New Year Music and Musicians Thread

[Wafflenose]

Morning all, and Happy New Year. I decided it was time for a new music thread too. I really enjoy hearing about what everyone (and their DCs) are up to each term, and it's great to hear from new posters too.

I have two DDs. Goo (10) - the child previously known as MiniWaffle. She's not very mini any more... she's 4'10" and catching up with me. Anyway, she plays the recorder, flute, piccolo and a bit of piano when it occurs to her. She is doing Grade 5 Theory and possibly Grade 5 Flute (if the new teacher deems her ready) this term. Next recorder exam will be Grade 7, but possibly not for about 18 months! Am hoping the new flute teacher will also do a bit of piano with her... we'll see.

And Rara (7) - previously known as BabyWaffle - plays the recorder and cello. I was thinking of putting her in for Grade 1 Theory, but she's not keen, so we'll wait. She is in the blissfully calm position of no exams this term - yay!

We all have the local music festival next month. I think Goo is doing 11 Classes, and Rara about 7 (plus possibly helping with some percussion parts). I have 27 groups, pairs and individuals entered, so am going to be busy for the next month or so.

So you should be :)

Doubt my DD would get a grade 7 pass on any of her instruments (too lazy) but she's still an amazing musician and I am sure yours is too!

Dorothy if my DD is still playing her instrument at 15 and still loves it I'll be very proud.

A pass is a pass, it does make me sad to hear so many kids ( including my DD) are not happy with the mark they get even if they have passed that exam. There must so much peer pressure...

Dorothy not being able to play all the notes at rehearsal is absolutely normal for strings players. That is why it is so good for improving sight reading

The violins only look super confident compared to the violas because there are so many of them.

I am too much of a nervous nelly for any exam so grade 7 sounds pretty awesome to me. If scales are a nervous issue it might help to know there is only 1 scale for grade 8. If you can do a 1st finger scale over 3 octaves in any position you can do them all.

The best thing for confidence is to play everything and anything to anyone who will listen.

Dorothy firstly, huge congratulations to your DD - getting to grade 7 is a fantastic achievement. A friend's daughter is currently learning for grade 7 in two instruments. All the way through she has passed exams rather than getting merit etc. She had to retake a grade 6 because of scales disaster. But no one cares, they just know she's reached those grades. Best of luck with grade 8 - take as much time with it as possible and enjoy playing would be my advice! Definitely agree that playing in concerts as much as possible is a huge confidence booster as well!

"she took a rather long break since the exam."

Slacker . It was the usual day for one, so my DD had her next lesson on the evening of exam day.

First time that conjunction has happened and I was poised to cancel, but DD isn't slow to raise a grievance and didn't protest. Realistically it was a friendly debrief with the one other person sincerely interested in the detail of the tale DD was bursting to tell. Teacher also demonstrated lots of repertoire-expanding stuff for DD to choose from i.e. she gets a break from the grade-ladder for a while now in favour of music that she really likes and wants to learn.

This is our annual parental-bliss phase re. music. First there’s a lot of wandering around doing whatever happily singing to herself. Yesterday she voluntarily (no parental nudging!), wandered over to the piano and spent the entire afternoon preoccupied with several quite beautiful pieces. She’s just started again on another one.

If she really really wants to have a better grade "certificate" then she could always try again next term. The best thing I find with grades exams is there isn't a consequence, you could always practise more, try harder and retake it if you want a nice "certificate collection"

Dorothy if your daughter's peers want to be critical then they will be. If your daughter had got a distinction then someone else would have got a better mark, taken it younger, on a "harder" instrument, with a more difficult exam board. It's all a load of tosh but the point is that if someone feels the need to score points then they will do. My favourite line that I picked up from this thread is that success starts at the pass mark but if your daughter feels that she wants to improve next time then the marking sheet will show her the way to go.

In my son's state school of 1200 pupils there are three pupils in Y11 and below who have G7 (there may be another secretive pianist and the clarinetist may have taken an exam so possibly five) - in a different setting your daughter would be right at the top of the musical tree.

Thanks all. She's feeling a lot more positive and her teacher has been in touch with encouraging words. Onwards and upwards

Glad people are still saying that, Icould it's always been one of my favourite sayings. Along with "progress is directly proportional to practice"!

My DD is now fretting about missing out Grade 7, gah! But if she did it, it would have to be either next term (after I had promised her there would be no exams then, because she is all examed out at the moment) or at the same time as Grade 6 Flute in the autumn. I suppose she could leave it a whole year, because we're certainly in no rush, but she could do Grade 8 in a year. The problem is, it's going round and round in her head and she's not sure what to do for the best. She also has an unfortunate liking for distinctions, having been given two this term (and she hasn't always had them, by any means!) so I don't know either. I suppose she could prepare all of the Grade 7 requirements and I could give her a mock exam in the summer holidays, which should hopefully show her that there's no point playing the pieces for another 4-5 months after that!

Dorothy: glad to hear she is feeling better!

There is always a solution I think, to move on or to retake. If retake and starting on 1-2 new pieces then scales, sight reading and aural are already done, keep the piece with highest score and learn 2 new fresh, why not?

My daughter has been so much into drawing these days, in the past we used to have a tutor to come for 2 months as she was really into it then I thought £50 for 1.5 hour craft/art a week is too expensive. We have stopped for few months now and I made a mistake to give her some new water drawing books and oh boy, now she doesnt stop, she doesnt feel excited with River flow in you anymore even before she begged to learn to play it. I am thinking of rewarding games that she must practise violin and piano at least 30 mins before she could turn into her books and her drawing. Arggg!!! There is always something doesnt make the journey easy!

Waffle: once my daughter could play anything around Goo level now then I would be happy and relaxed! By then hopefull she has undertood that music is beautiful and could be part of her life!

green I am curious - if your daughter is much keener on art than music why not invest the money and effort in that instead? My daughter also likes drawing and (especially) calligraphy but it isn't something she "needs" to do, whereas making music is essential for her. As a child I was the opposite and I ended up training as an artist and dropping music (I've taken up guitar again as an adult but I'm not very good). I have a friend whose daughter is a very gifted artist and has been drawing obsessively since she was at primary school. She's 14 now and it's obvious that she could make a professional career out of it if she wanted. I find it odd that in the UK, (classical) music is so much more highly valued by parents than the other arts.

Mistigri: oh only if I could know what she is really keen on, she is only 8 years old (and couple of months) and changes her mind even more often than myself. I try to encourage and give her support any time she finds that she likes something however its getting harder once she is more into it. Her love for drawing my fade as soon as end of this term break, it might be because of the books I bought her. She isnt particularly good at anything( yet). People says her drawing is nice but I know they have been kind. The same as music, she progresses well however I know deep down she isnt a talented musician. She might turn out musician or an artist later though which really hard for a mother to support. For now, ofcourse she likes to paint, then paint the life she likes, however dont just drop her instruments which she has been working hard for. I should have been more discipline I guess. As I said, there is always a solution, to be able to do it is a hard bit especially come to the sweet little angle, after a long big kiss then very often they could get away with anything they like.

Dorothy - glad your DD is feeling better; we are also in a high achievement school that makes do much fuss of the 'regular' g7 and 8 distcations that it's quite disproportionate ( and we are still in primary school)

Mist I - any music shop trip has to be well planned as DD gets out a full range of brass and wind and strings to try out; a, currently wrestling with her oboe/bassoon dilemma ( to which my answer is -neither!)

Waffle - we missed g6; will def do g7 as its quite different to G5 (aural ESP ) and quite a leap to g8.

Still waiting our result......guess we are last?

I've been lurking on this thread.

DD1 did Grade 1 theory in early March (passed with distinction!) and Grade 1 violin ten days later. According to the ABRSM website we should get the results between March 24th and April 8th but I am going mad waiting! She has lessons via the school music service and they aren't in for weeks!

2ndSopranos I am sure it will be a good outcome but I know what you mean about the wait! You try not to think about it but it niggles away!
I'm really interested in the art/music thing. I think all you can do when they are little is put opportunities in front of them and let them experiment. They know at this stage that they like something but they can tend to live in the moment. DS1 was always good at art in primary, and did as much as he could. Fast forward to secondary school and he's now into music in a big way. He's picked art and music as GCSE options. I know this is coursework madness but as he spends his breaks at school either in the art room or the music practice room, who am I to judge? I suspect at this stage that music is going to win over art at A level but knowing him, he could end up dropping both or trying to take both. That could be an interesting conversation!

green My DD was a bit of a butterfly at your DD's age, she had a very low boredom threshold and she wasn't very persistent. She started her first instrumenr at 5 and dropped at 10, without showing any signs of particular talent. Not all musical children are precocious.

loose I suspect that art is less valued because (a) it's not subject to grade exams and (b) there are no school places or scholarships at stake, probably because musical ability is a good proxy for academic ability whereas this is less true of the other arts.

Mistigri I see what you mean and I think people don't appreciate just how much skill and knowledge, let alone sheer persistence, is needed to be really good at art. DS1 was on a school workshop at the V&A recently and the curator/conservator told them straight that if you do art, that's what you do - i.e. art and nothing else! It will be interesting to see how far DS gets with both, but my suspicion is that the workload for art is going to cause him more headaches than for music since he already spends a lot of time outside school on music!

Hi Loose: I thinking among academic subjects, swimming, sports, music then arts is the hardest for parent to give them support. They were born with it, so much we could buy books, paying for lessons then not much else we can do. I wish him the best, being good at it is hard, of all I think its hardest as so little qualitative measurement available rather than concepts and personal perspective. Some could turn easily from brilliant to rubbish and the other way round. For us, I'd like she paints when she likes as she still have time and still young where she could "play" and treat them as "toys"( she was really into oil painting for 8 months and is now still into it but switch into water painting when I bought her the books before this holiday-my mistake-or not- as I wanted to give her a treat for the hard work she had done for learning grade 3 piano in 2 months). We went to Hamleys on Saturday and she was allowed to choose a toy and she choose a drawing board where you draw anything on the glass and switch the "on" button then it will flash at night. She hasnt left it for 1 second since we got home after that.

Mistigri: that is exactly what I am worried. I dont have any ambition for her in term of extra curri however if she does it then complete it in high quality, then she has it as a skill. I definitely will try to encourage her to learn all grades for both instruments and it doesnt matter how long does it take. At least then she has the basic skills( hoping similar like swimming) where she could always use it once she grows up. Similar to drawing, if she is into it then we could start the lesson again but I'd like she learns to draw well to certain level. Doing things half heartly and dropping things too easy is the thing I fear/dislike much and I am trying hard to let it not happen.

Loose I imagine it would be hard to do both at A level! I did art at both O and A level (showing my age) but it was complicated to timetable the A level with my other options and I mostly on my own. As far as I remember my school didn't even offer music - not that I'd have done it anyway.

News here is that DD has reached the final stages of a local music competition for musicians and groups playing original music. She has to submit a CD with three original recordings by Wednesday, and she needs to have a set of a minimum of 45 minutes of original compositions, no covers or remixes. I've just gone through her song list and she has 19 complete songs of which maybe 14 she still likes enough to want to play ... Might be a challenge to have them all performance-ready by late April though especially with a week away for a music camp. Will see tonight if she's still game ...

Mistigri: thats wonderful, fingers crossed for tonight!

Mistigri what exciting news! I hope she goes for it, the experience will be amazing!
Ds's more pressing concern is the maths revision he's not doing!
Green your DD is inspired - I now want to go to Hamley's and buy the drawing board! Good that she's trying out so many things. And don't mention swimming. I had to drag mine to swimming lessons amid huge moaning and we were all glad to give up once they could swim a length!

I think she'll probably send in her entry but (realist hat on) I'd be surprised if anything came of it - the entrants are mostly adult groups with a fair amount of experience and probably some pro recordings. I'd be astonished if they were to take a risk with a 14 year old singer-guitarist with some GarageBand demos who has played maybe six solo shows in her musical career - but I suppose you never know. The fact that they require a minimum repertoire of 45 minutes of original music must surely narrow the field, but probably not enough for her to have a chance. (The three finalists each play a 45 min set at a fair-sized venue in the town. It's a lot to ask of a 14 year old, especially playing solo - if I were on the jury not sure I'd want that responsibility).

Unfortunately due to time constraints there won't be time to record and submit her newest material, but we have decent recordings of three songs, two of which I think are pretty fine pop/folk songs.

Any thoughts on this please - DD moved to a new teacher towards the end of last term; new teacher has already stripped her technique down to basics and has said he wants DD to re-do ghee grade exam in the summer term with him (pehatever the result of e last exam (we are still awaiting results from March for the same grade!). It will be all new pieces (not yet selected). DD doesn't seem to mind but I sort of do (not least on cost grounds - this is G5) ..........

Misti - what a sense of adventure - good for DD!