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!

only I think that sounds like a good plan. She's still so young. My kids have had to practice things in rotation, depending what's coming up, and it sounds like your DD hasn't got enough time to do it super seriously right now. So keeping it fun and fresh at this age might be good thing.

Rara is so desperate to learn something new that she got up early to show me she can get practice done before school. She also asked me to write her a timetable and promised to stick to it. We'll see how it's going in a few days! I think she has almost made up her mind.

Waffle can you send Rara over to organise my boys! They would let me do a timetable and quite cheerfully ignore it!
Only I think jazz piano would also require a lot of practice but I think if you suggest using a jazz book like Martha Miers' series your DD could just focus on tunes for a while and take a break from, say, sight reading for a bit to cut down the amount of practice. Your DD is amazing to be on grade 5 violin at her age so definitely agree she can ease up a bit on the second instrument!
Ds2 tends to do piano every day but not his cello - that Needs to be ramped up - but he has an ensemble group as well so that helps a bit. And we really have to work on getting him to focus more when he practises.
Ds1 usually manages bass every day plus either xylophone or drums so he does two lots of practice a day and more xylophone than drums at the moment.
We had to have a serious talk about computer time last night. He had a strop because his brother was on the computer, not realising ds2 had only been there for about 10 minutes! I think he calmed down after a bit but I also gathered one of his friends had wound him up and we got the receiving end of it. I was actually accused of being 'tetchy'! That's quite strong for ds1!

Thanks for your opinions ladies

LooseAtTheSeams, not yet (grade 5) - not going to happen till next year and when she is 9. But I made it sound cool, didn't I

Special thanks to Wafflenose - not sure why but your words made me feel very...

Just to clarify - I don't feel she can get away on grade 4 level piano with 20 mins commitment-I just don't see it works, not in her case anyway. Body and self control is the biggest issue and obviously neither is up to the task at this stage. I would describe her level as confident 2.5 grade even though she managed to get a distinction for grade 3, just (perhaps examiner was in a good mood )
I have a feeling we are going in circles with piano.
The reason I am thinking about jazz piano is that it is still a piano :) but my understanding is that it works more towards general musicianship with the emphasis on improvisation and rhythm sort of things, rather than repetition and technique. Jazz piano was on agenda anyway but I was thinking about few years perspective.....
Piano and violin teachers are different. And dd is a bit of nerd so she is not into Disney or pop music at all....(I remember someone was writing about high % of strange children in music recently? )
My other concern is that piano teacher is very sweet and it would be difficult to leave her esp after all the efforts she put in, but...
Just don't know what to do!

"only"
DS (14) in Y10 is struggling to fit in four instruments (I am counting jazz piano and classical as separate). Of these, jazz piano is the only he's not sitting exams for, the others he's preparing G8 (hapsburg believe me when I say that piano g8 is no prepared in two solid months - or maybe it's only my DS ). Practice on each needs to be aprox 1 hour if he is to do everything he needs: pieces, scales, sight-reading, ensemble parts, competition pieces, sight-reading, etc (plus for example yesterday Sunday orchestral percussion required 1 hour on marimba and 30 min on snare - so one of his instruments is actually two!!
So, based on my crazy experience I can say:

• Jazz piano is not easier than classical, and requires as much practice. If you press me, DS ends up doing more jazz because the improvisation never ends once they start and improv is a crucial part of jazz and popular piano. Your DD would be introduced to a new way of thinking, the chords, the rythm, I don't see how that would be a time saver.
• Primary is the one time when they can actually pursue two instruments quite well. There was so much time for everything back then. Is she doing many extras apart from music? I understand she's so advanced with her violin, but can't you fit 20min piano in her afternoon/weekends?
• Piano is very important later on if she wants to do GCSE music, it really helps with composing and also with music theory.

So, what I would personally do is just no exams on piano but keep up clasical piano with the occasional easy jazz/popular piece whenever she feels like it. Fun, but steady. You may find that she progresses equally well and the pressure is off, so what if she misses a practice, who cares. My DH plays well, he was DS' teacher till g5 and he never sat a piano exam in his life because his teacher didn't believe in them. He's also amazing at sight-reading which shows no exams doesn't mean forgetting the essentials.

ealing I was very impressed your DD only needed 20min a week ha ha.

only not "only"!!!!!!

Sorry only our posts crossed.

Your perception that you're going in circles may be because she's so young. Progress is not a smooth uphill line. Her hands will grow. Everything will get better.

drummersmum

Only she's still very cool in my eyes!

drummersmum sounds like you are the one I need
How difficult are grades 1&2 in jazz piano? In terms of practicing I mean? I am more interested in the initial stage, as when it all gets complicated she may be almost done with her violin, and if not it does not sound to bad anyway as there are only 5 grades in jazz piano... still less to do then in classical one :)
I totally agree with what you say about primary, but as I said, I don't feel she is making any progress or even stays where she is with that tiny amount of practice.... Besides there is ds2 too - who also needs practicing and doing school work. None of them will be doing anything on their own :(.

LooseAtTheSeams thank you, it makes me feel good as a mother

"it does not sound too bad " that is

I also think when she older it may become easier for her?.... Body coordination. etc....

LooseAtTheSeams forgot to say-she started very early on violin too (I try to be honest :))

only I couldn't help re jazz grades as he's not sitting exams nor following any grade system. Teacher proposes pieces, DS is incredibly fast at starting to make them sound good, I guess the years of piano training help, sometimes DS would want to learn something he's heard and asks teacher, etc. It's totally flowing and they get to work on lots of cool standards that are not in the grade books and at a greater speed somehow. He gets many chances to perform as he regulary plays in a jazz trio o both piano and drums, so it's not fair to judge progress only on home practice. But it's working really well without grades.
I totally understand the DS2 thing having to fit in practice too. DS didn't do any school work age 8
Why do grades? Why liberate yourself from one and then get caught in the other? I really suspect your solution is to forget exams and grades at least for a while whether she continues with classical, combines or only does jazz. Sorry, my humble opinion...
How does your DD feel about all this? Is she attracted to jazz? Does she like listening to it?

drummersmum, silly me, sorry! you wrote your ds was not sitting exams.... thank you!

drummersmum, there are no humble opinions, all opinions are important and valuable to me even though it may appear I disagree :)- it still helps me to make my mind and look at the situation from different sides.
I have impression she likes jazz, she def liked the jazzy pieces from her exams, listening wise-this is smth I usually choose, and I am not big of jazz to be honest, I prefer baroque period
Exams... I am not sure why I am talking about exams... probably because all teachers I came across very keen on doing exams... May be it is smth in the air in our area

DS1 is in Y8 and trying to do three instruments. I'm not having much luck trying to get him to drop the one he does in school... But something's got to give at some point... We are not doing any exams in the near future. At least that's the plan until the child goes and signs himself up for Grade 2 flute exam in school.

I did the exams myself when I was growing up, but I'm not keen for DC to do the same. It will be entirely voluntary on their part. Our teachers are not pushing for exams either.

DS2 in Y9 juggles 3 plus singing in a Cathedral Choir, which has also involved RSCM exams.

He does exams on piano (Grade 7 this term), none at present on trombone (Grade 6-7 standard) and jazz clarinet is maybe next term (Grade6). He makes it work somehow, but except for piano doesn't do as much practice as recommended! He does play in lots of groups though.

Only ds2 would agree with your dd - he is also much keener on jazz and contemporary pieces! I was having exactly the same debate but as piano is technically his first instrument (or a dead heat!) he's doing the jazz piece from the standard ABRSM grade 4 book next and then deciding what to play after that. He teaches himself some other jazz pieces at home for fun.
Were you thinking about the grade 5 jazz exam instead of grade 5 theory?

drummersmum more than a couple of months concentrating on exam pieces and she would be ready to give up! TBH if she is comfortably working at or beyond the level of the exam that timescale is fine - scales are all OK as she keeps them ticking over as warm up exercises, sightreading good as she is trying out so many different pieces all the time now (huge benefit of no exams!) and aural fine as already done gr8 twice before on her other instruments. I can't really see her deciding to do it though as she is clearly having so much more fun playing lots of different stuff at the moment - long may it continue!

LooseAtTheSeams, no, no jazz instead of theory, I spoke to one jazz teacher in the past and he made it clear that does not matter what piano grades are-jazz piano should be done from scratch. Would take too long to do jazz, theory would be much quicker....

I think I should give myself time to new year to think things through and find out what my teachers think :) Thanks again everyone, and if you have more considerations meantime please feel free to share them with me

I don't know what I would do in your situation only, I think though that if she has already progressed to almost grade 4 I wouldn't want to write that progress off and start from scratch. DD would definitely see it as starting from scratch on the piano.

I think a lot of kids are not doing any practice at all (I know two in RL) or minimal, once/twice a week and they still progress. Slow but they do. Another way to look at the 20 min piano practice would be to break it into priorities, say today you cover a couple of scales and one piece, tomorrow another couple of scales and another piece and so on.

How much work is your DD assigned each week on piano? My DD has work on piano that takes about an hour (it could take even longer if done 100% the way the teacher asked) and there are evenings when I ask her to leave one piece of work out because it is too late. In fairness clarinet currently is a few little pieces from her method book and two graded pieces this week. This takes her 15-20 min. I then put the clarinet away while she starts on her scales on piano. When/if clarinet would take its toll and she'll have work assigned that takes longer I guess depending on what happens that term we'll leave some work out on the other instrument.

Currently she knows that she needs to ensure clarinet work is done every night as she is doing an exam. We also aim to get the piano work done every night but last night as an example we left out a Bartok piece and the sight reading exercises. Because it was too late and she was too tired anyway.

Oh Only, dont drop, its normal to slow down while you focus on other instrument( in our case is opposite now we focus on piano for now and do little for violin). My problem is the cost as its expensive paying each week without (any) practice. Mine is exam driven, without an exam she has Zero motivation. She is working on piano now because she knows there are so much to catch up. Still we have maximum 45 mins each evening only and not on weekends. What happens to us is while we are focusing on one instrument the other one works like a destressed one. She used to sit down and having fun not thinking at all on few etudes last term while she was learning violin grade 3. I never have to remind her she just sat down, piano was so relaxing for her to compare. Then the last few days I could see her picked up her violin herself and played randomly something I have no idea(which in the past has never happened). It wasnt long, 10mins or smth but to me its much better than not doing anything and/or purposely resisting it. Just my 2 cents!

Only in our case we have found music much easier to pursue as the DC have aged.