March Music Thread

[Wafflenose]

Here you are - a new thread for March! I can't believe we are now up to 700+ posts each month. Thank you all.

I am Waffle, Mum to two girls. I have Goo (11), short for Kajagoogoo, which is 'short' for Kaj, which means... well, that would be telling! Her younger sister is Rara (8) - Rara is what she used to call herself when she was learning to speak. Goo plays the flute, recorder and piano. Rara plays the cello, recorder and clarinet. We have Grade 7 Flute and Grade 1 Clarinet booked for the end of this month. I think we might have Grade 3 Cello and Grade 4 Piano coming up next term. Goo is off to secondary in a few months, and I really don't know if she will ever manage to fit in her last couple of recorder exams. I'm all for saving money though.

I will try my best to read everything and follow this month. Last month's thread moved so fast!!

Fleurdelise I knew there will be a solution to the problem . Is she violin teacher or violinist musician too? (remember, this is my idee fixe )

What year current piano syllabus changes? I would love dd to play Summertime for exam!

Kutik, Menuhin school or JD-teachers do take into account parent's views too, remember, you were not even sure about JD, so your teacher could figure out that it is not smth that would interest you at this point. I don't recollect any of our teachers saying-your dd should consider JD, but once I asked all have been like-oh, yes, definitely! Ask his view on Menuhin school for your ds and you may be surprised with their answer....

Only she plays violin with the symphony orchestra. The current piano syllabus is new 2017/2018 so it can be used until spring session 2019, plenty of time for your dd to play summertime.

only You are very sweet indeed. I like your positiveness and openness.

Just to clarify the fact - ds's teacher never said he 'should' apply for JD! The teacher is anti-JD in the first place! But anyway he is now supporting ds's JD challenge. It's a long story....

The problem with our "foreigner teachers": they never heard of NCO or JD etc. We only heard of NCO when its mentioned here then just on the deadline date we applied for it and went for the g3 pieces that we learnt the previous term. It clearly didnt meet the standard. They dont know about local festivals either.

Fleur: will google summertime tonight, she has time.

I'm not sure the foreigner point is fair. There are lots of "foreign" teachers in music schools and colleges in the UK who fully understand and promote ABRSM, JDs, competitions etc. and generally do wonders for music education in the UK (and indeed ABRSM and Trinity and used throughout the world by foreigners.) On the other hand plenty of non-foreign UK teachers who just go through the motions and don't understand or push these things. I don't think it is a foreigner vs non-foreigner thing but more to do with the individual - at least in my experience.

I agree hertsandessex, it is experience, not 'foreigness'. I know few foreign teachers-one it teaching in private school, and the rest know local system very well. I do prefer English teachers though, the only problem I have with them is standard of teaching is varying too much obviously depends on their own education. There are plently of foreing teachers in JDs too-according to the names supplied by their web sites.

Fleur, will put my house on the market today

A lot of foreign teachers also do teaching qualifications here too....

Only

I agree my experience with non English teachers was somehow different. One that a friend hired for her dc was exam obsessed, the day of the grade 1 exam she told my friend to go and buy the grade 2 book. She was a teacher that basically preferred to spend a whole year on 3 exam pieces not because the parents were pushing for exams but because that was her teaching method.

On the other hand another Russian teacher very sought after in our area is known for her reluctance to put her students up for exams, has very high expectations in terms of practice time and only does the key exams such as grade 5 and 8 in a relative short period of time, she has the type of pupils that achieve grade 5 in 2-3 years and grade 8 in 4-5 years.

There was a third teacher that a friend of my dd from school was having lessons with who didn't like exams but then when the parents insisted on an exam after 4 years of learning they discovered that she was only ready for grade 1. We're talking about a child who was overachieving at school with no learning difficulties. It's hard to judge though as I don't know the amount of practice the child put into it.

Our teachers are English and we're happy with them both, because I think they have a good balance of learning repertoire and taking an exam when ready without making it the reason for learning the instrument, more like an assessment of where dd is at that point in time.

We didn't choose them for their nationality though, it just happen naturally. I said this before, I literally found dd's piano teacher online with the help of google as she was the closer one we just hired her. When finding out about other teaching approaches later on from friends with dcs learning instruments we realised we found a gem.

I have not come across any foreign teachers of music in our children's private schools over the years so never really thought about it as an issue. We found a time capsule when we sold our parents' house we wrote as children - in fact the buyer's found it and kindly scanned the documents for us when they did building work. Mine listed all my music exam passes at age 10 or 11 one after the other - really weird. It's making me laugh now but clearly for some children chalking up the exam passes gives them some kind of validation. For other children the exams don't matter at all. I certainly also enjoyed and enjoy to this day playing music too and singing so it was never just about passing a load of exams (4 grade 8s if we count theory) but some are fun. I even did piano duet exams with my sister. I put my brother and sister and I in for associated board piano trio exams too which must have been some kind of ensemble exam.

One of my sixth former sons has chosen not to do guitar exams beyond grade 3 which I think it is a pity but he's old enough to choose and I don't think in his case it has held him back. The guitar is not his main instrument anyway.

I am always a bit dubious of teachers who don't want to the risk of being found wanting if their pupils do not pass exams. I did a piano exam a year from about age 8 from grade 1 to 8 and ditto music theory and I think that was a reasonably good way to measure progress. (Associated Board).

I totally agree that it's down to experience, not nationality. Both ds's piano and violin teachers are a foreigner. The piano teacher was trained/educated in two countries (no UK) but very experienced as a teacher and accompanist. She understands the system fully so can help exams if requited. The violin teacher was trained in his country. I'm not sure how much he understands the system here. He seemed to find out NCO quite recently for instance, and I know he hasn't helped exams much (but it's more like his choice rather than he cannot). But he seems to attract very able children and has sent quite a few to JDs, festivals/competitions or similar (not sure much of this as we don't do them). I feel the piano has more structure (so can see where ds is), but the violin..., as we are not following any particular syllabus, I have no clue...

But anyway, what I wanted to say was I have no issues with whether they are English or not. I do think it's really down to earth individual.

I found the piano teacher on the internet - we went for her simply because she was based locally and had a nice piano (Steinway). The violin teacher was simply supplied by ds's very ordinary state school so we didn't even look around and compare. Ds can stay with the piano teacher as long as he wants but no idea what will happen when ds leaves the school (next year). No idea how to find an alternative...

Kutik You could see if the violin teacher would continue outside school, or if they'd recommend someone else if they couldn't do it. Or the secondary might have teachers.

The best thing I love living in London is, it really doesnt matter you are woman or man, came from Liverpool or Newcastle or much far away cross many many borders, black or white, muslim or christian, as long as you are fit for the job then you are fit for the job. Both myself and my husband work in investment banks and you will be surprised that English peole are minority here. Its really a mixture if all over the world.

I am sure my teachers now are both familiar with abrsm requirements(for my piano teacher definitely including g5 theory exams requirement as at least he had us did it with him). Music is it own languague isnt it, every where else in the world eventually speak the same "musical" language. (Feeling a little gaga today as my daughter is selected to present the council for chess, I had no idea where that came from, we cant play and she only has 45mins lessons at school the last couple of years).

Just to clarify, I prefer English teachers because of their 1)networking 2)familiarity with local realities (basically they learned music in this country and know how it works here). Not for any other reason ;)
Saying that, I dont't think any if my dc will become a musician, and why I have such preferences? I have no idea

Never The teacher can continue teaching ds but this means we have to travel more than an hour one way to attend his lessons (he runs his school in his local where it's miles away from us). We go there for performance and workshop when invited but it's only manageable as it's one-off. Our local secondary may offer keyboard or guitar but certainly not orchestral instruments...

Kutik Then you may have to cast your net a lot wider ... In our local area we have a few amateur symphonies and chamber groups and most of the members are also teachers. And I found my piano teacher through the piano shop.

Much as I love these threads, are there any kids NOT playing at festivals every week? Are there any kids passing their exams WITHOUT distinctions? Are their any kids not applying for music school bursaries? Any kids that haven't passed they grade 8 piano at 11 or so? (From a rapidly depressed parent). I would love to join in but everyone seems to be on a Superior level? (child on grade 5 piano at 14). I want to join in, but there is no place for me :-(

Really hoping that there are hundreds of parents on here like me (just plodding along)

And heres me thinking that my daughter (14) grade 5 piano was doing amazing!!! Probably time to think of giving up, she has only achieved a pass in each of her exams :-(

You know for me one of the attractions of music as an extra curricular activity is it is basically non-competetive. And for that reason i am glad that my kids are not doing exams or following a system that 'ranks ' them (for want of a better word). They get enourmous pleasure from music and they work hard but they are free from the questions of 'what grade?' 'What suzuki book?'. Im actually a little nervous of ds's first piano concert in 2 weeks time, not because of his playing but because he and his best friend started playing at the same time in january and are using the same tutor book. Ds is playing his concert pieces from that book and if his best friend is too then that comparison /competetive element might rear its head .....

That said grades are very usefull for describing the expected level for courses/orchestras. Here we end up with pretty useless at least x years old and have played for at least y years, which doesnt work well imo

callme, my younger sons didn't get distinctions. They did the grades fairly early but don't take part in festivals (except the one which was only their school the other week which I mentioned) and they are concentrating on A level work, although I was at another school concert last night which was lovely.

Grade 5 age 14 is fine. I did a grade a year from age 8 I think it was. She should certainly not give up. The piano is particularly useful to learn as you can also accompany other people and it always comes in handy.

Life is fairly competitive though so I don't think my children have suffered by doing exams. They certainly had loads of children better than they are. When my twins won a music scholarship to their school there were I think 6 boys (a record year) or actually one of those went to a music school so that probably wasn't a scholarhip from their prep school who did. At least 3 of the other boys were much better than my two which has never bothered any of us. At last night's concert my son was in at least half the ensembles but the item that was best and I liked best was one for strings with another boy starring in it who is far and away the best and that's fine - I think if you like music listening to people who are much better than you are is fun rather than something that makes you jealous or uncomfortable or give up. My children know perfectly well the reason they didn't get a distinction in a particular grade and it's usually lack of practice. In fact one who got 100 in an exam ( pass mark) said he'd got the perfect score as he'd managed to do just enough work to pass (I am not suggesting that's the best attitude.......)