June Music Thread

[Fleurdelise]

Hello all and welcome to the June thread! Waffle did me the honours of asking me to initiate this thread as she has no access to Internet while on holiday.

This thread was first initiated by Waffle when Goo was 6 and now she's 11. It is a thread for all the musicians, big and small, to share their love (and frustrations ) during the long path of learning an instrument. I first joined when dd was 7 and in the process of preparing for grade 1 piano for moral support. If you read the ending of the May thread you'll realise I am still a nervous reck here we are now, two years later, Dd is 9 and preparing for grade 5 piano and grade 3 clarinet, the exams are in exactly 13 days. I also have DS 15 who is in the middle of his GCSEs at the moment, he has no musical interest.

As I couldn't leave Waffle without an introduction, below is a quote from the May thread. The only correction is that I believe Rara has now turned 9.

I have two daughters. Goo is 11 and in her last term at primary school. She's working towards her Grade 8 Flute (some time next year) and playing from the Grade 4 Piano book (currently refusing to take any exams, and putting off the first proper performance!). Rara is 8, may or may not be doing Grade 3 Cello this term, and is approaching Grade 2 Clarinet.

Both of them played the recorder for years, starting as preschoolers. They reached Grades 7 and 3 respectively, but sadly neither has really played since the music festival a few months ago. They are obsessed with their Flute and Clarinet, and really enjoy Piano and Cello. There won't be many opportunities to play the recorder at the secondary school they will attend, so much as I love it, it's probably a good time to quietly drop it. Recorder has given them both lots of opportunities, confidence, reading skills... and festival prizes!

Ds practiced today as his exam in a week time, dd has not been practicing since mid of May-we have been away with her for couple of weeks, then she jammed her thumb, then it was theory exam and now I decided we are not in any rush with exams, and told her teacher let us just play and not to do any grades for the time being as I am exhausted with two of them both playing two instruments now Cannot believe it was me who said it

Rara's cello pieces are sounding OK, and she'll be fine with sight reading and musical knowledge (she reckons she can't do Trinity aural, which isn't true, but oh well!). I am 99% certain she won't have all the scale requirements done it time though. There are 15, all totally different, and she knows 11, although she can't yet match them all up with their names, and hasn't even started on different bowing patterns. Aargh! On the clarinet, she's stuck at the moment, and needs to consolidate for a while. She's working on her 2 octave scales (sort of) and has the nice Disney book, What Else Can I Play (trying to get her to play more from book 2 now), Abracadabra, and I am writing her a piece.

We are still seeing extreme perfectionism from Goo, and it's not pretty. She sight read a beautiful piece during her lesson on Friday, and it sounded great, just the odd tiny slip. When her teacher showed me the music, I nearly fell over - it looked completely impossible, in five flats with masses of nasty accidentals in each bar. Goo spent the rest of the evening sulking because it wasn't perfect. SIGHT reading!! Anyway, her audition yesterday went OK, despite very little work. Her piano teacher has asked her to set up her very first performance and she is dragging her feet; however she has just taken me up on the offer to ask the Head of Music/ Reception teacher if she can play to Reception class. Very unthreatening.

Model student Goo just realised that she hasn't done a bit of reading homework that she had 10 days to do!! This is a first. She was kind of distracted by her residential trip last week, and audition this weekend. I've told her to just apologise and take the consequences. To be honest, she's hardly had to do any work at all in Year 6, and has become quite complacent and lazy.

I'm trying to sort a few summer holiday clarinet lessons . Dd's usual teacher wants her to start working with accompaniment over summer (grade7 not til December ish.. I thought it a bit early ..but maybe not?)
It's dd's last week as a year 9! They have school trips for half the week,Thursday and Friday as inset days and then everyone moves up a year next week ( the yr 11's have left).
She sat her gcse music exam in year 9 . Listening paper was the trickiest for her. Overall it's been great as she's come on loads.. (sheer amount of hours spent I think) .. . But it unexpectedly informed so many other areas too.
Art and French GCSEs to come in year 10
Fleur can you dm me the YouTube group details? Would love to see some other lovely playing. I'll post a video of Dd doing her clarinet playing (and jigging about no doubt!).

Waffle good luck with the exam, Rara still has time to cover what she needs. Glad to hear all went well with Goo's audition.

trout I've sent you a PM.

All - feel free to share the details to the YouTube channels with users you feel they can have it, it is ours and I trust you all to make a good judgment of who can have it and who can't. Ideally we only want to share with users participating/active on this thread.

It feels so strange now that DS has finished his GCSEs one DC goes to school and one doesn't.

I felt like that Fleur. ( I have an older non-musical dc)
It's a strange time.. it must feel utterly bizarre and unsettling for them
Thanks for dm

So exam day nearly on us (this week!!) and after a week of pretty much no practice, dd kicked herself into action yesterday and pieces are ok, aural is ok if a little light on depth when she has to describe stuff, sight reading is a work in progress - always - and scales are .....random really (i think it is 43 scales so i am silently sympathetic). Possibly yesterday was a little late for getting serious so i think we will be happy with a pass this time!

Trout - we will be doing the same in Dec

Fleur - will def add DD when we get past the exam....

I haven't had a chance to catch up with our video channel as yet due to spending an excruciatingly sweaty weekend at a swim gala, looking forward to it some point this week.

Following Prada's tips and adventures with new gorgeous pup (we're 5 months away) but hopefully our one will stay small, to suit it's small house. The one I wanted may be too challenged with its little legs by lots of stairs though so having to have a re-think

Good luck with those still with exams in coming weeks. DD looking forward now to her music residential shortly after next week's school week away...and I'm looking forward to some clear windows of being able to work with no interruptions!

Good luck with the exams all!

Abrsm says we should hear back on dd's exams from next Monday, I find it hard to forget about it myself but dd seems to have put it behind her. I just keep thinking that once we hear it will be another thing dd will have to deal with and most likely learn to bounce back.

I thought that once she calmed down, it didn't seem as bad as all that? They won't take much for re-starts or minor slips, and she got through the pieces OK in the end, didn't she? And the terrible scales turned out to be a couple of wrong ones. She is going to surprise you.

Waffle she kept mentioning the examiner sighing, not sure if it was a compassionate sigh or a "I am getting so fed up" sigh. Her teacher wanted to complain as it is very unprofessional to do it and obviously putting her off but I asked her not to.

He or she was probably just tired, or had a bad day, or could tell that she could do better. I really wouldn't read much into it. I still maintain that NOTHING she has told you about the exam points to a fail. She would have to have dropped maybe 25 points from what I would have expected after seeing her videos.

Fleur for all she knows the examiner had just taken a really difficult phone call, broke up with their partner - we just don't know what is going on in other people's lives. We assume that it's all about us but it's not always the case. After she's passed would be the time to have that discussion.

For those of us with players aged 16-33 there is an opportunity for a free (free, knock me down with a metronome) residential week of playing at the beginning of August. Applications need to be in by the end of this month. It is the Corps of Army music summer academy, there will be some running and gym work as well as playing.

www.army.mod.uk/music/35965.aspx

Thanks both, the thing is dd's piano teacher went in with her violin pupils to accompany them and dd for clarinet and she did say she was giving it away both ways, positive and negative but to be fair I said to her (the teacher) I'd rather have a human examiner for dd compared to the one in her grade 3 who was, by what dd described, in pocker face mode and she came out thinking he was mean and stern.

Anyway these are my thoughts, for what is worth I think dd needs to get used to people showing their annoyance at poor performances and stop expecting it to be all praise, not just in music but in all areas of life.

This time last year we had our g3 violin exam and our piano teacher who was her violin teacher as well as the accompanist and he left the exam room and said the examiner was very cold through out the pieces, he said it might probably a merit, then we still had a distinction. My trick to get through this stressful period is setting the expectation very low and try not to think about it, plan for the future. I dont set any expectation for the violin g5 exam in 4 weeks at all as if she fails then she will have learnt a lesson to respect exams and to have to put (real) work in, mine truly doesnt deserve more.

I brought mine to a tutor centre last Saturday and was told that she doesnt need a tutor, only practise with the exam format and within required time. There were so many great things I was told about her that I found it hard to believe. Things to do now is for her to switch back to classic readings as she has been on these physic books since beginning of yr4.

Fleur - i do agree with the others; any exam or festival that is unmoderated (in person/video rather than on paper) makes it more subjective than we like, even with lots of examiner training. And yes its something they have to get used to - some they will 'win' from, and others not. But your dd sounded so well prepared, she will pass.

DD on the other hand - well i am with Green - she doesn't really deserve to get more than a pass so what will be will be. She will learn from it , and in the greater scheme it really doesn't matter what score she gets - just that she learns from the process.

Ds also takes his perfectionism to the extreme waffle ( in everything that matters to him not just music) so you have my sympathies Waffle. We've had a difficult weekend here ahead of his exam where he has beaten himself up about minor errors and has then played worse because he's so wound up/ worried about very minor mistakes. I've emailed his teacher and asked him to be nice tonight !! Ds knows what's going wrong with his pieces but to be honest they were fine a week ago and so I think it's going to be as much about his state of mind as anything on the day of the exam. In desperation I have pinned a poster to his music stand which says " Trying ones best doesn't mean it always needs to be perfect. And you don't need to do your best ALL of the time" Right now I think I would rather have a lazy unmotivated child

Another thing is mine never tells us in details how did it go with her exams, test, competition. She only tells us results if she knows straightaway and/or said all is fine, what she think in minimum( on her music exam) but never said much more.( Maybe because we never have that much of time together since she was 5 months old when I had to go back to work) and most of the things she reads, does, learns now I have no idea( our English is rubbish, we are not that into physics, we are non-musical) even for maths ( the only thing I am supposed to know as she is only in year 4) what she is taught in school is different from what we were taught years ago in our home country and we both try not to confuse her. The one time she told me something else was with her G5 piano exam when she said “I didn’t know we have to do scales separate hands so I told the examiner that I didn’t know and she asked if I’d like to try so I tried and it wasn’t too bad— we ended up having a merit even failed scales, didn’t do well with aural. We agreed that we deserved it as we only learn G5 for 3 months or something. Learning from the G5 experience we are given G7 scales now even don’t have piano exam for this term, it doesn’t mean that she practises scales though. She said the other day, don’t worry, there are less scales in G7 compare to G5 and they are very similar. I guess I have to take her word, luckily my piano teacher talks to me. I feel hopeless with violin.

Trumpet - I think dd's approach is her own form of worry about perfection - she can't reach it (of course!) so avoids it but I dont think it's laziness at all. I do think her brain is processing it all when she isn't practicing - just frustrating it's not more visible :)

Green dd will only ever say fine or ok when asked about music, dance, drama or school exams.
Surprisingly I was actually told after Saturday 's theory it was fine, and there was a question on beaming. Never get that much detail

String I wasn't at all implying that your dd was lazy ( I don't think any of our children are) I was more thinking about his friends who are having a lovely carefree time . And I think you are probably right about your own dd spending time thinking about it ( but maybe also avoiding some stress about it not being perfect) unfortunately my ds is far too like me to be able to do that !!

Out of curiousity I was just looking at the grade 6 scales requirements as dd's teacher suggested preparing her for it (when the time comes) and then up to dd if she wants to take it or have a mock exam with her mentor (who used to be an Abrsm examiner at some point). I just realised that the scales will be much easier than the grade 5 ones as dd knows them already (well, allegedly, if you ignore the restarts and playing the wrong ones in the exam) they are now over 4 octaves instead of 3 and a few new requirements such as a couple of staccato scales and some scales in thirds and diminished seventh. Not such bad news then.

I think when you read about the dcs on this thread it is hard to even associate the word lazy with any of them. Can they work harder? Of course they can! But compared to a lot of their peers they are already working bloody hard to achieve all they are achieving on top of academics and sports.

By the way, dd wanted to start competing in trampolining, I had to say to her not yet, to be frank the last thing we need is starting to stress about sports competitions. But once 11+ is out of the way I think we will, it will make her stronger for sure.

DS2's standard answer to absolutely any question about how something went is 'fine'!
Despite the heat, he did a good bash at cello practice yesterday despite having to shake his head a few times to create a breeze! The pros and cons of slightly long hair, I guess. I was more impressed with DS1 who went off to his Japanese lesson despite engineering works diverting the trains AND the heat.
I am working at home and nearly melting.

Hello all, and good luck to those still to take theory, if I haven't missed you all now .

Have received dd report for music, all is good and It says at their age they are expected to practice for 4 hours during the holidays.
She told one of her teachers she didn't want to cut down to this and the teacher was even for dd school

At one time you'd struggle to get her to play piano but she's loving it now. I think it's because she isn't doing graded pieces and just concentrating on chords and Jazz harmony.

She is hoping to start her GCSE study for Italian during the summer, when she'll find time I don't know.
We are going to several Jazz festivals this summer to listen to various bands dh is playing with.

Are anyones kids doing summer courses this year? Mine isn't as I selfishly want her at home with us, so we can take her for a weekend or two away and days out with friends.