April Music Thread

[Wafflenose]

Happy Easter! The sun is shining here (at the moment) so I'm hoping spring has finally arrived.

Here's a new thread for anyone who wants to talk about music lessons, exams, practice, concerts, aural, scales, theory, ensembles or anything else music related. Everyone is welcome, from beginners to advanced and also adult learners. I started these threads 6.5 years ago when I had a beginner myself. Her nickname is Goo, she is 12 and taking Grade 8 Flute next term. I think she's finally going to do her Grade 5 Piano in the autumn. When those are out of the way, she's thinking of taking up the recorder again and doing Grade 8 on that, because flute sort of took over and she never got around to it. Her sister Rara is 9, and is currently around Grade 4 on both Cello and Clarinet. She doesn't want to do any more exams for ages, so will probably do her grade 5s in a couple of years or so. Rara is a lapsed recorder player who will be performing on it next month, and she dabbles with piano, glock and accordion. Both girls do South West Music School, although I regularly go back on forth over whether this is still the best setting for Goo. We are pretty rural and hours away from any big cities.

Please can we all be extra careful to make sure that everyone is acknowledged and assisted where appropriate... I include myself in needing to make an effort, but I'm not around all day, every day. This is a lovely, calm, supportive corner of Mumsnet but I do receive a handful of messages from people who don't feel welcome because they or their children are less advanced, or they're not in a position to consider JD/ private school/ expensive instruments and feel left out, or they wonder if it's OK to post about certain instruments/ families. I did say I would try. Thank you all so much!

windmum i'm sorry to hear this, how horrid for you both.

whoops... double posted AND didn't finish my post!!!

Windmum sorry to hear this...

Minijuggling good luck!

Re practice length and times: DD's JD expects them practice each day for the minimum of the equivalent of their one to one lesson times, which is 90 mins total. Some days we don't divide it equally, depending on what is needing most attention. Clarinet is currently needing more, so its often 60-30, but then she'll wander for a bit more funsies piano as she fancies.
Time wise, she's an early bird and also dances after school 3 or 4 nights a week, so almost all her practice happens at 7am.

I wish we could do practice before school but dd is not a morning person (neither am I) and she leaves the house at 740 so short of getting her up at 6 (which would lead to very grumpy practice) we are on evenings! I don’t try to enforce a length of practice...the arguments become counterproductive!

Unfortunately DS doesn't like the 3/4. The length is right but not comfortable... Quite a lot of solo performances will be happening this term too....

Unfortunately DS doesn't like the 3/4. The length is right but not comfortable... Quite a lot of performances will be happening this term too....

Ah... double posts... Sorry...

Quick question for you folks... If your DC is doing an ABRSM exam, should they always show a variety of different styles in their piece selection or is it ok to simply pluck an A, B and C piece off the syllabus.
My DD's teacher is telling her that her preferred B and C pieces are too similar. She likes them though as they suit her style of play. We're only talking Grade IV cello here... (I'm trying to avoid the odious Shepherds Hey that 90% of students do.) For anyone familiar with the syllabus she likes B1 and C6.

I always try to encourage my students to pick their favourite piece from each list but also try to show a variety of styles.

Re, insurance. I remember someone advising to add some onto the amount of the value to allow for inflation - for instance you buy £5k instrument but insure for £6k. How common is this? I've never added value before but it may be because we've never bought anything too expensive and unlikely to increase the value over the year anyway.

MidLife different styles would be better. I veto things occasionally for the same reason. I had a Grade 2 clarinet player who liked all the 'low notes' pieces (by coincidence) but insisted she had to show off the high register too. I figure that if they like two pieces and can live with the third, that's good enough.

Goo is planning to play two Baroque pieces for her Grade 8 exam, plus something contemporary. I am hoping that's OK... they are very different.

Sound advice Waffle re exam pieces - I shall try and remember this . I think ds's are usually quite different I'm not sure how he picks them . For his jazz this term each list focuses on a different style anyway .
Kutik I don't know about insurance but even though we paid a second hand price for Ds's trumpet they wanted us to insure it as new so that the cost of replacement would be covered , so maybe that does make sense.

I put 10% more as advised but just wonder if it is really necessary. I understand sometimes the value will go up, but if we review the value every year, no need to put the 10% now. NO?

Thanks for the advice. It's a shame she'll only be able to play one of the two pieces she likes best, but I hear you when you say that variety is important. DD is flying high after getting a distinction in Grade VI in her first instrument recently and even jack potting out with a magic 30 in one of her pieces! She was tickled pink.

On a totally unrelated matter I was just doing a bit of research earlier into a piece that DS1 is playing in orchestra this term and came across a lady pianist I had never heard of before called Martha Argerich. I haven't been able to stop listening to her all day. How simply incredible is this performance?

She's totally mesmerising isn't she? I started reading up about her on Wikipedia and it's amazing that her parents were given diplomatic roles to enable her to study abroad when she was young. Full credit to the Argentinian government for that.

Thanks for the heads up on Martha and Kissin. I'll listen to them tomorrow.

Not watching young musician tonight ( so I will try hard to avoid reading our discussions later) instead listening to BBC young brass award on Radio 2 including one of ds's AYM friends - they are all completely amazing I have no idea how they will decide on a winner - though obviously Ds has a favourite

Though I think Ds was a bit torn as the cornet player played one of his favourite pieces !! ( Guess what he wil get out to practise tomorrow!!)

I watched bbcym with kids again today. Lovely to see all the different instruments. Our favourites were the recorder player and the clarinettist. Though it was somewhat hard to tell as kids' enthusiasm was such they barely stopped talking for 30 seconds straight throughout I might go back and listen in peace tomorrow.

Cat
Ds's AYM friend didn't win but they were all truly amazing performances . It was however the cornet player playing ds's favourite piece that did win - I did think he might .

I desperately wanted to go and see the woodwind final as I play 4 of the 5 instruments (not as well as the competitors, I'm sure!) and did look into it, but the logistics of Birmingham twice in one weekend were too difficult. If I had managed to go, Goo would never have forgiven me for going without her, then Rara would have wanted to go, it would have got quite expensive if we'd gone on the train (DH needed the car) and far too late on a school night. It sounds amazing though. For anyone who's just joined the thread, we don't have a TV, but went to see the Strings final and were spotted in the audience!

Apparently South Westerlies had the best spread of cakes according to NCO (got email from them on the next rehearsal). Immediately I thought of folk's cupcakes.

Haha yes, folk was mainly responsible for that! And very nice they were too!