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.

Oh, and little DD2 (7) had her first piano lesson yesterday and is super-cute and keen! It will be interesting to see if piano suits her better than it suited DD1.

Bramshott.

Your dd did very well to get a merit, gr4 is a huge jump from 3 in quite a few instruments.
The aural is a big step too.
I think they often mark the unaccompanied song down a bit, the same happened to dd too and her piece was good too.
Have you read the article and tips for the unaccompanied piece on the abrsm website, its quite interesting.
As dd covered most of the gr5 syllabus just for repertoire she is going to skip this grade, obviously working on the musicality at this level and then going onto gr6 hopefully winter next year.
I think its important to remember they are still young as well and the intermediate and higher grades imo need a certain amount of maturity and lung development.

Thanks morethan. Reading now at ABRSM Very interesting. I think we may have underestimated that part a bit. She skipped Grade 3, and for Grade 2, the unaccompanied song felt like just a bit of fun really...

We met DD's new saxophone teacher on Friday. Seems very good. He thinks that as a recorder player (she did 6 years of soprano and alto recorder) the sax should come quite quickly once she learns the blowing technique. She will get 30 mins individual tuition once a week plus ensemble playing 1 hour a week starting after half term.

On the downside they have no suitable instruments to borrow so we've had to buy :-/

Bramshot

Ha Ha we were the same.
DD only passed grade 2 and that was mainly the unaccompanied song and a bit of misinformation from her previous teacher.
She got a distinction for grade 4 but isn't doing any now until gr6.
I think they do need a certain maturity for the higher grades especially as you can't expect them to make allowances for children.
There is no rush I think a merit is absolutely brilliant for your dds age, many haven't even started yet.

Shedding

For dd she was singing in a choir and it seemed to gel quite easily with a natural voice tbh, there is nothing forced because at the early stages it is relatively simple in sound iyswim.
If she likes Hymns there are a couple in the A list I'm sure.
Mine asked for Italian lessons, and this year starts French as well.
Languages aren't needed until gr6+, but she was interested in the arias
No idea why. We listen to all sorts of music, except opera.
Now, I go with the flow.
Her teacher will know her voice and be able to guide her with her choices and the syllabus has so many options.

Not caught up on this thread for ages! Nice to hear how you are all doing.

It's a bit odd chez Theas18 now as after this weekend we will only have dd2 (15) at home. So almost no exams ( maybe grade 7 clarinet sometime, and grade 8 recorder eventually when she feels like it - I shall suggest post GCSE - but there will be the practical element there too).

She's back at cathedral, suddenly this week finding herself doing more solo spots - which is great as she needs to improve her confidence - that's the problem having a sister 6yrs older - she's always so much better that you feel " rubbish".

Also started back at wind band. Sadly their Italy tour has been moved to clash with cathedral tour, which will take precedence as clearly there are zillions of clarinets and she wouldn't be missed.

DS has a choral scholarship audition Sunday and has decided today to learn the vagabond from songs of travel. We don't do over prepared here!

Shedding my young singers came to it via Anglican Church music ( from in utero lol) so classical and folk weren't hard, they also love musical theatre. The aria type work has been more challenging . Tbh they haven't done many singing exams.

Worth reading the syllabus and helping your child choose their folk song as chances are they know more than the teacher realises - many folk tunes now have hymns - waly waly (the water is wide) and kelvin grove are 2 we've done for various things. Picking less well own folk songs is fun too eg the alternative tune to Scarborough fair.

A quick thanks to Julie for the recommendation for the Hey Presto! music theory for cello books. I got the set, they look good and DS2 likes the look of them and is happy to work through them. I particularly like the specific things like bowing directions. (I'm not a cellist and this is useful information for me!)

Meanwhile, onward and almost upward with my piano practice: having just about survived F sharp minor, this week's treat is C sharp minor! I am in total admiration of all the DCs who can just play these, by the way!

One grade 3 student entered for this term (piano) and now working on local festival entries. Not expecting students to do particularly well, just trying to get them on stage!

We'll be doing the own choice string section (violin) as even though I helped choose the set pieces I'm not a fan of set pieces - one of my strengths was always choosing programme. Post-grade-1 student has accidentally been asked to play a grade 2 exam piece (Trinity alternative list) as of yesterday when I picked it without realising. It's from Trory's books so I'd suspected, though. The younger two are doing "Halloween" and "Where's my wellies?" from Red Parrot Green Parrot. Halloween has screeches behind the bridge, and they both play with lots of expression.

Also doing a couple of piano duets (two year 3s and two year 4s) against people up to three years older... again, they'll be on stage and get their certificates anyway... and hopefully some own-choice piano in the older beginners' section.

Oh, and I may do a harp entry (will likely be the only one) and probably one of my prospective diploma pieces in the adult violin bit.

We are officially back to normal today with the first peri lesson of the academic year. DS is in Y10 now so GSCEs loom, how long do we give it before there's an issue with him missing the last five minutes of his maths lesson? His music lesson is mostly in lunchtime but ideally he needs to get to it before it starts. My guess is that it's a month before he gets complaints.

I have no experience of festivals except that DS is entering one with wind band later in the year. Brass players have the alternate opportunity of solo and duet competitions but with those you are placed with prizes.

Oh, our 'festival' is a lot less serious - it's just a local thing and the music section isn't taken too seriously (trust me, the dance part is a lot more crazy). There will be a winner for 'string solo' or whatever, but age is taken into account. The duet class my pianists will be in is under-10, but they're respectively two 7yo and two 8yo. Certificates are bronze, silver, gold, platinum depending on level of performance (platinum hardly ever gets awarded), but everyone gets one.

There's usually set-piece solo, own-choice solo, recital (contrasting pieces) for each group of instruments or piano. Strings/piano are banded by age, wind/brass and oddly cello/bass by how long you've been playing. Thus not fair on my late-starter pianists.

Then there's a whole recorder section, various ensemble categories, school groups, and about half the music festival is vocal. There's also a signing choir category, which is cool, and they've added rock/pop vocals for the first time this year (guitar/drums was new last year I think).

The festivals sound fun! Nothing like that here as far as I know.

First official sax lesson for DD this evening. But she's already had a go on the new sax and it does seem like all those years of recorder will make it a lot easier as she was already sight reading simple tunes last night. She says the fingering is similar.

We have just had DD's NCO audition time through the post. It's in less than 3 weeks, and I still don't know what she's going to play! She has loads of stuff on the go. We are both doing a charity busk tomorrow, so will sit down and sort something out once that's out of the way.

Waffle - I'm assuming that it will be unaccompanied so you can't use the excuse that the accompanist needs to know what she's playing well ahead of time. Can she narrow it down to three pieces and then pick one from those later? (not that there's much "later" left)

I don't know whether I told the tale of our county audition, the form went off in March but we missed the deadline and they said they'd contact us later in the year. An eight month silence followed. I found out when the next round of auditions were but seeing as they were going to be the night before DS grade 8 we talked about it and decided just to let it slide and to remind them that he existed before the next round. Five days before the audition, six days before the exam, he had the letter asking him to attend. The good thing was that he had three pieces to chose from but there needed to be some emergency scale work. (He got in)

Eek, what a scary experience!

Accompanist will be me. I'll just go along with whatever!

Waffle - my DD firmly resisting playing a slower piece in contrast to her (very) fast one....

Lol, Janet - my DD only likes fast music!

We have a few possible pieces... she's learnt loads of pieces from the old (2008-12ish) Flute Grade 4 syllabus and especially likes Comic Song. Her teacher is quite cautious about exam entries, so just started her on the current syllabus a couple of weeks ago, ready for March... and several pieces are mastered already, as well as the scales. She just seems to learn so fast. So she'll probably pick two from those, or one from the current list to go with something from her Andrew Lloyd Webber Showtunes. She uses them for busking and LOVES them!

So we aren't going to be overly prepared, but I think she will play fine. Sight reading is her real strength. She can read anything, and doesn't care what key it's in. 4 flats? OK then. She just gets on with it!

Wow Waffle sight reading seems to be a v imp part of the audition so your dd should do well. My dd has two Frozen songs on the go and is really keen to include one....would be really nice to settle now!

Not sure whether to post here or in a separate thread but anyway ...

If you have an older child with several instruments, how do you rein in over-ambition/ over-enthusiasm in the early stages of a new instrument? We've got some piano repertoire suggestions from the new piano teacher, mostly in the grade 4-6 range which I think will be OK but some harder. Obviously DD wants to learn the hardest piece on the list, I think it is way too hard for her. She sulked when I suggested she choose two easier pieces.

And she had her first sax lesson on Friday and is already getting frustrated that she can't reliably produce the lowest/ highest notes when sight-reading. She's had the saxophone four days ...

Pass, but I can identify with the children..! Pesky harp is just annoyingly hard. Otoh, loads of lovely folk repertoire that's easy enough to play... Until clairseach arrives and I have to learn it again from scratch...