May/ June Music and Musicians Thread

[Wafflenose]

Welcome, everyone. I can't believe we need a new thread already, but I'm delighted that they now seem so popular!

I'm Waffle, I'm a music teacher and I have two daughters - Goo (10) who plays the recorder, flute, piccolo (a bit) and started the piano a month ago, and Rara (8) who isn't as musically inclined but plays the cello and recorder. She is plodding (very) slowly towards Grade 3 on both.

We're going on holiday this weekend, so will have to have a good read when I get back. For now, I'll wind the thread up and let it do its stuff.

Green I bet you are so relieved all the exams are over now! Well done to the extremely talented MiniGreen
Fleur sometimes the only answer to teenage boys is
DS1 is so monosyllabic it is unbelievable. When I phone on my way back from work it must sound like I'm talking to myself. After all the grunts the only sentence I usually get is 'Er-Mum, if I do all my music practice can I use the computer?' This week I retaliated with 'Only if your practice is meaningful!'

Hurrah to minigreen! She is a
Enjoy your summer Greenleave!

Loose at least you are not completely unreasonable because you take his phone away at night and don't let him self regulate and ask him to actually go to bed at 11pm on a school night. Because you know "I am the only teenager in the universe who doesn't get to keep his phone at night and stay on it all night! OMG!"

Thanks Fleur: I am now watching you on the clarinet and G5 piano with my . For us, theory turns out great fun, someone ended up really enjoying it and found the past papers were interesting. Someone even composed a little of something everyday.

We had a quick run over at home for 30mins today and did some aural exercise and there was a clapping exercise and when she went to the loo our teacher said: why, why she never made 1 single mistake in the clef and many other parts of theory and still she couldnt clap it correctly. I just said "well, we are only good at certain thing, she is good with maths so probably naturally it helps with theory, feeling the pulse is something completely different, a skill which might need so much more time and practice from her compare with theory.

By the way, here is what she wrote on Sunday. I tried very hard to find it interesting when I was told to sit and listen her playing. Someone has been composing the last month or so and really is into it

Only I am inspired to play my piano scales till they are "almost adequate" now

Music practice in our house is always finished with the phrase "can we switch the computer on now" Loose

Vicariously growing very proud of minigreen, minifleur et al.

I don't think DD is talented by the way, I think she loves her music and works hard which makes her teacher talk about talent while I keep quiet and tell DD later at home that her hard work makes her "talent".

I don't want her to ever believe she doesn't need to work because she's "talented".

I really don't rate talent at all. In my career, I've taught one child I'd say was talented, but he was also very lazy, which means that the harder workers passed him by the time they were 14. I have a couple of amazing pupils right now, but guess what, they practise a lot!!

Well done to Minigreen, and I hope everything went well for MiniQueen today.

Re: perfect pitch - I'm like waffle and am usually accurate within a tone or so. But I really don't think it's that important. It's relative pitch that matters - I have two string players and again, it's the ability to play the next note right that matters. I can hear out-of-tune in any key ...

But also perfect pitch is not fixed - I read an article about an experiment where they gave people with perfect pitch a keyboard that is less than a semitone out, and at the end of a week (or something) their perfect pitch were less than perfect. It does sound a rather cruel experiment though! I certainly have to "tune" my ears...

As for talent, I am with waffle too. I don't see that one needs to think too much about it. I'm with the Suzuki school of thought, that everyone can learn to "speak" music to a good level... Just do it!

Waffle that's exactly it - some children do well while it's easy but then give up when it gets more difficult. the crucial thing is to persevere.
Love MiniGreen telling you to sit still and listen, Green
Fleur DS1's last meltdown was over bedtime in the week. It turns out we are packing him off a bit early (before 11 in the week) but that was because he seemed to be tired all the time. So I am possibly the worst parent in the world!

Having said all that about perfect pitch I once had a piano that was slightly flat and I couldn't play anything on it ... Kept looking down to see that I was pressing the correct keys...

Loose the boy did well with his lessons, got to Grade 7 clarinet and an intermediate level with saxophone and piano. He had an unusually natural and mature grasp of things like style and phrasing. But he simply wouldn't practise. I did what I could in his lessons, but any amount of nagging wasn't going to put all of the scales there. On the morning of his Grade 6, he had a go at learning the lot (we had covered them, but clearly couldn't do them all in every lesson when there were pieces to work on). He came out with 127, three marks below a distinction. I said, "That's great, but imagine how well you could have done if you'd put in some work." He shrugged, and said, "Oh well, Merit's fine!" Indeed it is, but... aargh!

waffle That's amazing. Do you know if he's carried on with his music?

I think talent is overrated, but it's still what separates good from great. The percentage of 10 year olds who, even with dedicated practice, could reach the standard of our local piano wonderboy, is really rather small.

I suspect that musical talent is distributed on a bell curve similarly to intelligence - all our kids are probably somewhere on the right hand side of the curve, but kids like piano wonderboy are so far to the right that they're off the edge of the page.

Even wunderkids have to practice, of course.

waffle how frustrating! You do see bright children coast and it just seems a shame when someone else would work their socks off to get that result!
I think the piano wonder child must definitely be in a whole other category, though. That's a kind of genius rather than a talent.
DS2 has started to complain he's not 'lucky' with exams and I tell him it's not luck, it's practice - funnily enough, scales again!

Some time ago I read an interesting article which said smth like S=T*E
(success, talent, effort). And this is what I believe at :). If there is T=1 but E=0 - no result, and vise versa. But where E=1 and T=1...., the one with T=0 and E=1 will not bit it...

The 12yo winner of this year Menuhin competition...oh, I do believe in talent! There were 5 of them in finals but one could say on a competition stage who was going to win.
The theory goes that exceptionally talented children have both-talent and they are hard working and this something like 0.01% of population if I remember correctly
But yes, agree with Mistigri - they have to practice too

Good news - DD says her exam went fine, not perfect, but well that's all I needed to hear, I'm so happy for her

Greenleave my dd played your dd music and really liked it!

Yay for Minigreen and miniqueen!

Fleur...

Just spent the entire violin lesson chuckling at the 'GCSE in teenagers' thread. Like totally accurate. Like.

Yay! Well done to MinQueen - great relief all round, I'm sure and so glad to hear it went well.

Great news Queen!

OK, not even talking about absolute pitch or not, but dd2 is a bit weird. She can play "castle on a cloud" on the piano and sing the words (in my opinion...) really well with it. However when she sings it without piano, it's truly awful. Completely out of tune. We all have to scream for her to stop immediately.
Fleurdelise, I think ds is about the same age as yours. Sigh, say no more. We can have quite meaningful conversations at times, other times I have kicked him out of the house.

Lazy talented boy skipped off to university and rarely played again!

Of course there is such a thing as talent, but I work for LOTS of families like Felicity and Asterixia's, who totally overrate it in the early stages. They think that if their children are playing simple tunes after a few weeks or taking a music medal after a term or two that their children are Talented. Actually, it's more to do with understanding the material, quality teaching and some practice - until a certain level, at least.

Just reread some posts that I missed and on Ealingmini: I am sure she is ok, hope she feels better today. Usually when we come out of the exam feeling uncertained and knew bits we could do better actually means that we know the material well and the rest are certainly done well. The over confident, neglected ones are the worrying one. Big hugs here!

Fleur: terrible teen age! I cant even imagine I used to think that I should kill myself when my dad told me off over something. Reread my teenage diary and I cant believe it was me writting it. We are all through the time and I think I turn out fine!

Queen: great to hear that it went well for her!