April Music Thread

[Wafflenose]

We've managed to fill up the March thread, so I give you April's, around 10 hours early. Don't use it all up at once!

The music threads are for learners of ALL ages and stages, including beginners and adult learners.

My kids Goo (11) and Rara (8) break up from school today, thank goodness. Rara is off sick at the moment, in any case, but they both need a break. They did their music exams this week. Goo got a distinction for her Grade 7 Flute, and we are awaiting the results of Rara's Grade 1 Clarinet, plus a couple of my pupils. They will probably come on my birthday - the ABRSM ones often do.

Next term, we have a big community concert at the local high school - all the feeder schools take part. Goo could do Grade 7 Recorder and/ or Grade 4 Piano, but I don't think she wants to. Rara is doing Grade 3 Cello. My Year 6 Recorders have been asked to play in the local Festival gala concert, and I'm sure there will be primary school leavers' performances too.

gilly :)
Your dh is not any :)

Well done loose !

As regards getting 30/30 for pieces I always understood it was nigh impossible because the last mark or two where purely about style and taste.

DS got 30/30 a couple of times and I think I wrote about this on the thread before but one of them was when DS made a significant mistake (forgot to play the whole phrase in the middle)! We didn't (and still don't) have much experience in exam so we didn't really think about it too much. We just thought DS managed to make up the mistake with other stuff. But if 30/30 is so rare then the examiner must have been drunk or daydreaming perhaps! Anyway those 30/30s DS got in the past were from lower grade exams and DS was quite tiny at the time so the examiner may have been generous also? I know some other children who got 30/30 but again they are for lower grades.

I heard from somewhere the examiners are quite generous for grade 1.

All, any of your musical children left handed and if it affects their playing, dailies. My 3 years old is left handed and I have been secretly "train" her to right handed and it doesnt work. I think I just have to accept it. I dont have any left handed friends and no one in both my family and my husband's is left handed.

Gd 4 singing boy just got a nice 30/30 for one of his songs which was pleasing. He understood what it was about and delivered it with style!

Dd got her 30 in grade one on an alternative piece outside the main graded book (House on the Hill from the previous curriculum). It is a "spooky" piece and dd loved it, she had the mood of it nailed and I think all these combined, being an alternative piece also do not overheard by the examiner, gave him a proper performance which he enjoyed.

Only I do a recording of dd's piece usually around 2 weeks before the exams so it will be a couple of months before the next recordings, I'll send them on once ready.

Green I am a lefty who was forced to write with my right hand. While I love my quirkiness, I write with my right hand but anything else is left handed, including cutting bread, playing tennis, playing golf etc, please don't force your little one to change. It was a humiliating experience for me as a child besides thinking there was something wrong with me. Every sport I did (tennis, fencing) the initial lesson was the coach trying to get me to hold the equipment with my right hand before accepting that my strength was in my other hand.

No experience of how this affects music playing but I am sure it isn't the end of the world and everything is possible.

Somehow I always thought being left-handed would have advantage in music playing. My friend's DS who is left-handed struggled with writing as he couldn't see what he was writing (the left hand covers his writing). So he has been having hand writing tuition and he is doing well. He has unbelievably sensational left hand when he plays violin! Your DD will also have the killer left fingers for both piano and violin!?

Ds is sort of left handed ( he has always written with his left hand but uses scissors and does sporty things with his right hand mostly ?!?) it's never been a problem as long as he remembers to angle his book when writing.

Hi Greenleave,
My little dd is left handed. She plays drums right handed, on a right handed kit.
Doesn't seem to make any difference to her really- when she started she played open handed, now she plays cross handed...
She also learnt violin for a little bit, she learnt this right handed too, got to gr3.
She also plays percussion and piano- but I don't think it matters with those if your left or right handed.
Both her violin teacher and drum kit teacher were right handed so just taught her right handed....
Being left handed doesn't seem to have made any difference in her ability to learn/play, although she learnt to play right handed- so probably difficult to know X
Congrats Drummers- fantastic news about your DS, and congrats to anyone else too- too many pages to read!
As for the starting young debate- I'm not sure.
I don't think you have to start at 4 at violin to have a chance of becoming a professional.
My dd started playing violin at 6 1/2, she took grades 1-5 (missing out the gr3 exam but learnt the stuff for it) in 2 yrs.
Im not saying that this means she'll be a professional musician, but I think it shows that children/young people can achieve and make a lot of progress in a short amount of time.
I would like to think that with enough practice and access to opportunities, whether that be teaching, supportive parents, or a love of music, that the child can achieve whatever they want to.
I also agree with Gilly that the child has to want it though.

DS violin teacher always encouraged DS to play like a musician. She said that 'you might get apprised by playing e.g. grade 8 pieces when you are 9. What's the point? Most important is playing the music the composer wanted.' DS got two 30/30 of his G7. He did his G8 last week.Hope he can get 30/30s. It was the first time he said he felt nerverse. He has done few piano exams and one violin before by just walking in ourselves. Never like this one, his violin teacher traveled long to the exam for support. I don't know its support more or pressure more? Anyway, they are the few important exams to mark the end of primary school education.

Hi Greenleave dd is left handed but plays violin like a right handed child

Can't say we've ever had a 30/30 in this house, although DD1 often gets 28 or 29 for her pieces - and the lets herself down on scales and aural.

Re. left handedness, my brother is left handed, but used to play flute in the traditional way. Didn't cause him any issues.

I think that rationale behind playing violin as a right handed person even if one is left handed is that when one plays in an orchestra one may poke to a fellow musician eye with a bow...because of the setting of the orchestra.... Though theoretically it is possible to teach playing left handed, I think strings have to be changed in a reverse order for that, but not 100% sure.

When I was a child I used to practise left hand writing. My sister and I made dotted drawings or writings and we had to trace them with our left hand, and the next stage was that we had to have a go how accurately copy the stuff we wrote with right hand, and to get the proficiency certificate we had to write ever so neatly without any guide with left hand. We didn't own any computer game and so on!

With most instruments, both hands are so busy that it really doesn't make any difference which one is the dominant hand. I've been teaching woodwind (and some piano) for around 20 years and although I'm interested in whether my pupils are left or right handed, it doesn't affect my teaching or their technique at all, as far as I'm aware. I did have an adult who found a bar of low notes in El Cortejo (Grade 1 Clarinet) hard because she is left handed and it uses the weakest fingers of the right hand... but I also have two small, right handed pupils who found that bar hard because they couldn't reach overly well. I concluded that it's just a difficult bar.

I am right handed, but can write perfectly well with my left, due to being injured when I took my GCSEs. I taught myself.

Wow, so many DC got 30/30. I always think these DC have huge potential. Thanks for sharing.

Alexander, that's what I was saying. The boy I know who is leftie has those amazing left fingers for violin. But again, he may be just a good violinist!

violinand piano, I don't really think there is huge difference between DCs who got 30 and 28/29 in ability/potential. As someone said before, the mark is how they played at a certain time on a certain day. Everybody has bad and good days.

Interesting discussion of leftie. For violin, the left hand technique is limited and easy to fix. The right hand bowing technique is unlimited and worth a whole life to improve.

Better, oh I see. Forgive me my ignorance on the technical side of violin. Anyway, I just wanted to say this boy who is leftie has very good left fingers so I thought being leftie may be giving him some advantage.

I stopped watching Mozart in the Jungle because of the "world class soloist" playing violin left handed. It just doesn't happen except in exceptional circumstances (like losing fingers) because it's impossible for orchestras and it would destroy an antique instrument to string it backwards!