Problem with DD violin teacher

[MarkyMarky]

DD 7 started violin lessons in sept and I don’t feel she has made much progress. I encourage her to practise most days but the noise is atrocious. I contacted the violin teacher to ask why it’s so bad. The violin teacher basically said in not so many words that we must be patient and the violin takes time as it’s a very difficult instrument and implied that maybe she needs to practise more. This rubbed me up the wrong way as we are already practicing.

however DH is an accomplished cellist and said it must be the teacher as he’s musical and knows how to played stringed instruments. He said DD should be using her left hand fingers by now and making a ‘half decent’ sound.

I contacted the teacher again and said I’d appreciate more detail as what is covered in lessons as I wasn’t satisfied. She has ignored me so I contacted the local music service who basically said it’s down to the teacher to liaise directly with us, I explained that she was ignoring us.

I spoke with the school who said the same thing, the teacher needs to speak to us as there’s no-one else who will be able to help us.

AIBu to now make a complaint as we are not being listened to and we are paying a fortune for lessons?

1. Twinkle twinkle uses all fingers and has a string crossing. It wl be AGES before she can do that.

1. The singing is crucial for pitching. Violin doesn't have frets like a guitar, so you have to use your ears to play in tune. If you can sing it in tune, much easier to play in tune.

1. Mirror is essential. Violin requires an unnatural posture to hold. Bowing must be straight, you can't always see that from an angle, mirror is helpful to align elbow and wrist.

1. No point in learning an instrument and not musicianship. Teacher is totally on it.

1. I think group lessons are nowhere near as good as individual. Students get less attention and progress is slower.

1. I spent more on violins (£500 for half size, £750 for 3/4 size) and it made a difference. Also a decent bow, not the shitty (and heavy!) bow that cones with the stentor I).

1. Those qualifications are very high standard and not handed out like confetti. Some players and not good teachers and vice versa. Some are good at both. Qualifications don't really give you an insight. I think the teacher sounds excellent.

1. We pay £16 per 30 mins for a teacher to come to our home. I would say that's cheap.

9.my dd started at 4. It took her 2 months of plucking before she was allowed to pick up the bow. She is 9 now, between gr 3 and 4. She makes a tolerable sound and plays in tune because....... she sang a lot, clapped a lot, used mirrors, practiced daily, had a nice instrument and wasn't pressured after 2 months to play whole pieces with string crossings and all 4 fingers!

10. I don't think your husband played twinkle on his cello after 2 months, unless he started much later. Even on the piano that would be going some for a child that also had to learn to read music in 2 clefs.

You are the perfect parent to go down the Suzuki route.

Your DD’s teacher has given a very good description of her teaching method which in my opinion sounds very good.

You DH is talking shit btw

Must be difficult to play the violin with hairy hands

when I read threads like this…. My heart hurts a little for the children involved.

I mean it’s supposed to be a violin lesson nota general music lesson

😆yeah! Of COURSE you can play violin without understanding music 🤦‍♀️

#teamteacher

DH doesn’t have a clue.

No no!
We are a Suzuki family and can assure you we aren’t like OP at all! Of course we take it seriously and I’m in lessons and practice with my children BUT we have a real respect for the teacher, a realistic view of what children can achieve, and certainly don’t aspire to creating prodigies. I appreciate that this isn’t what the thread is about but if anyone is reading and is out of Suzuki then please don’t be - get the right teacher and it can be a joy!

Let's say you get a different teacher, then it's same results, then another teacher and it's the same then what ?

Sure, what does fun & the social benefits of group learning have to do with the fact that you've paid good money & want instant results? Keep hothousing & helicoptering OP. It's not important that your child enjoys music & learning for its own sake - you need accomplishments to parade to your peers.

Couldn't have put it better myself. Op, if you're not careful you'll put your DD off learning music at all. (I speak as someone who had a very similar experience of music lessons, albeit I was older than your DD. But a very similar scenario in terms of pressure to improve, and it led to my abandoning lessons altogether.)

She's 7. The lessons should be fun at this age, and it sounds like the teacher is accomplishing this. I get that the lessons are expensive, but that's not a reason to be as desperate for results as you seem to be.

Surely a reverse or more likely a troll? No set of parents can both be this stupid can they?
Off chance it's real....poor kid,I feel very,very sorry for her!.

@Mnbvcxz123 I’m just being a bit sarcastic.

I have a lot of respect for the Suzuki method. As the OP thinks she knows better than the teacher then the Suzuki approach may be good for all of them because of the parental inclusion. They will be there to see the teacher in action.

She's 7
Let her enjoy it
You really are expecting miracles.
You're paying £5 odd a lesson.
At a guess private lessons will be several times that

For me, i.like to learn new subjects due to enjoying and wanting to learn, I need to motivate myself to be good or better, otherwise if I was being forced to perform, it would not necessarily be as good.

It is bizarre that DD is only offered group lessons. If you want her to learn, she needs private lessons and to practice 30 mins per day minimum.

Techniques such as Suzuki run group lessons in addition to private lessons, but not instead of.

Shes won’t learn much in a class and 7 is quite late to start anyway, so you need to get cracking with someone else.

DC1 is a brilliant musician - major scholarship to RCM so not an idle boast. She started cello at 7, had a teacher who just wanted to push them through the grade factory as quickly as possible (Grade 5 in 3 years). DC now struggles to play the cello at all as their bow hold was so crap they developed tendonitis. It also affects their main instrument as they can only practice in 2 hour slots whereas most of the rest of the department do 6 hours straight. But yeah - your DH knows better....

Two months isn't long for anyone to learn a new type of instrument, let alone a young child.

If your DH thinks he's that good he can have a go at teaching her.

What a wind up. A 7 yo with no musical knowledge playing tunes on a violin after like 8 weeks. What are you on?

Grade 8 distinction violinist. Play in a decent (amateur) orchestra.

The teacher’s right (I mean, of course she’s right, right?) For violin - and stringed instruments in general - technique is everything. That means plenty of repetitive, rather tedious beginner stuff at the start, to build muscle memory and start to understand proprioception.

Trust me: I didn’t do enough of it and now I’m a very musical musician, with an excellent ear but unsound and inconsistent technique on the instrument. There’s a firm ceiling above me, in terms of the level of difficulty of pieces I can play.

Listen to the teacher: she’s right. Is your husband a professional cellist?

She's 7. The lessons should be fun at this age, and it sounds like the teacher is accomplishing this. I get that the lessons are expensive, but that's not a reason to be as desperate for results as you seem to be.

It depends what you want out of it. If she just wants to have fun DD can just scrape about a bit; if she actually wants to learn the violin, then she needs to take it seriously and find a teacher who does too.

Exactly, I pay £38 an hour once a week for my DDs violin lessons.

I mean it’s supposed to be a violin lesson nota general music lesson

It does sound like a violin lesson @MarkyMarky . She's teaching some basic theory they need to know like what different musical notes are called, but also stuff with the strings.

You are quite welcome to pay for individual lessons (which are bound to be better for anyone I imagine- unless the child gets bored by it.)

... if it were possible for a small child to get a passable Twinkle Twinkle out of a violin in two months, by now we'd be up to our bottom lip in accomplished adult violinists. Everyone would know a dozen of them. You wouldn't be able to get on the train at Green Park for busking string quartets cluttering up the connecting tunnels....

It depends what you want out of it. If she just wants to have fun DD can just scrape about a bit; if she actually wants to learn the violin, then she needs to take it seriously and find a teacher who does too.

@Mirabai I imagine part of the idea is to try and make them develop a love for it.

@Mirabai seven or eight is a perfect age to start a musical instrument. Talent will always come through whatever age someone is when they start. I sometimes take six year olds but prefer slightly older children as they concentrate better and usually make faster progress than a younger child. Their fine motor skills are far more developed, too. I knew a professional cellist who started at the age of nine and had twenty minute peripatetic lessons at school and passed grade 8 with 141/150 at sixteen.
Surely, though, music should be for everyone and having fun should be the most important thing about early lessons.

You love an instrument you can play, it’s hard to love something when you’re scraping around in frustration. Learning an instrument is a challenge, there is no way to sugar coat it. You can make learning fun but it still takes a great deal of practice and dedication.