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 similar experience but I am not sure if it is music related or maturity related if that makes sense. DD was on another planet till about Year 3 compared to her peers. She loved reading on and on but maths wasn't her thing. Now the penny dropped and she's in the high ability group at school we also need to work on her confidence as she's had years of thinking she's rubbish at maths.

Hi all: sorry for not being active as we went on a short holiday after xmas. I have one DD (14) who plays violin, piano, and a bit of guitar, and composes. She also sings and is doing grade 8 this term. She has just got back from NYO, and she LOVED it. She said it was amazing and has made so many friends.
Anyone else got music festivals this term? DD has 2, in one class for one and about 9 classes for the other one Its going to be very stressful......

Forgot to add we are probably auditioning for all the junior departments too, which will be VERY stressful. It's going to be a tiring term.......

I think there's a few of us with Festivals this term Ours is in March, I don't think DS2 will do quite as many individual classes this year, so will probably be 9 or 10 in total.

Is your DD doing any helping with Inspire? DS2 is doing the first residential in February!

My DD isn't doing the Feb one I'm pretty sure. I don't actually know which ones she's doing but she isn't doing ones until later in the year; she hasn't had leadership training yet and she won't until spring/summer.

Petra: miniPetra will do well xx

Love your post Fleur.

I had no idea about her ability in reception, to me by then they were too young to judge their ability. We are in a 3 forms state primary, the school is outstanding according to Ofsted. She has been in a top set for maths since from beginning. Its really nothing though as everything is still super relaxed and easy, she is (very) bored and doesnt have to put any effort at school for maths(she is now considered better with her writting comparing to maths and finds it more challenging where her imagination can go wild and expensive/difficult new words/sentences are endless. To be honest, top table or top in the top table of the 3 forms doesnt say much. She still could fail 11+ and it doesnt inspire her in terms of how intuitive and meaningful maths is. I am hoping for secondary where children loves maths and are naturally good at it and are willing to put effort into it will have more opportunity(ukmt or all sorts of challenges/exams)

I did a project looking into the relationship between music and maths as part of my maths A Level. I devised some music tests to do with pitch, rhythm and a few other things, and ran a comparison to check for correlation with maths ability. The link wasn't as strong as everyone thinks (everyone used to say to me, "Oh, music and maths! They go together, don't they?" hence the project). I think music just helps with EVERYTHING somehow, and a child who is good at both could be just intelligent, or good at decoding - they are both a bit like foreign languages, aren't they?

Goo is super good at maths, but she's just an all-rounder. I've taught children in the past who are better than she is at individual subjects, but she does well in everything and finds it all easy peasy. Rara has to work harder, but is laid back and has decided that B grades at secondary school would be just fine. I always thought of her maths as average, but she has gradually moved to the top end of the class. It's hard to see, because she has processing problems, word finding difficulties and is never first to blurt out the answer; struggles to finish tests in time. But her teachers say she is good at it.

We have our music festival in the next few weeks. I have entries in 32 classes, plus Goo in the Junior Young Musician competition. Goo is doing 14 classes altogether - slightly more recorder than flute, and refusing to try on the piano. Rara is doing 10, with more on the recorder but a few each on cello and clarinet.

Thanks for the advice on baris but wired crossed - I was just replying to somebody else about instrument hire rather than for myself. I have enough problems choosing between marimbas and cars :)

Yes similar experience but I am not sure if it is music related or maturity related if that makes sense. DD was on another planet till about Year 3 compared to her peers. She loved reading on and on but maths wasn't her thing. Now the penny dropped and she's in the high ability group at school we also need to work on her confidence as she's had years of thinking she's rubbish at maths.

I think it's to do with maturity, but also that some kids with natural aptitude for maths find very little of interest in the primary maths curriculum.

DD disliked maths and considered herself to be bad at it right through till Y10 (final year of French middle school). Mainly she's just not that good at arithmetic because she has problems with being meticulous when doing boring things. Now in equivalent Y12 (in France this is the year that maths is finally supposed to get a bit harder), she is finding the maths curriculum disappointingly easy. She even wants to continue maths in some form after school.

No idea about link with music, but the two students who are best at maths in DD's year are both musicians and also both very good at foreign languages (I think there is a definite music link when it comes to listening to language sounds).

DD has her first piano lesson of the year on Friday. She's playing the Schubert impromptu at a concert in three weeks - hmmm!!! We have the three pieces for the competition, Debussy arabesque no 1, Chopin nocturne op 72 no 1 and a John Cage piece which sounds very flashy but apparently is technically easy (harder rhythmically and to memorise but these are DD's strong points whereas technique is her weakness).

She also has another invitation to play the support slot at a local concert, no details yet though as the person approached DD directly via her FB music page, and she didn't think to ask any information lol.

Thanks for the bari information! The site herts (I think) linked to is the first one I have seen where they do supply baris for hire at a non-prohibitive rate. The more local shop where we bought his alto sax has the bari hite option hidden in its fine print as well, I have now discovered, so I think we have a possible way forward.... possible GCSE bribery...

('If you get good grades in your GCSEs we will hire you a bari sax' possibly one of the more obscure bribes-for-results out there!)

Well done MiniPetra, and good luck with the next exams!
I think I read somewhere that music ability can correlate with maths or languages or both. i actually think the concentration you need for music helps the brain develop skills in other areas of study anyway. However, there's another pattern suggested by Fleur and Waffle - DS1 was totally uninterested in maths until about Y5 and only found it interesting from Year 9. So, it's hard to tell if it's the curriculum or learning music that makes the difference with maths!

cantkeepawayforever DS did GCSEs last year and pulled his finger out in the final stages when he found out that he could take music technology as a fourth A level if he had a straight A average at GCSE. Up until then B's were good enough but then he had an incentive to aim higher.

Greenleave, Wafflenose and Mistigri, thanks for replying.
Very interesting to hear your experiences and thoughts.
I suppose all children are different but I think the main thing is for children to be happy at school and to have a lovely for music.

Late to this thread this time, a happy new year to all!

I have dd 10 who is doing grade 3 clarinet this term, she has been playing over the holidays but no exam stuff so we started back on that yesterday. all sounding pretty good apart from we have lost the music for one piece!

She is also a beginner on bassoon, it gets less practice as its a bit of a pain to put together, we will push it a bit more once the above grade 3 is out of the way. Possibly grade 1 in the summer term, we shall see. If not it will have to wait a while. Next school year is one where we will be concentrating on school entry.

Dd has started having a ten minute theory lesson every week with her clarinet teacher. She has worked through book one quickly and book 2 is on order. The aim being to get to grade 5 before she needs it for her clarinet grades so plenty of time.

We are still hunting for additional ensemble opportunities, and hopefully a summer course.

I haven't posted since last year! We have two learners (three, including me) on cello, violin, flute, drums and piano. It's a bit of a mad house here ...

wafle

I am very interested in your findings.
I can remember the look on dd face when people used to ask if she was good at Maths, a few times it really upset her.
She struggles so much and when younger felt she had to tell people, and she felt stupid.
I was always surprised how many people had heard of this and even more surprised how many commented.
She is quite good at languages though and has asked if I'll pay for an extra language GCSE, she wants to do Italian, German and French.

Ooh, I forgot to say... I got my Xaphoon for Christmas, so I'm now learning too! It's very confusing.

We are rubbish in languages as the whole household. Both of my daughters were late talker(even walker). Both are very socialise or more of socially friendly however not great at "responding"/"making speech"/"smart talk". I have been sending our 9 yrs old to a weekend French lesson for a year and for the 2 weeks skiing on the Alps I didnt hear 1 French sentence. Its kinda very frustrated so if you have any good tip in foreign language studying please share. To me learning languages is equally as important as music. I just dont know what else I can do yet. I am hoping for her to be able to speak 1-2 more languages, even only speaking.

Ds has always been good at maths and apparently he has the potential to be good at languages though he never attempts to speak in French when we are on holiday dd is much less confident in music ( and maths) but great at languages and really loves to have a go they are all just so different I think. But I do agree that learning an instrument is so beneficial to all areas of learning as well as being fun though ds would probably have disagreed with this today as he struggled with his arranging/ composition homework though he got there in the end

Mistigri I was the same as your daughter with Maths. At primary school (back in the 80s) it was all about learning your times tables and doing pages and pages of hand written sums which I hated and I honestly thought I was rubbish at maths. Things got much better at secondary school mostly because we were allowed to use calculators which freed my brain up for things like algebra which I loved. Managed to get an A grade at GCSE and did A Level Maths too. I thought I was weird, but glad I'm not the only one.

Maths (and science) is my DS's passion and I know that is why he has picked up music theory so easily. I don't know how he is with languages yet.

Agree maths is linked to music here. As most of you know, Miniprada has also passed her GCSE in Spanish aged 10 (neither parent is Spanish) so also agree languages are also linked....

. i actually think the concentration you need for music helps the brain develop skills in other areas of study anyway

Totally agree Loose and this is one of the main reason I want DD to keep at it.

Misti agree too, I think it is maturity and also boredom and lack of seeing the connection of maths and real life. Thinking of it DD started enjoying it since I gave her real life problems in year 3 to link the concept to useful situations.

I did Music, Maths and French for A Level. They are all a bit like foreign languages, I suppose! (I had a good time in the 6th form, went to a lot of parties, learned to drive, played a lot of gigs and did not a lot of work though!)

DS1's French teacher links music with languages. (He's not very good at French but does a lot of music. )

Personally I think such links are unhelpful on an individual level and lead to hurtful comments like what was said to gilly's DD. My stock reply is "he works hard at whatever subject"

Checking in :)

We are i the throws of A level mocks and a prolonged cold which annoyingly took the solos away at Xmas. DD2 did a nice little solo in the epiphany service though so voice ( and hopefully confidence) returning. Britten Ceremony of carols at the end of the month too!

Dunno if she's got many music exams planned. Much muttering about grade 8 of various sorts but not much actual practice! I think she probably should do at least 1 before uni just so she has the paper evidence...

Also applying for choral scholarships.