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!!

Well done minise22 and mingreen. It's lovely to hear of people enjoying the Festival experience.

We're moving into the final whirlwind of scheduling practices with accompanists (voice and clarinet), and duet partner (piano), before ours starts.

DS2 sang his first tenor solo at the Ash Wednesday Eucharist. I'm really not used and don't recognise it yet as his voice.

Also about to move into a series of concerts, so a busy end to term. DD will be putting music on hold for a few weeks after that, five AS exams to revise and sit!

As discussed before DS2 at 14 still has a number of baby teeth. An x-ray this week revealed a lack of adult tooth beneath a bottom canine, so we have been referred for assessment as the dentist says we need a Plan.

Rara has an appointment next week, about similar issues... both girls were incredibly early with their first set of teeth (all in by 20 months), wobbly teeth (4 years) and losing teeth (5 years)... then Rara ground to a halt. I'm not talking about the usual 2-year gap after losing the first eight teeth - she has yet to lose all of those, nothing at all has happened for three years, and the dentist now says she's way behind! I'm not worried, but have warned her that she might need an X-ray. One of her front teeth is severely twisted, and I wonder if the ones next to the front ones might be similar, erupting behind the baby teeth or something, so not pushing them out. Hopefully we'll get some answers... and hopefully you'll get a plan, raspberry.

OMG, these threads are moving so quickly that it is on page 5 before I had chance to join!
Thank you for starting it Waffle

I have dd who is year 4 and plays violin, piano and recorder and ds who is year 1 and plays violin (have no idea where we are with him, but he is to finish Fiddle time joggers soon).

Dd was registered for grade 5 violin exam in March but her teacher got double pneumonia and got into hospital. We didn't have lessons for few weeks and I was sure he would withdraw her esp she still didn't learn one piece. He was finally back last week and insisted on taking the exam which is in three weeks time . The reason he gave - "exams distract students from proper learning, so let us do it and move on" . So we have a lot of fun -seriously ill teacher and seriously unprepared student taking serious exam!

ealing, thank you for your nice pm

Fleur I hope everything gets better

Waffle and Prada, congratulations to you and your minis on having good schools

Now, I have one of my questions....
How far would you agree to travel (in time terms) for a reasonably good music teacher?

Travel for lessons, well currently 25 minutes for piano and 35 for drums , flute and violin. After june probably 1 hours 45 for violin. Thats all one way....

Only good luck with the exam and waffle and raspberry hope the teeth work out. DD 9 is actually ahead of ds (12) in loosing and gaining adult teeth, but ds seems to now be catching up and lost 4 or 5 last half term alone !!
For the right teacher I would travel in excess of an hour. Ds currently has his trumpet lesson here- but I've said i'm happy to travel to him if it gets too much driving for the teacher- he lives over an hour away. I'm slightly concerned that he might be moving and we will be on the look out for a new teacher after the summer- hope not.
Ds got really spooked by the thought of his AYM audition yesterday and had a completely disastrous practice where he was hyper critical of all that he did and got really cross and upset- so fingers crossed today's practice is calmer !!

I'd travel an hour. We travel currently 45 min for a sport that I don't consider so important so an hour for music would be fine.

Good luck with the exams and festivals all!

We're off to a Beethoven piano concerto today. Can't wait!

Raspberry good luck with the teeth thing. DD (clarinettist) has issues with missing adult teeth and we are hopefully sorted with a plan. She had to have an upper canine located via operation and then hauled into place with a gold chain.
Her ongoing trouble is that, on that side, the lateral next to the recovered canine is a bit peggy so she may lose it at some point. On the other side, the canine came in ok but the lateral is a baby tooth with no adult present. She wears a retainer to keep the spacing correct as she will probably need implants as an adult. The baby tooth has recently started to wobble so the plan may need to be amended.
Before the plan was agreed upon, one orthodontist wanted to remove the compromised teeth, close the gaps and reshape. We didn't want to go this route as it would have involved doing the same with the lower set which are unaffected. Her bite was pretty perfect so we didn't want to mess with it. We were also advised by her clarinet teacher that it would be better if we could avoid doing anything with the bottom set. Obviously, you don't have that to consider as it is the lower set affected.
I guess the X-ray didn't show the adult canine to be in a different place? Our daughter's was up beside her nose. Once we were shown it on an X-ray we could find it to touch!

Just a quick add in - I had two baby teeth canines until age 40! Finally has them out as were wearing down too much, and had implants which have been easy. So you never know how long those baby teeth may stick around 😀

Thank you Truffle. Gosh, lots to think about!

We are waiting for an appointment for a dental assesment and I suppose that x-ray will be more comprehensive than the dental surgery. The top teeth are a mishmash of baby teeth and adult teeth, and in some cases both! I am assuming all teeth are there as he didn't say anything.

Not sure how long the assessment will take to come through but there is an 18 month to 2 year wait for treatment!

Hope your appointment is ok Waffle

Thanks string. He did say that although the root has been reabsorbed it's showing no signs of moving, so may last into adulthood.

We have a lot of teachers near us. Our children mostly had lessons in school as well. I did drive one to lessons for about 10 - 15 mins at one stage and waited whilst she had the lesson. My children's father gives lessons and he often goes to people's houses by the way to each which is obviously very easy for the parents. He also has lessons at his house too and in school too.

We travel fifteen minutes to trombone teacher. Very lucky as piano teacher comes to us, and organ and voice happen to be 5-10 minutes away. Though if you add on travelling for the organ practices it adds up a lot!

I would travel further if it were necessary. We do for jazz workshops and similar. Up to an hour I think would be ok, but my DC are all much older.

Our piano teacher is 10 min away and our clarinet 20 min away. We have quite a few good teachers around so no need to travel but if I had to as above it would be up to an hour.

Glad to hear good festival stories, se22 and green.
Right now I would not travel more than 30 minutes because I need to work and DS is too busy. If I lived in a rural area or small town I would probably have to. We did travel 1 hour to see the drummer he had had a couple of special lessons with. One of the JD's he's applying to requires leaving the house 1 hour before, so that will be a new reality for us.

I was at a competition yesterday. DS was not competing, so I was an objective neutral spectator without mother's love warping my senses - although I did know one of the musicians. For me there was a clear winner with a clear runner-up. Everyone in the group I was with agreed. Unanimously. Yet the worst won. It was very disappointing and I'm still baffled. So is DS and DH. A dull, soulless performance with huge room for technical improvement won. This performance has the coldest audience response and the shortest applause. I have no doubt this young person practised hard and was thrilled to win, but it's not fair to the person who played best. It reminded me not to take competitions seriously, never ever. This was a respected adjudicator yet deaf to true musicality and passion.

Thank you ladies! Now I feel very lazy mother not dedicated to my children needs as the distance in question is 50 mins :).
We have violin teacher coming to our house too therefore I guess I can afford obe long commute assuming it works...
I found couple of good local teachers but it looks like they don't give private lessons (our violin teacher only has three private students, two of whom are mine :)), therefore need to look further... I am still waiting for reply from one of the local ones but he already made it clear that he only teachers at private schools... Grrrrr

Drummers, I think I already wrote about it.... Dd's teacher said that he didn't send his students to the festivals for ages (he teaches at private school) as he once witnessed the situation where the person who was not very good was given a top place on a grounds 1)he didn't take defeat very well 2) the better competitor was clearly very good and would have plenty competitions to come whilst that winning person literally had his last chance. Ridiculous but here we go. Festivals are getting notoriously unfair competitions nowdays therefore it is not worth taking them seriously, just as an opportunity of public performance.

I think our longest journey is 35 minutes to the piano teacher but that includes walking to the bus stop and buying donuts the other end - it's only around 15 minutes actual travel! DS1 is very lucky to be able to walk to his bass and drum lessons. Tuned percussion is a 15 minute drive away.
We've had cello versus bass guitar again this morning - cello managed to drown out the bass this time!

I think your willingness to travel depends a lot on where you live. If you live rurally you are soon reconciled to everything being at least half an hour away. DS has his lesson forty minutes away, music centre is thirty minutes, county rehearsals are forty minutes away. I'd travel an hour for a good teacher but that would probably be for an hour and a half lesson every other week. My longest run at the moment is an hour and a half but that's for a group that only runs a few times a year. I wouldn't fancy driving it every week. DS is 17 this month, when he can eventually drive himself it is going to make a huge difference to me.

There's definitely been times when I've disagreed with adjudicator, including when it has benefited my DC.

But as performance opportunities ours is brilliant. And expanding, especially with singing.

I am getting really desperate to find a perfect match teacher... My problem is that the longer we gave lessons the better I know what to expect from a teacher :))) and therefore I struggle to find a right one. I was watching piano festival few months ago, there was only one girl out of 10 children in grade 4-5 class who played with the 'proper' hands (like curvy fingers, etc). One! In 10! Grades 4-5! So what is about the rest? They are not taught techniqie??

I may asked this before but not sure, do your dc need to do studies or etudes? Esp interested in violin and piano dc. All our teachers mostly ignore them which seems a bit wrong to me....

Sorry I probably sound too grumpy, it is just 6 months without piano lessons and dd askes me to start piano lessons again but I struggle to find a teacher :). Plus gloomy weather and exam stress :)))

Opps, mistypes above

I should have said I would travel an hour at the weekend, we work full time so no time to travel in the evenings. Dd will be able to walk to her piano lesson once I am comfortable with her going on her own.

Only dd does studies in both piano and clarinet. Generally stops doing studies when the focus is exam prep like now, but she does Czerny, Bartok mainly.

On clarinet Paul Harris and James Rae studies currently also between exams mostly but the third exam piece is a study anyway on clarinet.