Autumn Term Music and Music Exams Thread

[Wafflenose]

Hello everyone. My children went back to school today, so I decided it was time for an Autumn Term thread. Please jump right in!

I have DD1 (MiniWaffle) aged 8, who loves music but knows her own mind!! She is currently playing Grade 6 and 7 Recorder pieces and trying to get her Treble up to scratch. Her second instrument is Flute and she's been hovering around Grade 4 for a while. I have no idea when her next exams will be, or what grade, but none this term that I'm aware of. She is auditioning for the NCO in October though. DD1 also sings, tinkers with piano and ukulele, and has just started the Grade 3 Theory book. I tend to find this one the biggest jump, and if you can do this one, you can manage Grade 4 and 5 easily. Usually. I hope.

DD2 (BabyWaffle) is 6, enjoys music and is going at a completely average pace. I can say this with some confidence, as I have about 120 pupils of my own. She's been playing the recorder for about 18 months and the cello since March. She wants to do Grade 1 Recorder and Initial Grade Cello this term.

Looking forward to hearing about how everyone else is getting on.

congratulations to those who have results, both parents and teachers.
None for dd this term as too many other things on and not enough exam sittings a year to do them all

She got through to second audition at Chets so is working on new pieces, modes and aural. So many concerts over this week, I think its 8 plus rehearsals.

Looking forward to watching her with the choir on boxing day, not sure how often she appears though. BBC 2 at 3.30 and other one at 9pm.

Sight reading - DS always ends his lesson with a duet or two which is really sight reading in disguise. He doesn't get the thirty second look through either, the second page is always a surprise.

I think we're down to the last eleven performances now, the last couple of weekends have been a blur. I should be able to keep up with the white shirt laundry now as he only needs two more for school. This year I caught him early and made it clear that three performances on the same day did not need three white shirts. There's no wonder that he never has any in his wardrobe.

Congratulations on the Chets audition Morethan, I hope it all goes well.

Woolleybear you can see the syllabus (busses? bussi?) online, it shows you what the various parts of the exam are, how many marks are for each, how long the exam is, what scales they are expected to know, what pieces they can pick from. It will help you understand what they have to do in advance of them having to do it.

Thanks Ishould I do hope she gets in, or not sure what she'll do.

That's a lot of performances for your ds, I thought 8 in the week was more than enough.
What has he been doing? Is it an orchestra?

We are a banding household and "Christmas is a band's harvest". I've been hearing that at least once a year for the last twenty odd years. A typical December weekend is a concert Friday night, three gigs Saturday, two more on Sunday and another concert on Monday. Three of those will be sit down concerts and the others might just be an hour playing carols in the local shopping centre/supermarket. It takes planning to arrange a time where a hot meal can go on the table. The thing that balances it out is that music centre breaks up fairly early in the month and there are no band rehearsals once everything is up to speed.

Back in the early 1990's the summers were really busy too but there are fewer local shows, galas and fairs now than there used to be. The rising cost of insurance was blamed for a few of the galas finishing, events that had a march had to have police or properly trained stewards - it means that Christmas is now a bigger share of the band's income than it used to be.

Ishould.

I remember now, sorry.
Doesn't your dh play as well or am I thinking of somebody else.
I remember seeing a video you loaded now, I think it was you. x

Our music centre usually breaks at beginning of second week of december, but this time last concert is thursday, then her choir concerts start and I spend days shopping at xmas markets in Manchester.

Then we have xmas day together and dh then starts his gigs until New Years eve, who'd marry a musician eh?

Thanks, I'm guessing she does a bit of sight reading without it being planned anyway as she is always picking and trying to play other tunes from her book as well as the ones she is given to practice! It is all a learning curve for me too!

Thanks, Ishouldbeweaving, I will try and look those up, it has a list of scales in the back of current book but no other information.

Yes, that's us. DH plays too and I linked a video of the pair of them at summer school. Our music centre finished term with concerts last weekend and as it clashed with a band job I went to music centre and DH went off with the band so that they were only one player short rather than two. The last job is Christmas Eve and then there will be a couple of weeks off and then it will be back to normal rehearsals.

I was a student in Manchester in the mid 1980's, I don't think I've seen a busking cellist since I left.

BabyWaffle's teacher stuck some Grade 1 Cello pieces in front of her tonight, out of interest, and BabyWaffle sight read them. faints Her teacher says she's ready to begin work on them, I think she needs a change from exam work and BabyWaffle is adamant she doesn't want to wade straight into the next one. So she is going to get the Joggers book and play through that, to add to her Oxford carols book, and we're saving Grade 1 for the summer. I asked her teacher if her progress is perfectly normal (she started at the end of March, aged 5, and I am beginning to suspect she is doing quite well) and her teacher said "No!" Lol. Maybe it is normal on this particular thread though!

dd2's grade one clarinet result in- a merit with, it has to be said, minimal effort, but thankfully minimum stress too. And at least she wants to carry on playing, whereas she got a high merit for grade 1 piano and virtually refused to ever play again!

Well done to all those with exam results.

Waffle, baby Waffle sounds as if she has found the right instrument for her with her cello.

We too are in the middle of the Christmas season. Concerts, shopping centre carols ..... DS2 has had his choir appearance on BBC1. The music service Concert Band hasn't finished yet, a Carol service plus rehearsal and a day at a shopping centre to go.

On Saturday the choristers are singing carols on the pitch before the football match, which is a new one for us. Although not a new venue as DD played there last week for a community carol concert.

Of course, as a chorister, DS2 doesn't finish until Christmas Day.

I've written large cheques for next term's exams (Grade 8 trombone for DS1 and Grade 4 clarinet for DS2).

Well done to all those passing exams!

DD had to do an end of term exam in her theory class for which she got 95% - which suggests that the bar was rather low :p (it's her first term of formal theory, in a class of much more experienced students).

Happy Christmas, everyone! I think we all deserve a sherry and a mince pie (which we call a 'christmas mince pie' here otherwise you get a meat pie!) for helping our children this term. A few weeks off and then we start ramping up for miss 8's grade 5 theory exam.

I'll join in the sherry and mince pie! We got to DS2's cello exam and everyone here came down with flu! He woke up with a streaming cold but soldiered on. His teacher says the pieces went very well - she accompanied him - but he wasn't very communicative about the rest. He did say the examiner was very nice, though, so not too traumatic. If he passes, he won't need to worry about another exam till the summer. He is much more interested in moving up to the training string orchestra next term!
I am in awe of Babywaffle, glad to hear she enjoys her cello so much at that age! Congrats to everyone on their exam results!
I need to start DS1 on theory over Christmas. I have the grade 1 book and plan to get him to work through the first couple of grades and then hand him over to someone else for anything more advanced!

I'll take the sherry and 'spie thank you. We also have G5 theory in the next sitting, I'll be glad to see the back of it. DS has been doing past papers and on a good week he's getting distinction marks but let's not talk about the bad weeks. I'm assuming he'll do better in the exam as he has to spend more than half an hour on them and he can't keep up a running commentary on school/gaming/tv shows while he's doing it. Silly little mistakes are a common feature throughout his homework, theory included.

Ah yes, Grade 5 theory for DS2 here as well. Plus our local festival.

I'll join in the sherry too!

Congratulations to everyone on the thread! We found out Monday that DD2 (8) got a high pass on her grade 2 cello and we are all thrilled. (given that I was worried she would fail only a few weeks before the exam!) Apparently only 3 marks off a merit. She is very happy & newly motivated and even said "I'm going to get a merit next time Mummy", all determined.

Thank you for all your support on this thread - I am new to all this music exam stuff and reading and posting here has been a huge help.

Wishing everyone a merry musical Christmas!

Congratulations to your DD Hearts, and to all the rest of the exam takers and concert givers!

Happy Christmas to you all - see you all next term!

RaspberrylemonPavlova (and other chorister mums) - how does Christmas Day work for a chorister? Do they split them between morning and evening service? Do you get up super early? I can't work out how you'd go about separating tiny people from their presents, I imagine it's not so bad as they get older.

It's the last day of term today, it was the school Christmas concert last night. I provided one third of the boys on stage (one drummer, one instrumentalist, one singer). Not only does it reinforce my son's view that singing is for girls but apparently so is drama and dance too. This might explain how it is that whenever we go shopping groups of giggling girls walk past with a "Hi, DSname". I had wondered about that because he never has a clue who they are.

I can't remember how old your DS is Ishouldbe and this could divide opinion, but has he heard of the Out of the Blue cappella Oxford boys? Now there could be a reason why so many girls know his name, and it's not for the negative reasons he thinks?!

Ishouldbe, the only sung service at our Cathedral is the Christmas Day Eucharist. Morning Prayer, the early Eucharist and Evening Prayer are all said.

DS will be there at 9.00 for practice, service at 10.30, finish about 12.00.

On Christmas Eve he will sing the Festival of Carols in the evening, come home for a couple of hours and gone back at 11.00 pm for practice, then midnight Eucharist. The younger ones don't do Midnight, just Y6 and older.

I'm sure other Cathedrals are different. Obviously Cathedrals with residential choristers will be.

Mr-grade-3's certificate etc. arrived in the post. As I suspected... he scraped through every section except the sightreading, with slightly better marks on the aural. I'm sure he didn't play as well as he had in the lesson before, either. Was pretty borderline and learnt the scales like a week before the exam (examiner gave him pass mark for those coz he clearly knew what notes he should be playing for each, just struggled to play them - no surprise). So, track record somewhat spoilt but I'm pleased that I am getting a good sense of the standards required, since I'm newish to putting people in for exams.

Now Christmas, which is surprisingly low-stress for me at the moment, compared to when I was in school or uni!

Hi all. Does anyone know what percentage of candidates achieve a distinction or merit?

DS has just found out he got 128 at grade 2 piano, and is gutted! He got distinction at grade 1 and I think was expecting it again. Did try and prepare him, and am saying all the right things but he is very upset...

(I am delighted and proud, but this is typical - high expectation )

thanks.

us.abrsm.org/en/press/exam-statistics/graded-music-exams-by-result-practical/

Stats. Notice the differences between grade 1 and grade 2.

That's great, thank you.

I just want to show him that a merit is a fine result.