January Music Thread

[Wafflenose]

Happy New Year!

Sorry I'm a bit late starting this thread - I've been away for a few days without internet access. Anyway, this is our monthly thread for musicians and parents of musicians of all ages and all abilities. It's a great place to chat, or to ask questions about lessons, practice, exams, auditions or anything music-related.

I have two DDs: Goo (11 and in Year 6) who plays the flute, recorder and piano, and Rara (8 and in Year 4) who plays the cello, recorder and clarinet. I think we have Grade 7 Flute and Grade 1 Clarinet coming up this term, and also the local music festival and Junior Young Musician competition for Goo. Grade 7 Recorder and Grade 3 Cello are tentatively pencilled in for the summer, but we'll think about those nearer the time. Goo is also in NCO, and lives for it... it's all she talks about, she loves writing to and texting all the friends she's made there, and she is in Under 12s this year. I am a teacher of woodwind and have a little clarinetist who's just got into Under 10s. I hope to have a few more trying out next time.

Yes ds and I will tune in too. Do you just go to their fb page and click on live or something?

Yes go to their page at the time specified and don't click on anything, they will start streaming live at that time. It is like they posted a movie only it is live.

Fantastic,thanks. Ds will be beside himself with excitement in the morning!

disorganisedmummy, drummersmum and Fleurdelise, thank you.

Well done Goodbyekittymum's DD. Excellent news.

First event done, CD recording in London this week.

Back to lessons tomorrow, piano. Looking forward to seeing DS's mark sheet from his exam.

Found you all! Happy new year!

Been mad here. We've had to do plenty of practice owing to 11+ entries and possible scholarship auditions. So far since Xmas miniprada has sat one London super selective exam and one of the boarding schools with a strong music reputation. So far, all gone as expected and we have two more next week (round 2 of the other London super selective plus boarding option number 2) plus one music scholarship audition for the latter also. Unfortunately local indie/ the post seem to have lost miniprada's music scholarship application 😱 And although they quickly rectified and invited her along to stage 1 it clashed with the exam for another already planned above. This was our ultimate 'if all else fails she can go there school' so not really an issue but annoying nevertheless. I'm sure things will turn out for the best in the end.

Fleur/Green - my top tips for next year are : 1. Save up your annual leave. Each school application (assuming you go down the indie scholarship route) required pre-assessments / lunch with the Head-type events plus taster days/weekends etc. Then at least two rounds of exam/interviews and one or two music auditions (usually not on the same day). Think about this realistically when looking at the number of applications you submit. It's especially easy in or around London to get sucked into the madness of doing too many to please child/head etc.

1. When ordering the annual school photos, choose the pack with eleventy billion passport photos in it. Every school application (and I include the State options here with 11+ or faith or music bias) seems to need a photo of this size. Luckily last year's school photo I ticked the wrong box and ended up with the mega pack

Wish us luck. Not enough at the moment to get us through. We can all do with out the added stress Including those rail Union b*stards who have decided to call a wholly unnecessary strike for Monday when one of her exams is. Sigh.

Thank you drummers for the link to Tuesday! DD a big fan of Nicola Benedetti. So much inner calm needed by you to get your DS through his run of activities...good luck on the Spanish mocks, and to you other GCSE parents too!

prada: great advice on the accruing of holiday leave, good luck also next week. The transport curve balls are a mandatory part of the exam process too, all sent to test your breaking point, but you'll both come out fighting and look back at the the farse with achievement over your celebratory pizzas

Thank you raspberryrippleicecream.

Good luck Prada and miniprada. It will be over soon.

We aren't applying for the indies, we have 5 great state secondary schools in our area that have one 11+ exam for all of them. You then list them in your order of preference and (hopefully) you get one of them allocated to you. They also take a % on music ability so there are audition and a MAT test.

Happy New Year, All!! Hope 2017 is a great one for us all.

We've been in SE Asia travelling for three weeks (totally wonderful) and have come back to the London 11+ 'excitement' with a bang (and jet lag) - DD1's had 2 of her 4 exams and 2 of 4 possible music auditions (talk about winging it ... lucky DD is of the nerves of steel type!). I'm really looking forward to moving on from an excess of Maths, English, Reasoning and 3 rather overplayed pieces.... Final 2 exams next week - hoorah - and I'm not sure when we'll hear if she's been selected for the other 2 music scholarships. But the madness will all settle down by half term with the results. Prada, you're so right - the seemingly endless visits, orchestra days etc take up so much more time than you would imagine. Good luck to miniPrada as she sallies forth next week.

(We're the mad family with 5 musical children - I don't get on here as often as I'd like and you'll be able to guess why! DS1 (14) plays cello and bassoon plus sings tenor in Chapel choir as of this term; DS2 (12) is still a beautiful treble chorister and plays violin and oboe; DD1 (10) plays harp in NCO and NYHO plus is a chorister; DS3 (6) plays piano and cello (RAM, Saturdays); and DD2 (4) sings at Guildhall on Saturdays. Practice times can be loud....)

Prada, best of luck with the coming up exam. Thanks for your advice. I am calming myself down by thinking it is still 2 years to my turn.
Goodbye:great result for the start of the year.
Drummers: thanks for letting me know, have save the info, link in my note for the future as my resolution for this year is staying away from facebook, do not look at all for 6 months. (Was thinking of cutting mumsnet too however this thread will keep me up).
I am nearly done with my laundry, only ironing now. The living rooms are tidied, all beds were done. Small things however did get into my nerve.
Some piano playing this morning and I am hoping for some violin. We have discarded our weekends rule previously that family and leisurely weekends only and have to use them for music practice now.
Our two years old suddenly changed during the holiday, she could sit down next to her sister for 10mins listening her sister piano playing and they happily banged on the keys for 15mins together later this morning. She begs to be read all the time and can sit tight longer than any of us. We usually have to find a reason to stop. This might be a good sight for starting violin at around 5yrs old

TRL: the whole musical family with 5 children from age 4-14 travelled to SE for 3 weeks, you are my hero.

As you can possibly tell from the username, I'm an old MNer who has namechanged.

Just a query for those who know saxophones... DS plays clarinet and alto sax. He would love to learn the baritone as well (partly because main bari player in his senior jazz band is leaving at end of the year) but our local music service doesn't hire them. For all other instruments the DC have learned, we have hired the instrument, at least initially, at v. low rates from the music service before going down the 'purchase' route. They hire soprano, alto and tenor saxes, but have no baritones ... DS most grumpy that a service that can come up with 2 contrabassoons for hire hasn't got a baritone sax!

Is the only route to buy one new or secondhand? Any ideas?

I don't know in detail about saxophones but there seem to be a lot of music shops (normal retail and online only) who hire out instruments. I just did a quick google and came up with this one for sax that seems like it might hire out bari's. I looked before at a music shop hiring out instruments and they discount a portion of rental payments off the price if you need to buy in the end. www.uksaxhire.co.uk/saxophones.php

I'm no help as DD hires hers through school, and I have had no luck with second hand either! DD loves playing it though. Good luck

So far behind! But well done to Minikitty and Miniraspberry and best of luck to all dcs doing school exams.
Drummersmum the concert sounds amazing and I am tempted to get tickets but must check dates! Good luck to you DS with the Spanish mock. DS1 is meant to be revising for a Japanese test next Friday so I will have to start nagging from tomorrow. I forgot and he spent the entire morning on his bass guitar and the entire afternoon playing a computer game!

Hi all

Dd (10) passed G3 piano, will take G4 cornet this term and possibly G5 violin in the summer. Plus she and I are going to do G5 theory this term...wish us luck!

herts

Hello. with bari's it's important to get a good one whatever the route to obtain one.
We always buy saxes, but rarely are they new. A good model bought second hand can last the life of the child's interest.
I'd ask at local music shops, sometimes they hire, or try Woodwind Exchange in bradford.
you will need to make sure it's had a good service and any maintenance it needs as it can be very hard and counter productive to play on a bad set up.
With less popular instruments like bari's or bass clarinets you find they can have been in storage for many years and really gunky, dirty and full of germs.
Please make sure you clean mouthpieces and bodies really well.
I can ask about models/makes and get back to you if you like.
Dd has a Conn 12M, or a Yanagisawa 901is also good. (She just said)
Dh not here atm, but will ask and get back to you.

Sorry it was to Can'tKeep

Thank you Greenleave and AlexandraLeaving.
Good luck to all dc's taking exams and the 11+.
Ds 9 is taking his 11+ this Sept.
Just want to ask a question, have any of you lovely ladies noticed a correlation between learning music and maths?
TIA.

Herts - we had same issue with bass clarinet; her JD now lends her one - there is no way i will be buying one anytime soon!

Prada - good luck! so glad we are finished; we were due to sit a boarding school one last friday after pre-auditioning, but decided that one is a good 6th form choice (rubbish for london travel for me and we are not interested full time boarding at this point). good luck if the same one as it is an amazing school, and the music programme is excellent!

Goodbye DD is the same age as your DS and taking the exam in September also.

Not sure if music/maths correlation in our case but it appeared so. DD is August born and was the youngest in her class when she started school. Her school journey was not the most straight forward one, she was behind her peers in reception and started catching up with the national curriculum somewhere in Year 1. This is mainly in maths, she always loved reading. She caught up and was getting slightly ahead when the curriculum changed in year 3. That threw her so she spent Year 4 on a catching game. She started music at 6 so just as she started Year 2. As she becomes better and better at music her maths skills seem to be improving and we've been told at the last parents meeting (now in Year 5) that she is top 5 in her class in maths, she has the same teacher as last year who knows her well and he asked us what have we done over the summer as she went from middle (average) of the class to top 5.

I think is a mixture of things really that help, one was formalising academic practice at home and spending more time trying to identify and descovering DD is actually really good at maths but her learning is visual. So when explaining fractions for example it helps if you associate the notion with an example in real life.

Music plays a role in all this as it fits right in even if only for the work ethic example she gets out of it, she now knows that if you want to be really good at something you work and the results are proportional with the work put in, her resilience compared to 2 years ago for example is fantastic.

Sorry for the long post.

Thanks for the reply Fleurdelise

I've been reading up about it and I wanted to ask parents who's children already play music.
We are in Birmingham so will be trying for the Birmingham Grammar School Consortium and the Walsall and Shropshire one.
We are no longer in a good school catchment areas either so it is quite worrying.
Sorry back to the question, my ds end of June born has always been very laid back, dislikes writing and not to fond of reading, and again like your ds learns better visually.
Even in year 3 he was still not using capital letters and full stops properly.
But that considering he always achieved higher than expected levels at the end of the school yr.
Since learning the piano steadily gone up from middle maths sets to top maths table in the top set maths group.