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.

raspberry

I bet I know who you are on about if I saw the child's face, you get to recognise them from concerts, but I don't know off hand who you mean.

If he wants to go I know he will be happy there if he likes an open day.
You kind of know straight away. I was worried how dd would take to it but needn't have worried about that side of it at all.
They are very weird full on days and you don't really know what you are doing half the time according to dd.
I really honestly find all the children lovely, enthusiastic and uncannily similar.
Anything you think I might help with I'm only to happy to help.
Although dd is only Y8 but she mixes with 6th formers more than other lower school students.
They get to choose if they want own room or share and wear suits rather than uniform. Far fewer restrictions, but certainly monitored strictly.

I think we are better at maths than any other subject and it does come easy and naturally as we love numbers and fascinated with any thing numbers related. This definitely helps with music at the starting point, help with chess and with theory and all the physics theory books she has been burying her head into. However only for a starting point I think, as being good at numbers wont make her any close to a mathematician without alot of studying (a cashier is closer call) nor musician without practice.

Loose: laughing at you on the 2 sides smaller shoes. I am the same, I dont know what they wear during the week. I have to put in my calendar a note every 3 months to review their wardrobe, it seems they need to be reviewed every month now.
MrSlant: I smile when I read your post about your son, that is lovely. Mine still needs a nag EVERY single practice section(thats why I have never thought of her having any musician ability).
Violin lesson is resumed tomorrow as we missed last week then piano lesson will be resumed next week. We will be deciding if we should do grade 7 in November. They are now on some 3 pieces this June festival. If they go ahead with the Autumn term exam then they will be back on scales first then after June they will start on the 3 pieces.
I still havent got violin fully back on track. Its still a very early day with our new violin teacher.
My 3 years old starts her first ballet lesson next week, so excited(we gave up with our 9 yrs old after couple of yrs as she didnt enjoy it). We wont be doing any music yet until at least 5 yrs old though. I am dreaming by then my elder daughter can "help" her little sister a little bit so I wont have to nag as much as now.

gillybeanz I think we'll go to the autumn open day and see what he thinks after that.

Grass my Chorister is in the process of changing voice, he has been very, very lucky as he was 14 last November and stayed treble until January this year. I think it was willpower as he was recording a CD in January. He is currently alto or tenor depending on the needs of Youth choir or Full Choir, but it is a big adjustment.

Our Cathedral Master of the Music retires this week, (after 26 years) it was a very damp Easter Evensong yesterday. Some of the Lay Clerks sang under him as Choristers.

MrSlant

Thank you so much for your lovely post and it just shows how even your own children can be so different.
I loved hearing about the sport and Music, it sounds like it all fits in so well together.

I have another thread in languages atm as obviously with dd dreams and ambitions she needs languages.
She has found some lovely Welsh pieces so is hoping to be able to pick up enough to get her through the pieces.
All we know is Llan (Llan) I'm not sure she'll manage it but she wants to have a go

I meant Clan rather than just repeating Llan. It's been a long day .

Well if you need any help at all on the Welsh pieces gilly PM me, my children are all bilingual and I'm in a choir which sings (and the language used during rehearsals which is a stretch for English me) nearly entirely in Welsh (although I joined a rebellion in my first ever practice, we were singing a Benedictus but in Welsh and there was a beautiful Gloria in excelsis section which was in no way as good in Welsh, so now we sing that section in Latin!). Fortunately DS1 is very laid back and enjoys seeing his brothers doing well without any angst on his part that it doesn't come as easily. They have all been in the school choir because it is part and parcel of growing up in Wales, the Eisteddfod culture is very strong where we live. Very hard to find a choir if you are a woman because of all the male voice choirs, you can't move for bumping into them!

Loose that was funny about the shoes, I felt like a bad mother also as dd showed me her shoes from last term, she has this habit to drag them on the floor on their tip so they looked disgusting. I had to wonder how did I not notice and how long did she go to school like that.

DS is funny though, his shoes are in a state too but he actually said no way should I buy him new ones for just a month. He wants a pair of expensive brand trainers in exchange so I said yes.

I actually feel I will cry when I will shop for his sixth form wear, it feels so real suddenly.

Back to lessons on Friday and Saturday, on top of paying for the music lessons I also need to pay for two exams, I just googled it and it is £110 for the two. I don't even want to think what lego set I could have got dd with that money (she's obsessed with Lego).

Ahhh sorry Grass forgot half my post.

Meant to say he is beginning to enjoy his 'new' voice, and is still enjoying singing.

He didn't manage to keep up the practice so much with his choir commitments though, so is on a similar place at 14 to your DS at 11. He sat Grade 7 piano last Christmas, no exams on trombone/ clarinet but around Grade 7 also.

No school for us until next Monday.

DS had an organ lesson last Saturday as his teacher will now be away for 2 weeks. Choir will still be on holiday next week too, which is a lovely treat. Piano and trombone start next week though.

she's obsessed with Lego

We had that. Throwing one in at xmas/birthday is a still a tradition that must be upheld, but running out of space for constructed lego kits collecting dust we managed to convert DD to those very fiddly Japanese paper/card models and NanoBlock kits... beginning with their uniquitous grand piano of course.

Another Nano Block fan here. DS still plays with lego but probably loves Nano Block more now. The weeny grand piano sits on DS's Yamaha upright.

Fleur we had shoe-dragging as well all through primary! It seems to have stopped now.
Awww to your DS - it's good he's already looking ahead to September - should help motivate him on the final slog through gcse exams. Good luck to him! And you...
Back to school today - two children out of the house on time and allegedly with all their equipment. DS1 has bass and drum lessons today and DS2 needs to do some serious piano practice. I heard him playing yesterday but not how his teacher wanted!
Nano bloc instruments are awesome!

One to school today and one to school tomorrow. There was last minute flute practice this morning.

I don't think too much about the maths/music thing. Half my colleagues are musical and half of them are not. (I work in maths.) But then most of us can't add up for toffee.

We have the rest of the week off which is why I am sitting here with my second cup of tea in my pajamas.

Fleur will he still need black shoes for concert dress? The first thing DS did after the end of term was go shopping for a naice black pair, up to then his concert shoes had to do double duty at school. The constraint of shoes having to conform to the teen norm went out of the window and he (or I) bought a lovely dressy pair.

For those of you with GCSEs ahead - there is life afterwards, you just have to survive the rest of this term.

One dc back to school on Thursday and the other next Monday. Currently contemplating the drive back from Scotland with just me driving. DH will be heading up a mountain today instead, so it's a long way for just one driver..... Now just have to convince DD1 that she needs to do some practice before we leave. Might manage it if I tell her we can't go to see my cousins lambs until it's done

Never heard of Nano blocks just googled it and I think I'll get dd some instruments for her birthday. She has the Lego hotel and it has a grand piano in it, she loved building it.

Yes DS will still need office shoes but wants to buy them closer to September to ensure they are spotless. If I could only convince him he cannot play football in them.

Icould I wish I could blink and be in July, all done with GCSEs by then and hopefully the music exams too so we can then relax for the summer.

This thread flies.
Fleur all the best for GCSEs!!!

Thank you drummers!

A very big thank you to everyone who posts on this thread (and earlier threads!) We’ve just received our 9 year old’s grade 1 result – and he got a distinction. He is incredibly happy as you can imagine. He found the sight reading a real challenge and I scoured these threads for all tips and they definitely worked as he got 19/21 !
We found these tips really helped:

1. A learning notes app – particularly on the left hand notes – 5-10mins per day for a few weeks is well worthwhile. We only have the cheap small Amazon fire gadgets and a free app and this was enough
2. Practice (practice and more practice) – the joining the dots book, and the improve your sightreading (Paul Harris), along with the grade 1 examples. Doing an exercise every time you practice is good
3. Do easy sightreading near the exam for confidence building
4. Decide on a strategy for how to use the 30 secs practice time. Initially we looked at the time / key and then used the time for practicing the left hand
5. Asking him to give himself a mark after each attempt

In hindsight, we should have started sightreading practice earlier and maybe even once you have got some basic ability to play easy pieces (our 7 year old is doing this now)

Bigs thanks again xx

Lovely news Gez8 !

Great news Gez8

Ah, yes when the boys' voices break! So sad in a way. My youngest had grade 8 singing by then and a music scholarship. The school at 12+ in a sense recruited him for his treble voice (he was also one of the youngest in the class and quite small and thin so looked like a good bet for a couple of years or a year) but it broke almost right away. The twins had passed grade 7 and also won a music scholarship at the same stage but their voices went too - one before the other. So I was particularly pleased to sing with one in Messiah recently - he sang bass. I wish they all sang with me at home at the piano every day which we did always when any of the 5 children had a music exam coming up. However it will never leave them even if they aren't of an age when singing with their mother accompanying them is what they want to do.

I do think that music can be the one thing that some children are good at and sometimes being good at that then makes them realise they can actually do other things and they do well at those others too. Also the one on one attention from one music teacher where parents can afford that (or even from a parent) is nice for them as well even if they don't seem to appreciate it at the time. My last child didn't do too well in his school entrance exam. They let him in anyway (along with his twin who did better) and look at him now - aged 18, they both got AAAA in AS levels last year. I was so surprised I thought they were joking when they called me. It does show how children change from 12 - 18 and if we write any off when they are younger that's a huge waste, not that any parent writes a child off but school systems can.

I remember when I went with our university chamber choir years ago to sing in a Welsh national eisteddfod (someone mentioned above). It was such good fun. I hope my twins sing at university (there was no choir in my school so university was a whole new world of singing for me). I will stop writing on these threads soon as when the twins leave school in a couple of months that will be the end of the era (30 years after my oldest went to her very first monrning nursery school).

On maths, I always liked it and music theory but I was just that sort of teenager,. However I don't think there is necessarily any overlap. Lots of musicians aren't good at maths. I do hear music not just in an emotinoal way but a patterned way in my head though and the keys (as I have perfect pitch) so it's quite a structured listening in a sense I think for me which might have a maths connection. I love fugues for example - so clever, just as so much of maths is intriguing.

Well done miniGez and I am happy to hear this thread helped.

First day of school yesterday and dd already couldn't fit music practice. She went to band and by the time she was home she was shattered so decided there's no point.

Goo has been doing a lot of thinking, and has reluctantly agreed to drop recorder, for the time being at least. She did her Grade 6 nearly two years ago, and apart from the odd spurt working towards the festival (and playing in my Year 6 school group at Grade 2-3 level with the odd special part written for her) she just hasn't made time for it. She could easily pass Grade 7 this term or Grade 8 next year, but she has to want it, and is ambivalent. She hates music exams now, as a result of too many over the past couple of year, and I think the thought of just one more flute exam and nothing else ever is appealing!

Rara is concentrating on clarinet (she's on a mission with that) and cello (probable Grade 3 this term) and says she's going to play lots of recorder in the autumn/ winter, but much as I love the recorder, I kind of hope she quietly drops it too. The descant and treble have similar but not-quite-the-same fingering as the upper and lower registers of the clarinet respectively. Goo can cope with several sets of slightly different fingering, but Rara really can't do it without becoming confused and frustrated. She has issues with key signatures as it is, and is constantly struggling to work out which notes are affected (and why the Bs are affected if there is an F sharp, because you need to use the natural, and so on) so I think clarinet/ cello/ descant+treble recorder = a bit much for her.

Goo is also flatly refusing to do piano exams, although I pointed out that she will probably have to do ONE before university/ music college. So we have no exams for Goo this term, and possibly one for Rara. Phew!