Spring/ Summer Music and Musicians Thread

[Wafflenose]

My children go back to school tomorrow, and it's my birthday this week, so it must be properly spring in the UK now, and time for a new thread! Please jump right in by telling us about your DCs' learning (or your own), or by asking any music/ music exam related questions you like. We have lots of experienced music parents and teachers on here, as well as lots of new ones.

I am a music teacher, and mum to Goo (10) and Rara (7). Goo started the recorder and flute when she was tiny (age 3 and 6 respectively), has recently added piccolo, but not very well yet, and is starting piano lessons in a couple of weeks. She has no exams this term, but will probably do Grade 6 Flute in the Autumn and Grade 8 Recorder next Spring. She plays in her school orchestra and recorder groups, South West Music School and NCO, and has her first concert with County Wind Band tonight, after a trial course. She hasn't auditioned to become a member yet, and might not for a few years yet, due to age and time factors.

Rara isn't so musically inclined - she prefers to read and draw, and is also very physically active. However, she is due to take her Grade 2 Cello exam this term, and Grade 3 Recorder in the Autumn - she's currently getting to grips with the treble and loving it!

Dd's homework is also more like "home learning" which is mainly ignored (unless I remind her). The only reason I make sure that music practice is done is that I pay for it and it is not cheap! The other reason is that being a pretty bright child she is not used to work hard, but music is a different matter - one needs to put an effort to be good at it - (I hope) it teaches her a work ethic.

We now established some routine with scales-playing all exam scales and arpeggios at the beginning of each violin practice (it used to take about 30 mins, now it is down to 10-15) - this is what her teacher recommends. I am thinking of doing something similar for piano but it seems more difficult to implement.

Fleurdelise I was pleased to read about your dd's lesson today, it makes you feel that all these efforts are not in vain, doesn't it?

I know what you mean onlymusic sometimes when she goes off on a tangent in her lesson and talks about puppies and kittens I feel like shouting "I am paying a lot of money for you to talk about kittens so stick to the script". But I do appreciate it builds their relationship and it doesn't happen that often.

drummers yes please if you don't mind pm-Ing the link. Thank you!

Fleur: very lovely to hear, we hope to get back to the piano soon, in few weeks time, the new beast hasnt got as much ride.
Onlymusic: we will learn that way too: scales first then pieces
We had some chords practised tonight for theory and a bit on the pastime with good company. Its such a lovely piece.
I found a website called bachtrack online, its where you can find all concerts music event in London. Apparently there is always smth happening in London and many of it entrances are free!!!

Routenationale "I can only imagine how well she would do if she actually put the work in."

Although I agree with Misti about benefits of stealth-practice, I frequently wonder about that.

But then I convince myself that DD wouldn't progress any faster if she did more i.e. that she efficiently squishes quite a lot into relatively little time, whereas if she spent more time then it wouldn't be so focused and she likely wouldn't achieve much more. Which isn't entirely convincing, but there's probably a measure of truth in there somewhere and this is only supposed to be good for her soul i.e. there is no need for faster.

Yes,regarding the cost, so far including the piano, music is the most expensive coat since she was born, school is free, swimming, some other clubs like chess, all the outdoor activities and few bikes, nothing could beat the cost of £75 each week and the new piano. Just a year ago, I would never imagine I would pay this much...

I am glad I joined this thread Fleurdelise, dd talks about kittens with both of her teachers too, so good to know that she is not unique , I am surprised that male teacher is as good at discussing kittens as his female counterpart

Thanks for bachtrack online Greenleave, I was looking for something like that for a long time! We have the same costs for our music lessons

Those of you talking about scale pots, do you know about the ScaleBox app? It's only got grades 1-5, and about 10 instruments, but it has all the requirements for the ABRSM exams and will pick and choose randomly from the various tests. (It doesn't mark you - you have to decide yourself whether you think you played it well or badly and give yourself a traffic light score as to whether you know it or not - that way in can choose the ones that you need to practice more often).

Sadly it doesn't work yet for my instrument that I'm trying to learn, so I'm still having to make my own scale pot, but hopefully they'll increase the lists at some point, and I know lots of teachers of those instruments do recommend it.

(I also wouldn't necessarily rely on it to tell you the requirements, as I don't know how often it's updated, so check the syllabus yourself just to be sure!).

But then I convince myself that DD wouldn't progress any faster if she did more i.e. that she efficiently squishes quite a lot into relatively little time, whereas if she spent more time then it wouldn't be so focused

I think it depends on the instrument and the objective. DD has very specific expectations of herself as a guitar player - you won't ever find her playing a "guitar-hero" solo, that's not what guitar is for her. It's primarily an accompanying instrument and she is already a very accomplished rhythm guitarist. On guitar, accuracy and reliability are the most important things and "stealth practice" aka "giving yourself a little concert" is quite good for those

Piano is a different matter though, because the style of music she wants to play is objectively difficult at her stage of learning (she has been playing for 2 years) and she has to work quite hard at it.

She has dropped sax lessons for the time being but I think she'd have got away with minimal practice for another year at least. It just doesn't seem to be as hard to learn as piano.

It's interesting to hear you all talk about scales and arpeggios. I did them as a child obviously. There is much less focus on them here - DD doesn't do scales or arpeggios at all, though she would know what notes to play if she needed to.

I think the scales and arpeggios give you the chance to practice the patterns in the music. Obviously every country teaches differently and the "end" result seems to be the same but only yesterday a friend of mine from a different European country sent me a video of her little one playing piano, she had a chromatic scale coming down at one point and she was struggling. For DD I think the scales helped her immensely, she can play passages where scales patterns involved at a fast (for her age) speed without thinking about it.

(just happy that dc music lessons are much cheaper than greenleaves, looking at 6 music lessons a week from Sept onwards....). My biggest expense is probably the petrol driving around 3 dc with each on average 1 activity a day...

Our lessons are not that expensive either in comparison. £30 a week currently for music, probably £45 as of September. Of course if I look at how much the piano and the clarinet cost on top of that, plus the huge amount of music we buy it is an amount quite high. But we once considered a private school for DD and decided that rather than send her there we can make better use of the tax money by supplementing their education with extra curricular activities. And what we're spending now is nowhere near the private school taxes.

Just to clarify - our costs cover 3 lessons - one hour and two 30 mins lessons for two children.
But yes, I forgot about petrol....

I refuse to add up what I spend on music lessons! I go pale at the beginning of each term!
Will give the scales app a go. DS2's cello scales practice could have gone a lot better yesterday but it was the end of SATS week and he was full of cold.
I am a Bad Mother, I am going away for a long weekend with friends next weekend and missing the DCs' exams on Friday. DH is ferrying them in the car and is less nervous about the exams than I am so I am hoping this is a positive thing and there will be no recriminations!

I view scales and arpeggios as fingering exercise...

Must say I complete forgot the nanny cost which cost more than our mortgage so I am counting till the day she is in year 6 and the little one needs after school care only after starting primary. Well, I mustn't dream of that day yet, still years to go.

IMO Chopin waltzes are only ok if you memorize the music as personally I always misjudge where the the left hand jumps are and make a horrid dischordant bump :)
This is a lot of fun.

I have a question please about music centres, the council ones. We do an Oxfordshire CC one. It is good and as I have said DD loves it but there doesn't seem to be much communication from them. DD doesn't take anything home to practise, I assume that is normal, but I guess I was hoping from some feedback that perhaps I shouldn't be expecting? She is going free this year anyway and is in the beginners bit (so leaves half way through) so may be there will be more forthcoming later. Has anyone else had a similar experience?

Thanks Crotchet, will search for scale box tonight!
Loose: it will be fine, enjoy your time "off", I am thinking of doing similar thing soon( long weekends with friends only to...recharge)

Greenleave I'm not remotely cross, and agree school work comes first. But Goo didn't leave the piece of work unfinished because of her music commitments - she just didn't want to do it. She finds school work easy, but still puts in massive effort. She gets 2-3 pieces of homework each week which are meant to take 25 minutes each, and she will spend several hours on each one, making it look beautiful. But this was a spelling sheet (additional to the two pieces which she did beautifully) - she could already spell all the words when they came home, but the children have to write them out (16 words this week) 10 times to 'prove' they've learnt them. School makes them use Look-Cover-Write-Check (which has apparently been proven to not help them learn them - Rara certainly has to do far more than that, e.g. find the part of the word she's struggling with and learn that, say it in funny ways, use mnemonics etc) and Goo just didn't see the point. Normally I make her do it, because it's not the last time she's going to get pointless homework, but this week I didn't realise it wasn't done until it got to 8.40 on Friday morning - 10 minutes before it was due to be handed it in, and time to leave the house. She got full marks in the test, and has yet to tell me if there were any consequences for not having filled in the sheet.

Mentor has just been and gone. Goo was painfully monosyllabic with him, but got a mini flute lesson, and showed him how piano is going. I will try and show you too!

She's doing great on piano waffle. You can see that she plays other instruments because of how rhythmically secure she is.

Funny story: I was trying to view waffle's videos and my internet was really slow. Just worked out that it's because DD is currently skyping her two musician friends in Lyon and they are doing an on-line jam session

Re music costs, we pay about £250 a year for piano and theory, and similar for guitar (x2 because I do lessons too). Her residentials cost about £1200 a year (three weeks), but I view this as coming partly out of the childcare budget, because the two summer weeks always coincide with me travelling for work. It's not cheap! We don't have any instrument costs this year (except strings and a new set of decent bridge pins) but I am going to fork out for a loop pedal, because DD is going to use her grant application mainly to fund studio time.

Lucysnowe Ds has been going to the local LEA music centre for the last eight years. There is never anything brought home to practise. He turns up, plays and comes home. They get the benefit of playing in an ensemble - there's no homework.

Is it you that has the brass player? I would suggest you find your local brass band and see if they have a training band. Some bands will take new players who can get a note, others wait until they have a bit more experience. The benefits are usually the loan of whatever instrument they have in the cupboard, it's another ensemble to join and once they reach performance standard you get quite a few picnics in parks.

Wafflenose, she is so good! And her hands - ah, I wish mine would place her hands on keys like that

Its lovely to see, she is so into it Waffle!!! My daughter is similar to Goo, she spends time on her homework(to earn stickers and points), she values them. Luckily, there isnt much homework in year 3 and most of the time it involves creating, drawing...arts related so it isnt too bad for us.
Mistigri £1200 for 3 weeks residential is a very good value one