September Music and Musicians Thread

[Wafflenose]

Hello to all musicians and parents of musicians, both old and new, beginners and advanced! Feel free to share whatever you like, and ask away about anything to do with music, exams, concerts, repertoire, practice, etc.

We are all heading back to school and work this coming Monday. My daughters Goo (10) and Rara (8) will be going into Year 6 and Year 4 respectively. Goo plays the recorder, flute and piano (just took up piano in April) and I have slapped a ban on exams for about a year - she has been doing too many. Rara plays the recorder and cello, and will be doing whole class brass lessons during Year 4. She's taking Grade 3 Recorder this term, and is about two-thirds of the way through the Grade 1 Theory book, doing it in her own sweet time and bloody annoying unique way. Goo's main project will be NCO and county auditions... not that she's busting a gut currently!

Mom17, I think it's a very tall order for a 10yr old to do 1hr45 practice in one go. Miniprada does an hour before school / dancing at the weekend on both instruments. Sometimes more on a Sunday. She can do a 2hr piano/ theory lesson combined without an issue as the lesson is varied between pieces/scales/arpeggio and theory. I think smart practice is the answer. I.e parts of the pieces that need practice as tricky and then a couple of scales and arpeggios per day.

DS(16) starts A level music and A level music technology in the next couple of weeks. GCSE music was fine, I have been ribbing him that he "only" got an A for composition, the A in the other units lifted it to an overall A. This year will be the first teaching of the new music A level so I had a good read of the syllabus which is more than he has done.

Hopefully there will be no more music exams until he's left home and I have no involvement in them.

Hello, I'm pretty new, came onboard towards end of last thread.
Dd1 (14) and Dd2 (12) both play suzuki violin. Dd1 early book 5, Dd2 almost finished book 4, just for one piece she skipped.
Both play in strings orchestras.
Dd2 interested in doing ABRSM this year to give her better chance of moving up to a better orchestra. She would like to attempt grade 4.

Sight reading will be her big challenge for her this year.

This came about during the summer hols, so we will see what teacher has to say... But many of her students do exams as well as Suzuki, so I'm expecting she will be supportive.

Do your dcs do a lot of other extracurricular activities as well as music? How do you balance the music practice with everything else?

mom17 DD does an hour or more in one session but she never looks at the time so she doesn't know how long she is practising. We practice tasks, not time, if a task takes 30 min or 10 min is irrelevant. So she knows basically that she needs to do certain things, occasionally she would get distracted and start talking about some random stuff, I let her talk a bit and then I remind her to finish her practice.

As a routine we start with scales/arpeggios, then studies, then pieces, then sight reading. Generally she has a piece more advanced that just needs a few corrections so it doesn't take long, a new one which is hands separate and a new one which is hands together up to a certain point. So not all the pieces will require the same amount of time.

Xantheticus DD does one or maximum of two sports aside music, now she is giving up both ice skating and dancing she'll do trampolining, only one hour a week and weirdly enough that particular evening she won't do any academic work but she'll still do music practice.

Xantheticus, my DD goes ballet, tap and modern twice a week which adds up to about 7 hrs in total pw. ok (not serious) dancers generally don't require extensive (or in our case any) practice in between. She is G 3 at all three diciplines and the levels are up to 6. It's a great way to keep fit and the annual exams add to a sense of achievement. She loves it as much as music. She also does Spanish (via Skype) 2x pw and has just passed her IGCSE. She loves Spanish also! I would add that in the case of all of her passions: music/ dance and Spanish; the teacher is massively important to her enjoyment.

Prada can you please send me details about the Skype Spanish lessons?

Alexandra, all, thanks so much for recommending Stoneleigh, we were told that the pieces were stunningly beautifully played and then offered for a place, I wasnt confident at all as we practised a little the last few days after the holiday and I listenned to your advices to have little vibrato only and played the grade 3 pieces at around grade 4 or higher level(min requirement is grade 4 and on paper we have just had grade 3 done)

Fleur - I'll check with the teacher before supplying as she is on mat leave at the mo. We did have her as a physical teacher initially.

DD2 has too many other activities. 2 hours ballet, 2 hours modern, 6 hours gymnastics. Fitting in practice can be a challenge.

Choices will have to be made next year when she goes to secondary school (we are in Ireland).

No problem Prada, don't worry if you can't, I thought there is a school that offers Skype lessons as their service, I didn't realise it was a teacher you actually know.

Pradaqueen, it is not 1hr 45 mins, I meant to say 1 hour or 45 mins. Actually earlier DS used to play each song/scale etc. 10 times, then I changed it to 10 mins, that is how timing thing popped in. I guess that is a bad idea, I will change it. It all started with Grade 3 songs which are longer and he is just not ready to do it 10 times, will reduce that number. I have asked him to practice more on bars where he is stuck but he doesn't like and always does start to end which is kind of time wastage.

Xantheticus, DS also has Tennis(8 hours/week) and Basketball( 4 hous/week) and drawing (1.5 hours/week), managing which is becoming difficult for me as I see he doesn't do justice with studies but he doesn't let me drop any activity. But yes, next year when he moves to middle school, I will have to drop one at least.

mom17 why 10 times? The way DD is being taught is "you need to achieve X. In order to achieve X repetition is the key", so she'll repeat a certain passage a few times every night, once achieved correctly move on. The next practice session the same thing but it will take shorter to achieve, by the end of the week she can generally incorporate the bars back in the piece with the correct technique. So it may be she repeated 10 times one bar or 20 times or 3 times. The result matters, not the number of repetition.

As to playing the pieces 10 times that must take a lot of time and personally I can't see how that improves them, if you make a mistake in bar 15 the first couple of times you'll keep making the same mistake. DD would play once, if there is a mistake isolate the bar and correct the mistake and maybe play the piece again if she thinks she "fixed it".

We're not experts of course, it is just the way it was "prescribed" and it seems to make practice more efficient.

Ds1 does some art stuff and Japanese outside of music. He is going to do DofE as well so will probably do some tennis lessons.
DS2 does an hour of tennis a week and was going to a code club at primary, so imagine he will carry on with that. He likes to do sailing in the school holidays but that isn't really available to us in term time.
Basically they like to go to music groups and negotiate with me about using the computer the rest of the time!
Icouldbe great news about A* music, good luck to your DS with the A level!

Just saw about repetition - agree with Fleur. My piano teacher is very much against repeating whole piece and wants focus of practice to be on the tricky bits. She said to practise tricky bar until can play it then play three times correctly in a row before stopping! Otherwise the bits you can't do get ingrained as mistakes, DS2 piano teacher is the same but the battle is getting DS2 to see it that way. I think that's going to be a bit of a theme this year!

Start to finish is impossible once they start playing longer pieces anyway. The two pieces DD is working on take around 5 mins each to play through (might be longer for the Schubert). I try to get her to focus on the bits that she makes mistakes in, but it's not always easy!

Piano is a big contrast to guitar as I don't think she's yet found a guitar piece that she can't master in one session!

She doesn't really do any other serious activities though she might do a kick-boxing fitness class this year as her school timetable is a bit more activity-friendly than last year (when she had three 13 hour school days, including travel). There comes a point when you have to choose. DS who is in Y10 has more flexibility because his school is a 90 second walk from home, and his main activity (BMX racing) is no longer very serious. He's going to join the table tennis club this year which has the massive advantage of being 2 mins from our house and having four sessions a week that he can attend. I'd like him to do some music, but the local music school (also 2 mins from the house) isn't very user-friendly. They turned DD away when she wanted to start piano!!! (yet the conservatoire took her, go figure).

Loose, DS is also doing his bronze DofE. He took up badminton for it and now loves the class so much he won't give it up... Charity stuff is all done and the skills section is getting his drums exam done so that'll happen soon. His final expedition is this October (had a training one before the summer).

Apart from that, every other extra activity he does is related to music: ensembles, orchestra, choir, composition, etc. Ah, and dreaming. That's a big one.

What Mistigiri says about longer pieces is right. Practice challenge for us is to convince him to start practice at the bars he still can't play very well, as opposed to starting from the beginning which is always the bit he knows so well... which is of course more pleasurable for him to play.

Hello to old and new for autumn term. DD now in Y8, turns 13 this month, plays violin at G8 level and piano at G7. No violin exams done for over 2 years now, focusing on technique improvement. Piano also has a full 1 to 2 terms after every exam taken off syllabus material to extend repertoire beyond exam material.

Practice now more of a challenge and done in-school mid week and weekends at home, due to a 15 hours a week swimming schedule. Homework done mostly in between school and training, not ideal and takes some gritty scheduling but so far, she seems to juggle well in between the odd meltdown

icould congrats on the A* !

drummers I'd like ds1 to do badminton tbh, I think he'd really enjoy it. Dreaming seems to be a big activity here, too!
Ealing that is a fierce swimming schedule!

She sleeps well though Loose (or at least until the alarm at stupid o'clock)!

I agree re: repetition in practice above. Focus on the areas that need attention or, as a pp said, it's just compounding the same mistakes.

We done to Minigreen re: stoneleigh and to icould's A*!

Ealing. OMG 15 hrs swimming! And I know that's a very early start. Very relieved miniprada has no aptitude for outdoor pursuits or swimming!!

Thank you all for sharing your experience with piano practicing, so it does not look that bad after all. I suddenly realised that dd has never been taught how to practice piano correctly, oh, well, this probably happens when you start with one teacher and end up with another one....
Fleurdelise there is actually one of the methods of studying piano-repeating each bar 10 times, etc - but this is obviously not English method, I have heard it from foreign learners. In fact this is smth I try to incorporate now (may be not 10 times but 5 is min), otherwise I just don't know how to approach it, she constantly makes mistakes even if she played it well the evening before/
*Green", so your dd got the place, is it right? Massive congratulations

About repeating the whole piece-this is what dd used to do, now I also try to avoid it but concentrating on separate bars only.... I learn as she goes along.... :)