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.

sorry catching up again...

Waffle - lovely and accomplished playing (DD but you are not far behind :))

Disorganised - that sounds really positive, do hope you decide to audition!

Alexandra - wow!

Well weekend full of school exams and then NCO regional concert; school entrance interview to prepare for tomorrow. And then we heading rapidly in to the seasonal stuff....

Loose Just an amp for playing for fun rather than anything high end please!

Never Yamaha THR 5 or 10 are good for home use - USB and headphone output and you can plug things into it. DH says that's for home rather than gigs! Hope that helps!

Thank you loose!

In spite of my good intentions I am only on page 6 right now, which is till not bad!
Green, dd also got her pen license recently - so I know the feeling!

Shaky - congratulations with the exam results!

Talking about practices, memorising, etc... How long do your dc and their teachers prepare "important" pieces (pieces for exams, festivals, concerts)? Say pieces with 60 to 100 bars length? (which is about 2 to 3 pages of music in one clef)

And you probably noticed by now that I am slightly mad about music books.... Anyway, went to Oxfam book shop today and got this book for only £2.50, feel so lucky!
www.amazon.co.uk/Great-Masters-Violin-Corelli-Zukerman/dp/0671604619/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1478472572&sr=8-1&keywords=great+masters+of+the+violin

We've had a nice weekend -
dS2 was asked to play trombone for our City's Fireshow, which has a sort of show part of it when they light the bonfire. Only 4 people on stage, 2 adults, an older teen and DS.
Well over 30, 000 attended! Quite an experience for him.

This thread was such an inspiration... :)
Yesterday I was reading about morning practices of some of your dc. Ds5 woke up before 7am today . I made a HUGE effort and got up 30 mins before my usual time. 7.40am now and ds's violin practice is done for today! What a relief!

onlymusic So miss 12 works things up really quickly. Her grade 8 pieces were memorised within 3 weeks and the longest she worked on them was four months. That's a long time for her. She is happiest when she has about a month. Miss 10 likes to work them up over a longer period. It takes her much longer to memorise them - more like a couple of months for her grade 8 music.

Morning all. So here's how it all went on Saturday.

Ds was able to take part in 2 classes;Junior String Ensemble and Musical Awareness which is like theory and aural. The string ensemble was first. There were about 30 odd players ranging from around 8-9 into 14 or so. All strings. The conductor was lovely and very welcoming and invited ds to sit down and play to which he said no so we watched at first. The first piece they all had to sight read so it was nice that they were all in the same boat. I looked at the music and thought ds could handle it but he was terrified! After the first few bars he picked up his violin and off he went!! I was so proud. They played one other piece that they had all been rehearsing so ds had to sight read again but again he coped really well and you could see that he was loving it. The conductor said afterwards that he did very well. We had a break for lunch and then went to Musical Awareness. Once again the tutor was lovely and very welcoming. This class is taught in small groups and were about 7 in the group. They were doing the pentatonic scale and had to sing the notes solo!! Ds pitched all the notes perfectly although he was very quiet and I could only just hear him. They did various other exercises around this and then played the scale on their instruments. Dad's theory was the one thing that worried me but it seemed that he was at the same level if not (dare I say it,a bit higher) than the others in the group. They did lots of other things too but that's the jist of it.
We could have stayed on and watched the Junior Symphony but by that time ds2 was bored stupid and I think ds1 was totally overwhelmed by it all.
It wasn't till much later that he said he absolutely loved it and wanted to audition.

So that's all there is to say really. Auditions start from February.

Feel free to ask any more questions.

only thinking of you yesterday as DS unwrapped some of his presents from his mates: Herbie Hancock's autobiography "Possibilities" and Alan Rusbridger's "Play It Again". I am going to borrow them!! He also got some Duke Ellington's original vinyls!

Count me in for the stationery book Drummers

Pradaqueen, just read about mini Prada Mozart performance at school -there are moments when it feels so worthwhile, aren't they?

hapsburg interesting article, thank you!

Hapsburg - loved the article, thanks for posting the link!
Well my own practice has been patchy to say the least. I can just about get by on what I already know but the new piece needs a lot more work! At least my scales are ok!
DS2 made me laugh yesterday - he was warming up with scales on cello and one of them sounded odd. When challenged, he looked daggers at me and said it was impossible to play because the cello was too small but rather undermined his point by then playing it properly!
Drummersmum - fabulous presents! Your DS did well there!

I've been to see Amadeus at the National Theatre. :)

neverever was it good?
loose it's always the instrument's fault
disorganised thanks so much for sharing your experience!

only it takes DS 4 or 5 months to get a grade 8 piano piece to concert standard. If he didn't go to school it would be less! Three times that for three pieces. Mozart sonata movement is definitely 5 months at least.
Percussion pieces it really depends but less. If it's snare then an intensive one month may do it. If it's tuned two months dedicated if grade 8 level.

Only - it varies a lot; DD got two g8 pieces ready for auditions and a performance in oct and started work on them in July time, which i thought was very tight. However other pieces at other times have taken much longer. And she was very determined to do these two pieces which probably sped things up. From watching her she will happily 'note bash' for a period on her own, and start to memorise (not deliberately, just how she works) and then will ask for lessons on the pieces to work out tricky corners etc - and to correct bowing!!! It takes some careful timing to make sure she doesn't lock it into her memory before the wrinkles have been ironed out....However a set of scales in comparison could take years to learn......:(

How long in terms of how many concentration hours? Then it will depend on at what age. Then the child musical background(playing other instrument at what level) and depends on grades. We thought 3 months are enough for us to learn the pieces and scales, aural, sight reading. Well, 2 months passed and we havent played the 2 pieces properly, learned 1/2 scales. I look at the "festival" links and think of enrolling her in so she has more chance(meaning motivation) to learn from the piece.

Loose: you are doing so well, I know I should start too however I am just so so lazy. Its harder for us I believe, just think you are being admired by someone else who cant bring herself to do the same thing(yet!)

Good luck to onlymusic DC and anyone else doing G5 theory tomorrow. DS2 is quite keen to get it over and done with now.

I have to say that I'll be glad to have DD1 getting the theory exam over and done with - so that I don't have to keep nagging her to do some past papers! Good luck to all the DC doing the exam.

Wishing everyone else luck with theory today! DS1 seems confident apart from the musical terms, which hopefully is just one point and hopefully not the 1 point between pass and fail.
Green it's lovely comments like yours that help me persevere! You have so much going on in your day, I really don't think you should feel bad for not doing piano lessons yet! Last night I spent most of the lesson on Indian Pony Race but was a little shocked to discover how much faster I need to play it. And I have developed a bad habit of crouching over the keyboard for the middle part!

Best of luck to everyone with their theory today. I've lost track of who's doing what when!!