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!!

only, etudes and studies largely ignored by all DS teachers all these years. DS does piano Hanon exercises because I downloaded, printed and bound them for him. But no Czerny here.

Shocking to hear adjudicators favouring the poorer performers. In our festival the winner was quite clear in the classes we watched and yes, there may have been the odd variation of opinion where I thought a performer deserved a second place and got a third and the other way around but nothing as bad as the performer who obviously wasn't the best to win.

Raspberry, we were told the same about the waiting list for assessment but were also advised that teeth could be lost in the meantime if we didn't act at the right time. The impacted tooth could have moved and damaged the roots of neighbouring teeth.
So we got the assessment done privately which cost about £90. Then once we knew where we were we decided to have the recovery op done privately as her teeth were compromised. The rest of the treatment was NHS. If we had waited she could have lost a couple of adult front teeth.

Thanks Truffle. I'll bear all that in mind.

Quikie on the festival, our winners clearly deserved it (according to my ears, which are not realiable). The children were better than us(however we thought we def wasnt the worst :))). Both the classes we did yesterday and today were big classes. Children played 2 pieces had more chance to show off hence were winners. It was a lovely experience to perform in front of audience, I did enjoy to hear her playing very much and felt proud(which we never had with piano in the past). Its an eye opener to see so many other little talented pianist. A girl who must be younger than 9yrs old(us) did couple of g7 pieces and won the overall grade 6-8. The two (little) boys came second were very young too played 3 pages sophisticated Bach pieces(dont know what they are and dont remember what they are called). The lady Adjudicator gave us loads of detailed comments on each and I enjoyed to learn her opinion, I thought she was brilliant. Festivals def the place to go for piano in the future, its much better than abrsm exams as we could hear them play various classes, compare our playing with others and heard detailed comments straight away.

We might be very little competitive type( went out for a lovely lunch after then a long walk in the park yesterday) and today (a long bath now then will be games time then long family dinner) then bed, she didnt care about no medal/cup the least so it suits us well. If someone who expects alot could be dishearten as some other children are truly amazing(we are slight barbarian), comparing with them could be demotivated.

Oh, I am so sorry, but really need all your collective experiences again....

Found some teachers, relatively locally. One of them is Russian. From what I remember, they are good playing and technique wise, but their attitude sometimes....strange, to say the least. I remember there was some discussion of Russian teachers before, could those of you who came across Russian teachers share your experiences please? I think I can put up with odd teachers but I want to make sure that they are (statistically) good when it comes to teaching :))))

I cant travel, we were recommended a really good violin teacher however couldnt carry on as she is only available during the week and we have to travel to her(only 10mins drive, still). I hope when she is bigger and still is into violin/piano and if we find a good one then she could go there herself if its less than 1 hour.
Only, my Russian piano teacher is like a family to us now. It takes time for him to know my daughter and for us to know his style. However we are not very serious and never have to ask more from him.

My current violin teacher which I havent got the connection with however I find to know her better must be one of an Eastern European.

They both went to Royal school of Music, they work hard and passionate.

However I do understand for violin, having a well-known, great teacher is the key to success. We dont aim for it, more of an armature (however hope to improve) so we wont be able to commit to travel, cost, many practise hours.

only ds does studies/etudes in both piano and violin. Piano has been hugely neglected since last June. But when he practises he usually spends 1/3 on scales, 1/3 on studies/etudes then 1/3 on pieces. However, I know a boy who is absolutely brilliant in both piano & violin (g8 distinction for both at the age of 10) doesn't do any study/etude in violin (he does in piano). Apparently his violin teacher disbelieve using them. Not sure why. But it seems working fine with the boy.

I don't mind travelling more than an hour as long as it's not a weekly commitment. He spends lots of time in a car for his sports. He also goes to a Saturday school and it takes us an hour one way. So I'm very reluctant to schedule any additional weekly long journey. Luckily Ds learns violin at school and piano is 20 mins journey.

We heard an advice today that learning a piece from back to front or not in any order would be a good idea. We learn (few) etudes

Yes green we have also heard that re learning a piece.
fleur yes...I don't mean to say it happens often, it happened this time in a very obvious way, I was with two professional musicians who agreed with me and were shocked. I also don't mean to say there was some hidden reason for it. I just think it was good to see it, helps put things in perspective.

Fleur what ligature and mouth piece did you get in the end

Green - DD does that when she is getting to performance standard on a piece; no idea why?

Drummers - we have seen some odd ones, and i agree that you have to do festivals for fun and feedback only

If you music enthusiasts have not yet seen it, a new series on BBCFOUR TV by Dr Helen Czerski covers the creation of sound, harmony, and other aspects of music, including an MRI scan of Lesley Garrett's vocal chords while singing!

Sound Waves: the Symphony of Physics has been broadcast, but is available on iPlayer:

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08h06tq

Green we've been told that also, learning a piece starting with other parts rather than the beginning. Our teacher explained that she does favour that method also at grade 5+ level, that is because if you start with the beginning of the piece all the time you end up practising the beginning more than the rest of the piece. For example dd is 3 quarters of a way through one of her grade 5 piece having learnt it beginning to end. Obviously the first 4 lines of music were learnt first and practised on their own let's say 2 weeks (I can't remember exactly). So now every time she practises that piece she'll start with the beginning still playing the 4 lines that have been learnt first and then continuing with the middle etc. So in practising that way she'll always do the 4 lines more than the rest of the piece as she practised them the longest.

se22 I got the Vandoren B45 mouthpiece with a Rovner 1R ligature (£22.15 on Amazon currently).

"The mysterious sound of the black hole" is def something mine is interested in knowing(just watched the whole 1hr). It was a wonderful documentary, thanks so much for sharing Ferguson.

Fleur, drummers, we were told we should start with the hardest bits first or the last as by then learning the rest wont be felt as challenging. I was so amazed of some very young children who played (very) long pieces without a music book. We have a good memory, we still need a book in front of us(to be honest I didnt see her look at the book at all) however we were very impressed with others.(ok, forgive us, first time we came to a piano festival and we are barbarians).

Green exactly, you explained it better than I, it is about giving the hardest bits the longest practice period rather than learning it beginning to end.

Dd is a good memoriser, we haven't yet found her limit, the most she currently memorised was a 3 pages piece. Cumulative she memorised 6 pieces at the same time but each up to two pages.

This goes against sight reading though therefore she needs extra practice for sight reading to ensure it is covered.

We had a great day today, went to the local symphony orchestra concert, dd was mesmerised more so as her piano teacher (who plays violin with the orchestra) took her back stage to meet the pianist that played a Beethoven piano concerto. He was amazing and dd could barely say two words.

Does anyone have one of those electronic drum pad thing? Like this? Is it any good?

My oldest son had one that was more like a stand up electronic one - like a drum kit with separate parts that was electronic. He now has a full drum kit which thankfully now he's passed grade 8 is usually upstairs although even there it takes up a full cupboard. His electropnic one (now sold) was about double the price of the one you linked to and was like this
www.amazon.co.uk/ION-Audio-Redline-Illuminated-Electronic-x/dp/B00LHVE8XG/ref=sr_1_6?s=musical-instruments&ie=UTF8&qid=1488791008&sr=1-6&keywords=drum+kit&tag=mumsnetforum-21 It is probably best to ask the drum teacher what it is best for a child to have based on their level etc.

Thanks Tiger. We tried one of those "stand up" ones at the Yamaha shop and everyone liked them. But we really don't have room... I'm hoping that DS will get more chance of playing the real thing when he goes to secondary, and perhaps we'll get away with just a pad-type model at home. I've spoken to one of the music teachers but will talk to more.

Thank you for your answers ladies, very helpful.
Kutik, nice to know that not playing studies is not the end of the world :)

I haven't posted on this thread before so hello! My 13 year old just sat grade 6 piano this morning (ABRSM). Just received an illicit text from her at school saying she mucked up her scales in the exam by playing 2 of the wrong ones!

I don't know if she was allowed to redo the wrong ones but how fatal do you think this is?

Everything else went "good" according to her, except for sight reading which was ok.

Very worried mum :(

She can pass if she failed all the scales - my 5 children seem to have become past masters of that... silly them. Also the examiner will often lte you have another go if you make a bad start. Hopefully she will have done fine. One of my children failed grade 7 piano and never redid it (she was almost into GCSE years) and then stopped which was a bit sad. It does get quite hard with the harder grades.

Hello, cocopops ! I don't think it's fatal at all. My ds once managed to skip a whole line (4 bars or so) at an exam. It was in the middle of the piece and the most dramatic part. I could hear him playing outside the exam room, and at first I didn't notice what happened but thought it was rather short and lacked the dynamics than usual! We expected the worst mark for the piece, however he got 30/30! It must have been either he played the rest so well that he made up the mistake or the examiner didn't really notice the mistake! I suppose it could be the latter as forgetting a whole line is quite fatal... I must say ds is very good at pretending nothing happened.

I really think mucking up two scales won't be a big deal, especially everything else went "good"!

ferguson thanks for the recommendation, looks great! The moment DS frees up a bit of time we'll watch it!

green the memory thing varies between players but the more they play a piece the more it stays with them. DS now plays two whole movements of the Mozart´s sonata without the book plus the other g8 pieces and almost everything he has played over the years. He has never performed with book. He only uses the book to practice for the pencilling about dynamics etc. It sounds as if your DD is not looking at it but it's a psychological crutch just in case. I would take the book away at home and do performance practice without it. She will be surprised how much she knows the pieces she has been working on for a while.

cocopops don't worry, scales are but a small part of the final grade.

NeverEver I don't think your DS will be able to get away with a pad-type model at home. The pads are a tool for adding in some drums to mixes, etc, but not to learn or practice. I am a lover of acoustic but totally understand space and noise issues. Can you fit this in your home? It's not too bulky and any corner will do. DS tried it at a friend's and liked it: www.gear4music.com/Drums-and-Percussion/Roland-TD-1KV-V-Drums-Electronic-Drum-Kit-with-Mesh-Snare/13C0