July Music and Musicians Thread

[Wafflenose]

Welcome to wet July (well it's wet here) and a new thread. This is the place where we can talk about all things musical, like music lessons, exams, practice and new instruments. I am a music teacher (woodwind) and have two daughters. Goo is 10 and her first instrument is recorder, although on paper, flute has now caught up. She plays flute in NCO Under 11s, has just received the difficult bits she's meant to work on, so is finally cracking on with sorting out her piccolo. She started piano lessons at Easter and is going fast, currently playing Grade 3 pieces, and working through the Grade 2 sight reading and Dozen a Day books. Rara is 8 and far less keen - we are still currently trying to figure out what she really enjoys so that we can encourage her. But for now, she's learning the recorder and cello, and is between Grade 2 and 3 on both.

Goo did her flute exam on June 23rd, and now won't have any until at least March, or next June if I can push for that. Rara will probably do Grade 3 Recorder at Christmas. I have had a quiet exam term for my pupils - 7 altogether. 4 are already safely through (3 merits and a distinction), we are awaiting results for a Grade 6 Theory, and I have a couple of clarinettists still to go on Monday.

Hi Truffle just started grade 6 theory with DD1, really more to keep DD2 company while she cracks on with grade 5 than anything else. I was wondering which books / resources your DD is using and what you think of them?

She does it at school, I think they work through the AB workbooks and then loads of past papers.
I'll have a look later to see if she is using anything else.

We used the Lina Ng books when DC were small (up to Grade 1). Then they got a bit too slow and we went for the AB music theory in practice (Grade 2,3). They are SO boring. On recommendation we are going to try Ying Ying Ng's music theory for young musicians (Grade 4) - we haven't started yet - going to get through the AB book, but it looks much more promising.

Prada, Only: we are terrible at language(however we wont give up, I am hoping this Xmas skiing trip I will have someone in our family who could say couple of sentences in French)

We eventually sticked with Abrsm practise books, for g5 we must have done 4-5 times few sections(intervals, ornaments). I remember my teacher said there were composing, clefs, key/time signatures which she never got 1 single answer wrong, he said he was very surprised while it took us many times to get intervals and ornaments to be corrected. We started with average scores however the couple of weeks before exam we consistently had over 90%(we were more concerned about violin as she skipped 1 grade). I usually asked her if anytime during the week she could finish 1 past paper book(4 tests then I took a picture and send to our teacher to mark, she marked herself from the answer book too). Many times there were silly mistakes(forgot the whole session). Our nanny said(she did it during the day while I was at work), she sat down for it very quick(it took her less than 1hr to do it in the exam). I think its hard for young children as they have never sat a real external exam in their life, never studied for an exam and has zero exam technique/experience. She although really enjoys learning theory. I asked her not to do the last past paper book as I wanted her to rest the last week completely while she really wanted to do it.

Green it might be worth letting DD play with Duolingo on her own before the ski trip - it's free and actually quite fun to use. It won't make her fluent but a lot of words will stick, especially as she's had lessons before and she'll recognise vocabulary on holiday.
I mentioned rowing to DS2. He isn't bothered at the moment as it's all about the sailing but I'm keeping it mind for the future!
I have deep sympathy for any DC who struggled with word problems in maths as they were usually too much for me!
Busy few days with work meant not much piano practice for me - determined to put that right today before I undo all the good work of the past week!

gillybeanz I loved the Charlie Parker!

DS did the ABRSM theory books. Luckily for us he was prepared in school and we were very much out of the loop. That's why I can never offer any good advice here! I don't think he felt as passionate about the whole thing as awesome minigreen though!

In terms of the languages debate, in his case there's definitely a capacity and also an affection for them. Whether that's something to do with music I don't know, because lately music has been linked with so much soon they're going to say it cures cancer. So I'm taking a bit of a sceptic stance. If music uses the whole brain like they say it does, then it logically follows that a general intellectual potential should help and vice versa. It requires not only logic thinking, but coordination, memory, concentration and emotional intelligence... But anyway, it's true that he's chosen Spanish, French and Latin GCSE, one of those outside the school because of timetabling. He even says if he doesn't do music he may want to do languages. He enjoys them that much. Maths is different, even though ironically he's also top set for it, there's capacity but less love .

On another note (no pun intended) I am very glad we didn't sign him up for more courses this summer which we couldn't afford anyway Being at home, he's been so dedicated, practising 2 to 3 hours a day and composing another 4 hours which means I've had noise in the house almost seven hours a day - I feel like gillybeanz!! He's composed a duet for piano and marimba which he hopes to showcase at school. If he had spent the summer either away with us or on more courses, he would've never had the creative space and time, being at home with nothing else to do. So sometimes it's good to just let them get on with it without scheduling their life. It's a balance, I guess?

Gosh that was long.

I don't know whether there is a general link between maths, languages and music, but my DD is very able at language learning - she is the most bilingual person I know (in terms of her absolute command of both her languages both orally and written) and she also can speak Spanish fairly fluently and read/write it to near native standard. She has an exceptional ear for language sounds - when she did a spanish exchange a year ago, after four years of school spanish, her host family initially thought she was from a spanish-speaking family. She is good but probably not brilliant at maths - I guess we will find out for sure this year (Y12).

misti she certainly sings in a lovely English.

drummersmum English is her first language, but she can sing equally well in French, though she doesn't do it that often. My younger child is pretty obviously "not french" when he speaks french (even though he's completely bilingual) but DD can pass as French, English or even Spanish. She has a very neutral english accent, but a very distinctly regional accent in French though with her ear for accents, she has no trouble imitating a Parisien accent when she doesn't want to sound like a country bumpkin ;) (and she can be convincingly Californian on demand too lol).

mistigiri were your children born in France?

I know some of you find Rara as amusing as I do, so here's a report on today's theory... we were doing tones and semitones. She had no problems writing notes a semitone higher or lower, or adding accidentals to make them that way, so we turned the page and looked at the scales. I explained that all major scales follow the pattern of Tone, Tone, Semitone etc to make them sound the same, and demonstrated on her cello. I wrote down TTSTTTS and told her that's all she needs to remember when constructing the scale. Well apparently that is far too easy, so instead she is going to memorise 'Tiny Tomato, Small Tomato, Tall Tomato, Small'. She's very funny at times, but SO longwinded, has to come at everything from an arty farty angle and can be bloody hard work. I fear that she is going to take longer than Goo's 2.5 years (although Goo only did it during the school holidays) unless we try to do a chapter every weekend as well. Hmm, one very longwinded book each year means she would be 13 by the time she sat Grade 5, unless she pulls her finger out. Rara won't actually need to take the exam for a very long time (if ever) as she is plodding very, very slowly towards Grade 3 on cello and recorder. We are doing it to help with her scales, key signatures and cello note naming, which are all a bit shaky.

Tall tomato Rara

Love it Waffle I am 48 and never quite got round to my scales times tables. I am adopting this but changing the last "s" to squash cos I need space for my artistic temperament . Doing the m.educationquizzes.com quizzes in solidarity with DD2 now - she is 13 and I have never been brave enough to attempt to get her to sit and do theory before. (It is DD1 who is the orderly soul in our house).

Waffle Rara has a truly creative mind - it will be fascinating to see what she ends up doing in life! I like the tiny tomato idea, actually, I may steal it...
DS2 is very resistant to theory, unlike DS1, and I let him off theory lessons last term just because he already had 2 practical exams, SATS and CATS. Slightly nervous about broaching the subject in the autumn. I may wait until DS1 takes the grade 5 exam before turning attention back to DS2!

I would recommend doing it with one child at a time, Loose!

Rara would like to run a cattery, or be an artist at the moment.

We had a lovely concert last week, the band played Tubby the Tuba with DS1 as Tubby and DD as the bullfrog. DH was persuaded to narrate. It was another last one though as it was DS1s last concert with the band. (Hopefully, nervously waiting for Thursday!).

At the moment be is in no bands and has no forthcoming concerts, for the first time in 10 years, which feels very odd.

howabout interesting link with quizzes, thank you!
Wafflenose, if Rara needs a partner to run a cattery, dd will be happy to join - this would be her dream job!

Hope everything goes well on Thu raspberryrippleicecream

We have been ignoring theory recently-I feel no theory exams are coming in November after all-teachers confused me too much with their different ideas-as a result I lost motivation in encouraging dd :)

Hello all! Back from our holiday last week, I hope all the musicians are doing well enjoying their summer. I'll try to catch up on the thread one of these days I just popped around to say hello.

Back to work now.

Welcome back Fleurdelise!

I came across this research, still reading it but came across some interesting ideas already...
www.researchcatalogue.net/view/87580/87581

That's really in-depth, only!

Thanks Alexandra and Only.

Hope your Boy enjoys his camp.

On holiday now so will catch up with everyone's news later, only wanted to say welcome back to Fleur and report that there hasnt been any music since last Friday until Tuesday after the bank holiday week!