October Music Thread

[Wafflenose]

Welcome to the thread for October, which is open to ANYONE who wants to discuss music lessons, practice, exams, auditions, instrument hire/ purchase or whatever related issues you'd like to. Newbies are especially welcome, and we have some each month, often with beginners. All of our kids were beginners once.

I have two DDs. Goo is 12 and plays the flute and piano. She can also play recorders and the piccolo, but doesn't. We've just moved her to another piano teacher because the first one retired, so it's nice to hear her practising again. She has been learning for about 2.5 years and hasn't done any exams... nor is she intending to. On the flute we have extended range scales, the Chaminade Concertino and Bizet's Carmen Fantasy at the moment. She plays in 7 school ensembles and does NCO and South West Music School, although she's likely to be leaving both at various points during this academic year.

Rara is 10 and plays the cello and clarinet regularly, and recorder sometimes. She's vaguely working towards Grade 5 on both, but it might end up being 4 on the cello because of various aspects she's behind in... we'll see. I am still teaching her the clarinet and am currently super fed up because however kind, patient and helpful I am, she behaves in such a horrible way. We can't afford lessons. Ho hum. Rara also does NCO and SWMS. Under 11s will be beyond her, but she'll carry on with SWMS for now.

I am a teacher of woodwind!

I find it all such a worry string . Not sure that we have too many choices either ( ds is looking for someone who will cover a wide variety of completely different styles with him !!) - fingers crossed that it works out for all of them

Hope the new teachers work out Trumpet and Crazy. DD2 has started with a new guitar teacher this term, who she seems to like and started piano lessons too. Both lessons are at school and I haven’t yet met either of them. Don’t hear too much about them.

DD1 has a concert this evening with the county youth orchestra which promises to be good. She’s due a lie in tomorrow as it has been an intensive weekend of music making!

Good luck to miniCrazy for her audition today!

Enjoy the concert double . Ds has sort of recovered from last week and is now off for a week of music making !! No rest for us here

to everyone who has teacher issues. We had some a few years ago for my son and it was really hard. We probably kept an unsuitable teacher too long as I found it really hard to tell her it wasn’t working.

I feel for you melting. I am completely unmusical (cannot even help with rythm) and we had two extra lessons scheduled leading up to the Nco audition. After one of them DD was so tired that she was in tears and I felt so awful. No advice I’m afraid, just . If it is any consolation, my DD seemed totally happy after the audition (all over!) and is giggling away at the moment. We talked about being well prepared, giving it your best effort and then relax a LOT after.

Good luck, minicrazy.

The more I read about audition stresses, the more I worry about how appropriate it is to put our young, impressionable DCs through it. Some are resilient and bounce back from disappointment but some ( like Goo) don't. I know such disappointments are part of life, but NCO children are so young and the fact that "failure" may mean feeling like they've not only been turned down but actually turned away from something they've loved doing previously ( in the case of Dcs who have previously been in one of the orchestras) feels particularly hard.
The age banding brings its own problems too.

I don't know what the answer is - I'm just musing, and feeling very sorry for Goo and others who may feel caught in a no win situation. Music should bring happiness, at this age, not heartache.

Floot - yes I have been musing this too; dd is pretty resilient but she was a little tocked by Goo’s (and others) experience last year; dd has been in it for five years now - it is going to be tough not to get in after that length of time. Don’t really have any answers and I guess they all go through it st some point but yes they are young.

String, I agree they are young. I think what adds the pressure is when you have been in NCO previously; you know what you might be missing and if your friends get in on the same instrument and you don’t it must knock confidence so much. Hoping so don’t have to deal with that this year after 3 years.

Yes,Double, that's what I was trying to say. I can't think of similar situations where this happens, other than NYO, where the children are obviously older and more experienced.

I have been struggling with this as well. So far, our DD isn’t really that worried about the actual auditions (or school exams) to an extent that sometimes drives me crazy. She can be clearly not on top of things and really not worry about it until the very last minute.

The problem for us is that she (obviously at 9) doesn’t realise how early she needs to start practicing and that she needs to practice a certain amount in order to manage. She once realised she couldn’t play a piece at all two days before her orchestra and burst into tears. I couldn’t help her (non musical), but as luck had it, her oboe teacher was able to help her go through the violin music slowly and methodically and eventually she was ok.

How do the rest of you manage this? We don’t practice that much I’m afraid, about 20-30 min a day on her violin and an additional 10min oboe. Some days is she is tired, so we skip practice. Obviously she has orchestra and ensemble work in addition to this, but those sessions she loves, she signed up for an extra school ensemble without my knowledge.

Do we do a lot or a little? Any thoughts would be very helpful. I keep second guessing my self and worrying about it. I completely agree with you string, music should bring happiness....

coffee, that sounds plenty at age 9. If she is crying through tiredness, you're right to step back.
My mantra for students that age is " little and often". The more times the instrument is picked up and played, the better, rather than one or 2 long sessions.
Maybe, if your DD thinks of both instruments as equally important, she could change to 20 minutes on each? The oboe might take a good 10 minutes to warm up, for example, plus playing opportunities will be greater for oboe ( less players around), so being proficient on that is an absolute bonus.
It's good to recognise the difference between a child that is swinging the lead about practising, and one who is just too exhausted - we all know that our children will sometimes resist having to 'work', but genuine protestations of tiredness definitely need to be listened to. It sounds like you're very in tune with your Dd's wants and needs. 😀

floot I agree about Nco. DS2 is pretty resilient, so I will carry on putting him in for in, on the off chance he gets in. But many children aren’t so resilient, and/or are particularly invested in the NCO

I prefer the Pro Corda approach, where they take on a child after a pretty low key audition, and that’s it forever. Whilst there are opportunities to play at the highest level at Pro Corda (Sheku is a Pro Corda alumnus!), they also accommodate a range of ability and experience. They think of themselves as an educational programme rather than an elite organisation, like th NYO. It is, however, easier though to do this for a chamber music programme than for an orchestra, where there are a limited number of seats. I don’t know what the answer is...

coffee. I agree with others that this is plenty of practice. It is about the same as DS2, who is 10. She can do a little extra in the holidays when she is less tired. The key is to be targeted and strategic. She won’t be able to get through everything everyday. I would sit down with the teacher and agree a 20 minute practice routine that she can work through.

As for orchestra, as her sight reading develops, she will find it less stressful when she doesn’t know the part. It doesn’t matter if she doesn’t play every note, as long as she tracks where she is. Again, this will come with experience.

Thank you floot!

That is a good point about relative importance. She might think them equally important actually, we haven’t really discussed it . I guess I never was keen on keeping up with two instruments (DD previously insisted on swapping piano for violin which I eventually agreed to), so when I after quite a bit of nagging from her side gave in and organised oboe rent + lessons, I kind of “let her run with it”.... The amount and difficulty of the music is quite different as well, she is grade 5 on the violin (doing pesky music theory at the moment) whereas on the oboe, she is only doing grade 1.

Maybe I will ask her oboe teacher to give her some practice chart or similar so she can do a bit more if she likes. At the moment she plays her scales and songs - and then packs away.... mistakes seems to come from “running out of puff” as opposed to sighreading/finger issues...

Thank you Taggie. It seems that she is doing a fair amount then . To be honest, she usually sorts things out with her violin teacher herself... my main input to her violin practice is to call to her to slow doing from another room....she doesn’t really like “practice tempo” and tends to charge at which point her fingers sometimes cannot keep up with the bow in pieces like Vivaldi.

To be honest, it is only when we are coming up to an audition, a performance or grade exam that I try to make sure that she really knows what she is doing (repeat lines where she often goes wrong or similar). Sometimes I think that I should let her handle that as well, but I am so worried that she will not practice enough the week or two before (and then be upset about not being prepared as has happened before) that this is when I try to arrange extra lessons if we are able. And then she gets very upset about the extra lessons....and I feel bad ☹️

I will see if I can speak to her violin teacher... they seem to be in an agreement about me meaning well, but not really understanding anything about music though... which I guess is pretty spot on...

I lurk on this thread - love reading all the various musical activities on the thread!

My 11 yo dd1 is doing Grade 3 theory in a few weeks. I'm sure she'll pass it but is going through an "I'm going to fail absolutely everything" phase.

She's still desperate to go to a specialist music school and has another advice audition in December. I really have no idea if she's got a chance - her teacher is being very supportive at least - but she's very keen to give it her absolute best!

Coffee, less time for a grade 1 level instrument sounds very much proportionate to me. If nothing else, the pieces are so much shorter. Tho with DS's horn he doesn't yet practice enough to get properly warmed up so it sounds lots better at the end of the lesson! What I do say is to make something better. I'd rather he picks a couple of bars and fixes something in one piece even if he misses out another piece entirely.
Possible idea in the run up to exams - ask her to perform one of her pieces (or even section of a piece) to you each day, give her 10 minutes say to try to get that piece as good as possible then come in to hear the performance. Might help get her to listen to that piece critically rather than charging through to get on to the next thing. DS absolutely hates me helping him practice so this is one thing I sometimes use to try to steer from afar. And yes, I do the yelling "slow down" thing too

The DCs are both at workshops at RIBA today so I have tried to have a relaxing morning getting lost amongst the changing leaves in Regent's Park. Don't know why I always get lost in that park .

And then I went to Chimes at RAM to get some Christmas music & fun pieces for after their exams. Not sure if they will see it like that but there you go .

Good luck to mini 4strings on her advice audition. What is she playing?

Part of a Vivaldi violin concerto and some Elgar. Or at least that's the current plan! We've got a few weeks yet at least. They also want to hear some scales which will be interesting...

DS has spent all day playing today. On his xbox.

Well earned downtime littlelad!

Sounds good 4strings.
Littleladsdad- downtime is good.

DS 15, talented singer, choral scholar, done TV work sings with NYCGB & sings with a world renowned opera company.
Happy to help anyone with audition tips etc.
Currently needs to get his piano skills up to scratch as hoping to study music at university. His dream is to be a choral conductor.

Welcome, Raine. ☺
You're not in Wales, by any chance, are you?