January Music Thread

[Wafflenose]

Happy New Year!

This is the new thread for our continuing (6 year old) conversation about all things to do with music - lessons, exams, auditions, theory, scales, practice and whatever else you want to talk about.

I am Waffle, teacher of woodwind, amateur composer, and unpaid consultant watching and commenting on all sorts of woodwind videos that people send my way! I am mum to Goo 12, and Rara 9, who both play instruments, do South West Music School and NCO. Goo plays flute and piano, and has Grade 8 and Grade 5 pending for some time this year. Rara plays cello and clarinet - working within Grade 4 for both, but hasn't taken a clarinet exam since Grade 1, and wants to do Grade 3 this coming term. She's way behind with Theory, so it's theory boot camp again this week. We start back to school late (Jan 8th) so that's good.

Kutik dd is only doing g5 scales on violin but was set a challenge of learning them all over Christmas. I'm not musical so also used a tuner to cheat. Every time one was played until really solid I'd ask her what the key signatures meant. Now she can play them all from memory although I also get told they are "fine" when playing at speed

DS seems to run through all the scales he was given randomly. Should I ask him to master one before moving to the next? But how perfect is enough? If he takes a good few days or more to master one then move to another, wouldn't he forget what he mastered before by the time he completed the whole cycle?

Sorry I sound a complete beginner...

Kutik, after finding my dh's old gr8 books I saw he had each day written with a list of scales for that day so have instigated this even though DS is only doing gr3. So we have a day each on major, minor, arpeggio, contrary motion/ chromatic, arpeggio s again as they are worst, a day in hand for any that need extra and the lesson day with none allocated. It means he hopefully doesn't get scunnered trying to do them all each day but actually only doing what he can already do. Would that work?

waffle at Rara's number of pieces she's working on. Do you always keep that amount of repertoire going on with Goo and her?

Drummer no!!! There's no such thing as a short practice with Rara though... she likes to play everything!

We do 'lucky dip' scales. They have a card for each scale / arpeggio and they pick a couple of cards each day to work on. We work our way through the pack then they get shuffled up and we start again. If there's one that needs more work, it goes straight back in the pack rather than waiting out for the re-shuffle.

Amazing I think keeping a lot of repertoire going at the same time is awesome. Means you're always ready for an impromptu!

Ooh, I like the lucky dip idea, will try that one too to keep up the variety once they are all secure.

kutik

Cross posts, I was answering waffle.
We always had lucky dip scales box on top of piano. With three compartments: one for scales, one for arpeggios etc and a compartment where to put the ones done. Then you start all over again.

I posted this in july 2016 when DS started preparing g8... This was for the lucky dip box.

Awesome drummers! Our system is not nearly so refined! 👏🏻

Drummers the cartoon made me laugh having said that ds decided to play all the major scales the other night and just rattled them off ( I think f sharp major needed a bit of work) so he probably needs less work on them than I think. I must remember to make him do the minors at the weekend - that'll make me popular !

If there's one that needs more work, it goes straight back in the pack rather than waiting out for the re-shuffle.
That's a good system folk. DS has been doing this for marimba.

DD also had lucky dip scale boxes in the run up to exams - a little tip though - make sure the cards are all exactly the same size/colour/shape/texture! You would not believe how quickly she worked out which was f sharp melodic minor without even being able to see the card!

Ooh lots of great scales advice! We do need some kind of system. Drummers great picture - that is pretty much how I feel about it!!
Kutik sadly, I can tell when the scales are wrong. I wish I didn't know. Sometimes they don't even have the right number of notes. Occasionally there's a less than convincing readjustment while playing the note! To be fair, they are easier on the piano! Hence I have to slow him down and make him focus. Then it's OK. The most frustrating times are when he plays accurately and slowly on the ascending scale and fast and inaccurate on the way down.

drummers, according to DS, I am the second gentlest, kindest, sweetest person on the planet!

Thank you all for sharing your experience! I often hear the lucky dip method but have never thought of trying - not sure why. I may try out with his piano scales as he is supposed to do the exam this term. But if I make a card for hand together, single handed, staccato, legato for all the scales and arpeggios, it'll be nearly 200! If we want to rotate the whole thing weekly, he must pick 50 cards each session as he usually practises 4 days a week... It sounds very daunting! drummers, can you please tell me how you grouped for each card?

Violin scales are peasy compared with piano quantity-wise. However, piano is easier to spot mistake so I am less likely to be tricked (though I can't tell which scale so if he plays a wrong scale smoothly and pretends nothing is wrong then I won't notice). Violin is hard to spot especially when played fast. So DS can get away with dodgy scales.

Don't you think it would be great if a professionally organised scale boot camp existed? You would damp DCs there and a few days later they would come out with perfect scales. Any instrumental or music teacher who may be reading this post, I would suggest it will be a great business chance...

Kutik yes! I could just hand DS2 over to someone else! Great idea!
I am prepared to admit the scales started to sound better last night. Two more sessions and at least the major scales and arpeggios should be ok-ish!

Loose, glad scales are shaping nicely in your household!

DS is sitting exam No.2 at the moment. Then that's it. Good bye to 11+ papers. Hurrah!

DH is away at the moment. This morning we received a text from him saying 'have a great day at JD!'. Seriously? I don't know why he can't even remember his son's exam day...

By the way, I even thought it would be great if somewhere like JD or music centre would schedule scale classes in their weekly programme! It's so important yet everybody seem to struggle to learn/teach/practise properly. For some, it's also easily ignored as it's a small percentage of marks in exams but ideally shouldn't.

Good luck Minikutik and well done!

JD dilemma....

Is it going to make life easier, or harder?? Currently we have violin (1-2hrs lesson at home), cello (45 min lesson, half an hour away) and piano (1.25 hrs in total, 20min away) plus stage school from 10-2 on Saturdays which is 45 min away and usually results in 2 trips. I feel like we spend our lives dashing between places, and we have little time at home to fit in the essential practice.

JD would mean giving up stage school, but Noo's secondary school (starting September) has a fab drama department so she will start to get that there and she can carry on with holiday projects etc. at local theatres.

Going to look at JD in Cardiff in a few weeks. Noo not keen on sacrificing theatre school though, and I haven't even broached it with DD2 (they have a 'music first' programme in Cardiff that we would try to get her on if Noo gets into JD).

Then we have the dilemma of leaving their excellent teachers....

Of course, all hypothetical as she hasn't even auditioned yet, but they're being very positive about her chances.

Loose, thank you! We arrived too early so were allowed to wait in the library. DS quickly found a corner filled with a great set of dictionaries of music and musicians, so spent the waiting time ever so busily on searching for composers until he was asked to move to the exam hall. I am in a cafe waiting at the moment!

folk, for us, JD hasn't made our life easier nor harder. DS studies only violin there. He used to have his violin lessons at school during school time, so moving his violin lessons to Saturday didn't make any difference for our weekdays schedule. He still has piano lessons with the same teacher after school, so again no change here. He used to go to Saturday school of my country so was always busy on Saturdays since he was 3, so again no change for us schedule-wise.

If your DD has lessons after school during weekdays and move all of them to Saturday, I think you will see quite a difference as you can drop all the ferrying after school?

However, if you have a great teacher, you should think the move carefully. We've been quite lucky with teachers, but I know quite many people struggle to find the best match. It's very precious and fortunate to have a teacher whose schedule fits in yours, and who is very good to the child.

DS really wanted to go to JD. He almost forced us to apply. It was nothing to do with his teacher at the time, but he was so so willing to the challenge that no one could stopped him.