand=8117337904829351814

NB We are already taking him to all possible concerts that aren't too formal and aren't in noisy venues, which is one chamber music for kids concert per year, two Suzuki violin concerts a year, very occasional outdoor brass or jazz in our botanic gardens, but mostly it's just taking him to Cathedral rehearsals so he can hear the choir and the organ. Sadly the cathedral no longer has a children's choir (or a DoM or an organist), as it's on its last legs with lack of congregation and funding, so it's just us and a bunch of other old hands grabbing some well-known music off the shelves half an hour before the service.
I think he's doing ok in terms of music exposure - it could be better but could be a lot worse. So I'm more looking for ideas on how to engage with his interests in tuning, pitch, acoustics etc.

Does anyone here have suggestions on what I might provide for a tuning/acoustics-obsessed toddler?

DS is 2.5 and probably on the autistic spectrum, though this is changing very rapidly at the moment, and manifests mostly as very strong interests. The most enduring of the interests (and a theme running through all topics) is sound, specifically stuff like harmonic series, acoustics, tuning systems. He has hyperacusis which is a nightmare a lot of the time in the real world, but a source of joy and wonder when he e.g. points out the 5ths on my violin are beating against the (increasingly out of tune) equal-temperament piano. Or stands in front of someone's empty concrete garage singing different notes to work out which resonates best. Or sings something difficult, in tune (he has been good with pitch for ages but only recently has started to have the vocal control to sing without it being frustrating).

He loves bells, but there's only one peal where we live and the people who infrequently ring those (probably quite rightly) aren't interested in giving tours. Likewise the only piano tuner in town, who kept asking if it was time for DS's nap when DS sat silently agog watching him tune our piano. DS talked about that to anyone who would listen for ages, and still mentions it nearly a year later.

We have a kiddy glockenspiel that DS plays but its tuning isn't great. He plays intervals on the piano and comments on the tuning. We play violin every day but he is 2.5, wilful, opinionated, awful at following directions, and more interested in tuning it than playing Twinkle variations, so definitely not ready for lessons (good Suzuki teacher here for later on though; and DS can sing all of Book 1 now so should take to it quickly if he ever does start lessons).

Can anyone recommend books, DVDs, instruments, anything?? Nice demonstrations of harmonic series or tuning, in particular?

Before DD1 started at JD, we spent Saturdays getting her to and from other music activities so I don't feel as though we've really missed out on anything. On occasions she's missed events such as the school Christmas fair and a cousin's baptism, and we have to be careful to plan carefully if we go away at half-term because JD is often on for one of the weeks, but that's it really. It helps that she's old enough to get herself to and from JD so we don't all miss out.

Hi all. A slight off topic question please. For those who have children that spend their Saturdays at JDs, what activities/outings you wished you could have done on Saturdays before your DC started JD? I’m trying to fill in our Saturdays before ds starts in September! Thank you!

Sorry, just realised I missed out the word Trinity in my post above as being the board with the better waiting room!

Congratulations to minilots and minimitsouko!
Can't add much about exam boards as DS2 does ABRSM for cello and piano. He would probably love to drop the abrsm aural, though, and the faster turnaround time from Trinity sounds very appealing!

Congratulations to Lots DD's grade 8 distinction and Mitsouko DS's success in gaining a place at jd!

DS has done only ABRSM for both violin and piano but his previous piano teacher wasn't happy with ABRSM for a while so was going to switch to Trinity for his last piano exam. However, now we see no point of taking an exam with the new teacher, so suppose we'll never have this Trinity vs ABRSM discussion...

But if he decides to tick a box at some point, it'll probably be ABRSM as he knows all the scales/aural so it's a bit like a fast track way to 'finish off' for him. Less effort/time requirement is what he needs if it's just to tick a box. His piano lesson is only half an hour weekly so it's rather quite precious. He would hate to spend his whole lesson on just going through exam materials!

Many congratulations to your DD Lots and also Mitsouko's DS for the trumpet place.

We have done a variety of ABRSM and Trinity exams here. I prefer because the waiting room is nicer and I get given a cup of coffee! The local centre doesn't have specialist sessions but the school organised sessions used to. Results are very fast (fastest was five minutes!) as the examiner leaves the results with the rep when they leave.

Thank you for all the lovely messages... We’ve just demolished a celebratory chocolate pudding! 🙂

Many congrats to your dd Lots 👏🏻👍🏻👏🏻

Congrats to miniLots!
Trinity v ABRSM - DD2 did ABRSM Grade 4, but switched to Trinity for Grade 7 and will do Grade 8 Trinity. Although she has done Grade 5 Theory, she can be very shy and hates sight singing, so Trinity suits her better. The pieces she’ll be doing are on both lists anyway. Additionally, for her instrument there is a choice between scales and orchestral excerpts, although those are full of scalic passages anyway.