July Music Thread

[Wafflenose]

I was celebrating the end of a VERY busy week with a glass of and realised it's now just past midnight, and therefore July! Have a new thread!

The music threads are for ALL musicians, young and old, beginners and advanced, and every style of music!

I have two DDs, Goo (11) who is currently stropping and eye-rolling her way through her last few weeks at primary school, and Rara (9) who is funny and creative. Goo is working towards Grade 8 Flute, and has been playing the piano for just over a year. She is refusing to take any exams or perform on it though. Rara has her Grade 3 Cello exam coming up soon, and is just moving beyond Grade 2 Clarinet now. Both played the recorder from age 3/4 and got to a really good level, but other than helping out with my school groups, they don't really play any more - they are particularly obsessed with the flute and clarinet.

I am a teacher of woodwind - currently about 80 recorder pupils (many group taught) in two schools, plus two private flute pupils and six private clarinet pupils.

Fleur, apparently Bartok had huge hands and his music reflects his ability to reach wider notes. I remember DS had to hop a note instead of sustaining somewhere near the end!

earling and Olly, thank you for your kind words. DS enjoyed learning but also the friendship with those who share the similar heritage. We visit my home country every year. We always have fab time there. Hopefully it keeps DS's interest in the language and culture.

Olly, a merit is great! Congrats . Over the rainbow is a lovely piece and it gets better and better as your playing develops. My DD still likes to play it, and I think it is great for vibrato practice too.

Do have a look at the Rondeau for G4 which can be an impressive piece, especially with lots of dynamics.

Hope mini string and se22 enjoyed today's prom, we went this afternoon and had a wonderful time after she had a ball at the RCM.

Hi mini yes it was fab. Although dd might be a little tired for orchestra in the morning

How is everybody doing? Very quiet on the thread. I guess lots of people are off on holiday, we're still around till the 4th but it is quiet here also.

Our time is now filled with MAT practice and I could scream, she's going from 44 to 48 to 50 back below 45. She needs 46/47 to be invited for an audition. To be fair I don't even know why I am putting my hopes up, there are only 11 music places at the girls grammar and dd doesn't even want to go there lol. I would send her there though but very little chance to get in so I should stop hoping for it.

Kutik indeed there are some big stretches there, thank god for the pedal.

How is everybody else?

Very well done Olly!

Kutik, both myself and my husband came from South east Asia, we studied our higher degree here and ended up staying the last 13 yrs. At heart, we still belongs to home. I have a rule, only our native language is spoken among us, home or outside unless we have non-speaker. Since last Sept, before our Sunday Orchestra, although our weekends have been only resting time/family time. We go home (almost) every year, born in the capital, I dont enjoy much the over population/polution for too long, we usually end up staying in a holiday resort almost the whole time with grand parents and relatives. Home is more of where our larger family is, however when I go anywhere for more than 10 days I do miss my home here. I dont realise that I have fallen in love with London where my children were born and are raising up. I feel I belong to where I live now too. We still keep our culture(however we dont have many celebrations): sharing a nice meal with neighbors(all are English), giving them a copy of our keys, open the back garden yard etc. Every summer I teach my 9 yrs old read and write(the last 3 summers). She can read well however her writting is more of year 1. I write her a small note everyday (as I leave home eay in the morning and never see them in the morning) and write to her sometimes when I am angry and disapointed or overwhelmed with love and passions and the notes are in our native language. So yes, you can still (partially) keep your culture (a little bit) without going to a weekend school(we have never been).

We are all OK, nothing to report here. I was worried the July thread would run out, but I now think it will last. Neither of the kids has done any music practice for around 10 days, and Goo is a nightmare to motivate at the moment. It always gets left until the last moment! They are starting again today.

DS is away on tour at the moment, back tonight and straight into (the second day of) orchestra course. makes a change from the slow pace of life post GCSEs!

We are practising grade 5 pieces, including Romance from Gadfly. An hour or so a day. Her teacher is away for two weeks. It's nice because on school nights it all feels quite rushed. Since NSSO and G4 results DD is just really interested in playing more. Last two days, she has been chasing me to play. I do make her practice piano, grade 2 in Dec, on her own, as I work from home and that would be quite a lot of time just on music.

I am wondering when she might practice violin on her own - she says it is not the same, and I have to be there. But at the same time it is quite nice to have that individual time with her - with 3 DCs it can often just be crowd control.

But currently there is no time for starting violin with younger DD - who is completely different in any case and I imagine it will be a lot harder. She is only 6, but already the most opinionated person in the family..

We aren't taking a holiday. But not rushing around is very nice. Having a morning coffee in a cup instead of a travel thermos in the car on the way to three different schools!

Sorry Waffle. Will try and manage my posts so as not to fill up the thread too soon!

I'm impressed with the practice!
DS2 (to be fair) did do about half an hour on the cello yesterday😀
I'm off to do a bit of piano now. Spent nearly all weekend marking so I owe it to myself!

Green, thank you so much for the encouraging, positive message.

There is a slight difference between your case and mine though - I am only person who is non-English in our family as DH is a traditional English man, and I am surrounded by his equally traditional family and relations! So I appreciated the extra input and social side the Saturday school offered. But I am more positive today, certainly recovering from the initial sadness!

We spend 6 - 8 weeks in my home country every year. I am also a city girl, but our city has easy access to mountains, beaches, rivers, forests and even hot springs! So I do feel London is where we belong but we don't miss it at all when we are in my country! We also travel around as it's nice to go on a holiday with my parents as well as to show DS different faces of the country at each visit.

DS loves the country (and foods...) so far - I made sure he has fab time every time we were there. So hopefully I don't need to fight too hard to keep my culture alive in our family without the third party's help! I will keep talking to him in my language anyway, however the down side of it is that he will copy my way of speaking so he sounds very much feminine (which he is not aware of)!

I've name changed but been lurking and occasionally posting for a while. DD is practising daily of her own volition but seems to have been set a very repetitive set of exercises and two short pieces so I suspect this is on top of eg. polish all gd5 scales or some similar omission!

We have her residential course pieces to practise but I am scared to show them to her (when we arrive home from a few days away) as I am scared she'll announce them impossible and have a big flounce.

Yes, it definitely is easier for us with both parents speaking the language.

Niggle, I dont really know how you all manage 2 musical children not mentioning 3, we used to have one of us in here with 5 musical children.

Piano lesson today. I will be presenting in the lesson. I havent had one for a long time(maybe a year ago?). I was very honest with our teacher and sent him a text and told him that there hasnt been any practice as we had loads of guesses over the weekend and we had the whole week off next week as a break after violin exam. Hopefully he has a plan for us today.

Waffle and other clarinet(moms) - any suggestions for bass clarinet piece for the early autumn? Not for nco but for JD orchestra entry auditions

This looks really hard, can anyone reassure me?!

Ooh! The results are through! DS2 got 125 for grade 4 piano, a merit! I am so proud of him!
I am also taking a tiny bit of credit for his scales mark as that reflects a whole load of nagging on my part...

Well done Loose and miniLiose fantastic score! Know what you mean about the scales

Oh Loose, a massive well done to your DS2 and to mommy Loose ofcourse!

Waffle or any other knowledgeable clarinet people: I would be very grateful for your advice.

DS2's teacher suggested that he begin learning the scales for ABRSM Grade 8 clarinet over the summer holidays and he is keen to start doing this. He has the ABRSM book of scales & arpeggios for Grades 1-8. However, when I looked at the syllabus to confirm which ones he should learn, it seems to be changing.

The 2014-2017 syllabus included 94 of the scales / arpeggios in the book and they had to be able to play any of these.

The 2018-2021 syllabus (which he will be doing) looks different, and only features 48 selected scales & arpeggios, some of which aren't in the book.

Have I misunderstood the new syllabus or have they really halved the number of scales & arpeggios they need to learn?

I have tried to tell him that learning any of them would be useful, but his ASD is making him worry about which scales to focus on before he sees his teacher again in September.

Well done loose

Well done loose!

TheSecond no advice on grade 8 as we are a long way to get there but yes the syllabus for clarinet has changed from 2018 and my understanding is that the scales are not as many as previously (for all grades) I am sure Waffle will clarify. You can now buy a pack with all you need like this one (there must be a grade 8 also I would assume)

shop.abrsm.org/shop/prod/ABRSM-Clarinet-Exam-Pack-2018-2021-ABRSM-Grade-5/2301808

Hi Second yes you are right; the. Ew books are out now and also the syllabus is on line so you can check. On the move or would send you a link. New scales and sightreading take affect from Jan, pieces from spring session. View seems to be it has been made 'easier' and consistent with other instruments

Thank you Fleurdelise and stringchild
The 'exam packs' only go up to G5 but there's a new G6-8 scales & arpeggios book (2018 onwards) which I've ordered for him.

The G7 scales book doesnt look as scary as the G5 (around the same amount, just "different") so the change might have been there, this is for piano.

We had a lesson today and it was again all about "counting", I was a little bored, an hour was long for me. Still our teacher said we dont need to spend time on scales, they are purely labour, he said they never spent time on learning scales during lessons in G5. This I didnt know as I am sure for violin we still had to "learn" scales in lessons. Sight reading was good, she is sight-reading a short however challenged piece(will take a copy after tea) to practise on couple if things(sorry I couldnt catch up, all this fingerings on how many octaves).

Forgot to say, happy moving to couple of us earlier. Moving to a semi-detach is my life time goal(stamp duty is our killer).