(Mostly) August Music Thread

[Wafflenose]

Here's a new thread for August, but we're starting it a few days early, because you lot have managed to be super chatty this month! I wonder if things will slow down in August due to people going away... maybe or maybe not?

I'm Waffle, a teacher of woodwind - mostly recorders and clarinet, but I have a couple of flutes currently, and teach saxophone, piano and theory when required. I am determined that the music threads should be open to ALL, including complete beginners and adult learners. It's a good place to discuss lessons, practice, concerts, exams and our generally hectic lives!

I have a DH who plays the guitar for pleasure (no lessons) and two girls. Goo is 11 and has her Grade 7 Flute (March 2017) and Grade 6 Recorder (December 2015 and now pretty much stopped ). She has been learning the piano for 15 months, is refusing to perform in any way, shape or form, but will probably take Grade 5 next year. Rara is 9 and has Grade 3 Cello (July 2017), Grade 3 Recorder (December 2016 and also ceased) and is working towards her Grade 3 Clarinet... probably next spring. Goo is off to NCO Under 12s on Sunday, and we need to pop out to get her some shoes and general supplies in a bit.

I have just realised that we will probably have Grade 8 Flute and Grade 3 Clarinet going on in the same session, Spring 2018. Oh dear! If Rara bothers with Grade 4 Cello, we'll probably have that at the same time as Grade 5 Piano, next summer. Double oh dear!

drummers

Of course the "inborn talent" thing is so limiting - if it's all about talent, and I don't have the talent because I couldn't play The bloody Lark Ascending after 2 lessons, then I might as well give up. It's all that growth mindset thing, isn't it? (Or gross mindset, as someone's DC said ... )

I'm not bothered if someone says my kids are musical if they mean they enjoy music. I would wonder about the slightly more nuanced comments that I think Fleur has been getting from people,who don't appreciate how hard MiniFleur works. I agree practise is the major difference in most cases - I've had people express surprise that my dcs have got as far as they have because their child hasn't. My dcs would be even further along if they practised more! I was really lucky when DS2 started learning piano to talk to a friend whose son also learned. I was amazed how fast he was progressing and she explained the great secret - you guessed it, she sat in on lessons, reinforced what the teacher said at home and he practised! And of course as he got better he got more motivated - something I've noticed with DS2. I do have lovely friends who would support their DS to the hilt if he wanted to pursue music but he just doesn't want to - so it does work the other way as well! They support his sporting activities instead but they certainly don't claim one is better than the other.

My dd gets really offended by the innate talent comments.
Her dad is a world renowned player and recognised famously in his little niche.
The amount of people who comment she must be good because of who her dad is.
I can see it really upsets her, it's as though all her hard work amounts to nothing.
It's even worse if they ask about any other children as ds1 and ds2 chose not to take up music. We encouraged them the same as dd, but they were sporty and not into playing themselves.
They do enjoy music and did have ability had they chosen to continue.
People ask if they are musical, I reply well yes, but they don't play any instruments.
They do have a wide variety of interest in most genre's of music though and will enjoy the good standard rather than rubbish, so they took this from a home environment with lots of music played.

Well, I think it's a bit of both, hard practice and natural talent. And parents willing to support. I am all in favour of children doing music, arts and sport at school (rather than just maths and English). Even if they don't have instruments at home as it may be all that they get to play, and actually really enjoy it. Same with sports, and science etc etc.

But not sure I agree with Drummersmum: "Or how i could look if i went to the gym everyday". Hm, I wouldn't put my hopes up. Sometimes it is really a case of lost cause.

The musical talent thing is complex I think: a self-reinforcing mixture of aptitute, motivation and work. The best musicians I know do of course work hard at their music, but that does not mean that anyone who worked equally hard could be equally good.

DD is clearly "musical" by any sensible definition of the word, but it wasn't at all obvious until she was 12 - and she did learn an instrument from age 5 (stopped at 10 due to lack of interest). Before she started teaching herself guitar 4 years ago, I genuinely would never have thought of her as "musical" - in fact, I never expected her to play an instrument again in her life. So "musicality" is innate, but it requires the right combination of circumstances to express itself.

What was that quote about needing x amount of hours of practice.
Was it 15,000 or something.
I can't remember the musician who quoted it now.

I agree with every word of Misti

Very true, Mistigri!
By the way, I could have stood on a tennis court practising all day every day for my whole youth and I'd still be an uncoordinated mess! (maybe not as uncoordinated, though!)

Wow, you lot... 235 messages and it's only August 1st! If we're going to need more than one a month, you can all help out with starting them!

[wouldn't put my hopes up, that was referring to me not drummersmum obviously)

I totally agree with Misti! I guess the moments I find "musicality" annoying is when it comes from parents that don't see the connection between the two: musicality (I call it inclination) and hard work. You can be a person who has an innate ability to make music by singing and playing instruments, if there's no nurture, opportunity and a lot of hard work you'll never know.

Don't get me wrong, I don't have sleepless nights when people don't recognise dd's hard work, it just annoys me more after a period of hard(er) work when ppl honestly think dd has woken up like that lol.

Like that time when after ds got into a school based on academic ability (a school 3 miles away so no way on catchment) somebody with kids the same age made a flippant comment as her dcs didn't get in "oh I don't know how you get into X school, I think you need to be recommended by your primary school or something". Like she was trying to find a "fault" and minimise DS's hard work just to make herself feel better.

It's not just about hard work though. DD has a natural aptitude for certain subjects at school. She finds stuff easy that others find hard (especially languages and writing). She works, but not as hard as most of her friends.

Similar with music: she does work, but not as hard as she might, or as hard as you would think given her rate of progress.

I think it's important to teach the value of work, but at the same time, children with an aptitude, whether for schoolwork or for music or for anything else, need to understand that they are also lucky ... that they have a "gift", not in the sense of talent, but in the sense that they were given something precious that is not given to everyone.

foundout

mistigiri I agree, some people have inclinations, abilities... But as Orson Wells put it, it's 5% inspiration and 95% perspiration.

loose it may be so, but if you had been put on a tennis court age 5 like some champions and given nothing but that, every free hour of your growing up, you cannot even start to imagine what tennis you would play now. OK, you may not win Wimbledon, but... Pity for your students now, they would not have amazing you!

Gilly it was the book "Bounce" by tennis table Olympic champion Matthew Syed. DS read that book and it had a big impact on him.

Perhaps we use the description "musical" in different ways. I note that I described my DS3 back a few pages as being "musical" . We don't all have the same amount of natural ability.

I guess I would use it to describe him as I know he can play expressively and really feel the emotion in music. The fact is that he doesn't want to spend hours practising to progress through exam grades. My DH, however, I firmly believe that if he practised loads would still not achieve either accuracy or emotion. He simply cannot count beats in a bar or pitch a note or hear different pitches. So I would say he is not musical.

Sorry if I have irritated anyone by saying that I think DS3 is musical. It's probably because I am not musical!

Oh god tennis table. I meant table tennis.

Read about Laszlo Polgar's experiment. He's the father of the Polgar sisters, the best female chess players in history. He believed he could create genius, married someone who agreed and had the three daughters with that purpose:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r

I think dd1 is 'musical', at about 4/5, her lalalaing in a campsite toilet caused a fellow camper who was a music teacher to stop their shower to come out and see who was singing and as soon as she encountered communal singing through hymns at school she pestered for printouts to sing at home. Her instrument came easily to her but I didn't start her early enough or push her at all really practice so now she's not at a very high grade for a string instrument but she gets a lot out of it. One thing I am good at is rooting out cheap or heavily funded courses and opportunities and now she has a wonderful life and education as a chorister and second study instrumentalist at specialist music school. My point about believing that people are potentially innately 'musical' is that i do think that her school that receives so much funding from the government should do massively more outreach work to actively seek out musical children who don't have such focused involved parents. The amount of money required to get a child to even audition level is eye watering.

Truffle good point! I tend to associate musical with being expressive, too.
Teachers say DS2 is musical and I think that's what they mean but I think he's just a great little chap to have in an ensemble - turns up, listens, plays, is happy! However, he's not a big fan of music exams. He's currently complaining about 2 out of 3 cello pieces being boring. I have to check the syllabus as I think he has some alternatives. Or he's just played the current ones too much. Or he's just being awkward!
Drummers you're too kind. I must have some coordination because my hands can do different things on the piano but that skill was never evident in school PE lessons!

I really enjoyed reading about the polgar sisters, as I remember, they all seemed quite normal and still get on too!

Truffle I do think we are safe here to use the musical term with regards to our dcs, we all know that what we mean by that is that our dcs have a desire to learn (that goes up and down at times) and put in the required work (that again goes up and down at times).

What I meant is that there are still people out there who think that musical ability shows without any work related to it whatsoever, without any means to show it.

I don't believe in talent, I believe in having a drive towards a certain sport or instrument and doing everything in your power to achieve the goals you set yourself, be it that you (or your parents) want to become a professional tennis player or a professional musician or you just want to learn something for pleasure. That is my opinion at least.

I promise though that if the third music teacher that we are joining in September tells me dd is indeed talented with regards to music, same as the other two who stated that in the past, I will swallow my pride and admit I was wrong.

Wasn't it in Bounce that it was mentioned the fact that a lot of table tennis champions were coming from the same street in the same city just because they had the facility to practice all day and night and were seeing it as having fun, rather than practice?

I think my definition of 'talent' might be unusual. Barring major disabilities, I reckon I can get everyone to Grade 5 or so, but I think real talent tends to show itself later. I had a boy a few years ago who was able to choose just the right phrasing and expression to suit every style, without being taught. His use of vibrato was sensitive and appropriate... and due to lack of practice, his sight reading was extremely good. I haven't had anyone with so much 'natural' ability before or since, but its showed itself late. I had an amazing little girl for a few years, and she achieved far more than him at a young age. I think it was sheer hard work though.

fleur yes it was in Bounce.

Interesting discussion!

For what it's worth, i think there are a range of basic skills / attitdes / aptitudes that, if present, can manifest themselves in a variety of different ways, and the exact form in which they manifest themselves will depend a lot on exposure / encouragement / serendipity.

DS is well co-ordinated, with great gross motor and increasingly good fine motor skills. he has a good sense of pitch, and a great sense of rhythm. He has an ability to immerse himself in things, a fair chunk of showmanship / extroversion, a bit of competitiveness and a tolerance for hard work in a good cause. He's logical, has a retentive memory and makes connections between different things that he knows. He's not a follower of the crowd, and won't do something just because it is popular.

The first arena in which he applied these basic skills was football goalkeeping. The second is jazz music. He has been equally good at both (professional football academy at 10; county jazz band at 15).

DD has an almost identical set of skills, including the 'musical' ones of pitch and rhythm. She is less extrovert, but has a greater capacity to tolerate endless hard work. She's a very able and musically expressive dancer. She's done music at different points, and is no less basically able than DS, but simply doesn't have the time to both dance and do music seriously.

Yes, there will be some people who have the 'overtly' musical skills to such a degree that they can only be really expressed in 'pure' musical form, but for many with a balanced set of skills that have some that are normally associated with music and others that are not explicitly musical, the skillset can be applied in a variety of different contexts.

Thesecond: thank you, I was thinking of these science events too however thought that mine could be young (9yrs old).

I read all your comments with interest. I know something for sure that my daughter could do better now if I have more time for her. I know that we have to work harder to keep up. Do I want her to work harder then I dont know. I want her to do better and to success however at the same time I know the benefit of her laying on the grass grazing to the sky as long as she likes, running in the park until she no longer wants it. Just making mess everywhere in the house with her science experiment. Our week is almost very hectic that we could only prioritise to find time to see each other a little, to eat healthily and to have enough sleep. My priority is still finding a balance, nothing is too much or too little, none of the girls activity or well-being is ignored. Then yes I am hoping when they are bigger, they will follow their interest/hobby better. For now, the moment I am paying for anything, I dont want her to do it half heartedly as the money was hard earned and its bad habit to just not trying her best.