November Music Thread

[Wafflenose]

Let's have a new thread for November... I'm not sure if the old one will last long enough. This is a place to talk about music lessons, practice, exams and anything to do with learning instruments/ singing. We have beginners and advanced players of all ages.

I am mum to two girls - Goo (newly 11) - Flute, Recorder and Piano, and Rara (8) - Cello, Recorder, and one month of Clarinet so far. She won't put the clarinet down, so I think we've found The One.

Misti I have just listened to your DD, she is truly amazing! I hope I can buy her albums one day!

Only well that's a patronising assumption. DD is quite modest (or acting dumb) and I had a few comments but in a different way. There is another girl playing piano at her school and I had the "my DD says your DD is preparing for grade 5 piano, is it true?" with a look on their face like it is obviously impossible.

I am sure DD makes bad comments also, I don't want to think she is a complete Angel, is just that I always tell her not to show off with anything and if I'd hear her do so I'd step in immediately.

Monkey: well done to your daughters, it must have been a super proud moment.

I am lucky that I dont have school gates issues and with any play date we never had time to chat about anything. I went to few parents drinks and helped with couple of fairs however I am apparently not in the same leagues where I have lost of the connection on whats happening at schools, academic, friendships. That is the sacrifice we have to make for working parents. I have quite a different level with my friends who are mostly expats, have good jobs, work hard to earn the current positions and expect their children working harder. I do see mine are not as good and its ok. We are comparing to our potential rather than anything else, as long as we improving and working then that is ok isnt it

green I work too and just don't have to get involved in academic stuff except maybe help DS with the occasional piece of written homework at the weekend. It means they are much more independent than the kids with helicopter parents. Don't stress, it sounds like you are doing a good job.

Obviously we are all proud of our kids and rightly so but there's a difference between being normally proud (which is healthy and good for kids' self-esteem) and making your kids' achievements the centre of your life (which isn't good for you or your kids).

Fleurdelise you are right, children are always children, it is adults who are annoying. And sometime children just repeat adults-this is the problem!

Greenleave I don't really socialise with parents, this particular mum in my expamle "invited" herself to my house-she asked for help with smth, and we just started to chat about school, etc.... I mean I can see where she is coming from but she put me in a position where I had to either pretend that her assumptions are right or to show off. Neither is good of course.

jaffacakes DS did a summer week there a few years ago. It was a super friendly atmosphere and he really enjoyed. Unfortunately the location it was such a treck for us from West London that we have not repeated the experience.

Small question everyone: we cant sing and tonight lesson didnt go well as she could barely make a squeaky sound(that gene must come from me, I sing in squeaky sound). Any particular advice to help for these last minutes please. She still prefers to stick with singing. I cant moan enough about aurals and scales. Scales are better now. Aural becomes our weakest spot.

Aural tends to be a weaker area here too - particularly with DD2 who is very shy and doesn't want to sing in front of strangers meaning that she had a series of meltdowns in the lead up to her last exam. And sight singing -what's that about?!

We could sight reading with playing on the piano ok although sight singing is a disaster.

I was also wondering about the CYM. We may have to leave daughter's beloved teacher at some point, and are thinking about Saturday schools. Guild Hall and CYM mostly. My girl is, shall we say, quirky and spirited. I was thinking that from the website maybe CYM might be better for this? It's so much cheaper too, though I know Guild Hall does bursaries. Does anyone know how the general standard compares? Are the entry requirements similar. She hasn't done any grades but her teacher says approx 5-6 and she was in the NCO last year (training orchestra summer course a week after she turned 8). Music reading a bit weaker, but not too bad; well behind with scales (bad music mum ).

I read disorganisedmummy's thread on this in relation to ASD. My girl doesn't have a diagnosis for ASD, but shows some traits, and has sensory seeking behaviours (insesent fiddling, some ticks when anxious, tendency chatter and prance about inappropriately etc) and may have some processing issues too.

She needs challenge as she can be a total pain when idle/bored.

If you have covered CYM in another thread please redirect me, otherwise any thoughts or experience with ether?

Thanks in advance

I just read that back and I've made her sound awful . She is also creative, passionate, very loving (when I dont ask her to play scales) and bunch of other nice stuff.

What is CYM?

I ment NCO this year. It must be all the Christmas I'v already seen. She turns 9 in the summer.

The Centre for Young Musician, in Central London. It's a division of Guild Hall according to their web site.

Greenleave is humming an option? Really though, I wouldn't stress too much as it's a tiny part of the whole exam, and the examiner gives an overall mark for the section.

I have no other advice. My older DC refused to do ABRSM because of aural singing (DD did up to Grade4). DS2's chorister training helps, but is a bit of an overkill for an aural test!

Raspberry: We were thinking of humming a month ago however didnt practise on it, only few days left I was thinking of asking her to sight singing only. The singing was ok for the first half of the note then the second half the voice just went to a very funny direction either squeaky or too soft you can hardly hear it. Just asked her last night if she'd like to join the school choir and she said she'd love to then hopefully in the future it wont be as big of an issue.

Green school choir would definitely be a solution - DS2 was supposed to join one to try and improve his singing but he point blank refused! I suggested humming as well but he is so defensive about it. Luckily he is good at the non-singing parts so it really didn't affect his overall mark for aural very much.
The real disaster was DS1's grade 5 aural. The last time he'd had an aural lesson was for grade 3. He had 2 emergency aural lessons, both with a very heavy cold! I think the mark he got in the exam was a sympathy vote! Fortunately the place where he does bass and drums also does aural lessons so next time there's a sniff of an exam he's going to be booked in!

sorry, that sounded far too gloomy. I meant to add that it just wasn't worth getting stressed about the aural - really the focus is on the rest of the exam. I can only sing with a piano and am pretty hopeless without something to tune into but a lot of the test is about other stuff.
DS1 is cheerful about his incompetence at singing. On the music tour last summer, I gather the mainly female singing group adopted him and tried to teach him to sing. So it possibly had some compensations!

It is much easier to avoid the competitive parents once children turn eleven because then having parents at the school gate is social suicide and you just don't see so many people. I now see the odd parent walking dogs, not outside the school. When I was at the school gate I used to amuse myself by playing a game in which I win by not discussing my own child. There was the mother of a Swimmer, a Diver and a Footballer and I'd start the conversation by asking about their child's progress. If I did well then I'd be collecting DS and saying goodbye without ever getting to talk about him at all.

What talented children some of you have. I loved the music clips.

Gosh, there are some really awful parents around the country, aren't there. We definitely struck lucky with our school and associated parents and friends (though school does work hard on pastoral stuff).

I might change my mind next year when we need to do entrance exams, but I can't help thinking that, if a child needs extensive tutoring to get to 11+ levels at 10/11, they are going to be thoroughly miserable by the time they are 15/16 and tackling formal exams. It is a fine line between getting a child to try their best and stressing them out so they become over-anxious.

Re the aurals, I was watching a few on Youtube (need to get a life) and it didn't seem that you needed to be a particularly strong singer to get good marks. (It was more about singing the right notes in time confidently). Somebody suggested showing DC how the marks are awarded across the whole syllabus (if you can find a way of saying that it isn't a deal-breaker if the rest of the exam elements earn more of the marks - it might help with nerves.)

Good luck to forthcoming candidates.

Our situation is not school gates, I work full time so no time for it, I do say hello and all that but if anything I find it refreshing that we never discuss kids achievements on the only day I pick DD up from school.

Our situation is in private life, friend with DCs same age.

No advice on aural, DD didn't start the grade 5 prep yet, she's still happy to sing in the exam, well I think she is, we'll see the results for the clarinet exam soon as she refused to sing for her clarinet teacher but did it for her piano teacher.

MonkeypuzzleClimber did you consider RAM too? They take children from 8yo
You didn't make your dd sound awful at all, quite the opposite

Thanks all, short term, points might be lost and thats expected, there isnt much time for it now. Long term, joining school choir, I think anything can be trained, hopefully it would help too.
Loose: the whole summer we were working on some other aspects of aural, like dictation. Learning the pieces is lovely, sight reading is ok for now, the rest(aural+scales) is a burden.
Fleur: yes, its so hard with friends with children at the same or similar age. We come from a developing country where music/art/sport are not regarded so we are offloaded with jealousy in these subjects. My daughter isnt G&T registered (her school doesnt have the scheme luckily) so academically there isnt anything to show. We are being happy with a dumb label for now ha ha ha.