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!

patricks. That’s brilliant priorities! I love reading the boys’ old books. A classic from Adam was a Mother’s Day piece from y2 / y3. Rather than ‘I help my mother by doing the washing up/walking the dog/tidying my room’ etc, DS2 wrote ‘I help my mother by playing my violin in tune’. Quite right too

Double, didn't your DD spend stormy nights in a tent before? Or was it someone else?? Hope the weather gets nicer as the forecast says and she enjoys her hiking trip!

Taggie, those innocent work at school really reveal family life behind the closed door, don't they? DS had to write about himself and family in his first English lesson at new school. I would love to read how he described 'us'!!

Well remembered Patrick! Yes, she seems to attract the bad weather when she camps

It may not be entirely her fault. It's hard to avoid when you live in this country.

No music news for the weekend here. It's dds once monthly weekend at her dad's and she point blank refuses to take her instruments there. It means at 7pmwhen she gets home I'm the horrible parent who says she should practice at least one!

She already has an excuse lined up for theory club time this week...but hope to get her back there soon. We are using the ABRSM books which are great when she has support but are there any which are more instructional? I can't help her with the above books at all.

I have just ordered the how to blitz books too as the Abrsm ones seem very dry. Not received them yet but will comment when DD has tried them. There is a theory club at high school but she needs to be getting going before next year I think. We've done the books 1 and 2 from Abrsm but have ordered 4 and 5, hopefully we can fill in the gaps from grade 3 .

Hello - it's another post-CYM clueless question here for DD2 (9, plays flute). Sorry! All well with the wind band this week, thanks to all of your help she came out beaming from that one. However she was also asked to join a junior folk ensemble this week, which makes the day pretty full.

The folk ensemble was mainly fiddles and harps, and one other flute who was as confused as she was. She came out crying and said that she wasn't able to do it. The leader requires them all to play by ear, which is lovely and I'm sure how folk 'works'.

However, she doesn't have perfect pitch - and he's not telling them what note he's starting on. Her sister, who does play violin, could play along by ear quite happily without knowing that the melody starts on E or whatever but I'm not sure DD2 can. I've tested her by turning her round and playing a quick phrase on the piano. She can play it back on flute if I tell her what note she's starting on, but not if I don't. And she doesn't always get it right.

Anyway, gist of it is that she doesn't want to go back to this ensemble. Should I make her - or does she not have the skills for this one? Or can I explain to the tutor that she'd be able to do it if she knew what key she was in, for example, or a starting note?

Any thoughts very gratefully received!

NB has another audition - on precisely the same day and at the same time as the first, at the far end of the country. Polite 'what do I do now?' e-mail dispatched....

Hi @minisnowballs - as you might guess from my alias, I have a passing interest in folk music. It is great that your DD wanted to go and try it out and I'm so sad that her first experience wasn't as fun as she would have hoped. It's a learned skill, going into an ensemble and having the confidence to play along. This is how most folk 'sessions' work - someone will start off a tune, which may or may not be known by the other participants, and everyone else picks up and jumps in. It can be tremendous fun, but also very daunting - as I have experienced myself as an adult!!!! It's sometimes quite uncomfortable not knowing the tune, but eventually you get enough experience to recognise the key and toot along with some fitting arpeggios or scalic phrases that seem to fit. There are no rules, and everyone gets it wrong, especially at the start. It's a fantastic skill to learn but as with other aspects of music, playing by ear and improvising take lots of practice! So she won't be able to do it right away. Btw, I don't have perfect pitch either - sometimes the session leader will announce the name of the piece and the key its in but not always. She will learn by trial and error to pick this up as she plays.

There are lots of lovely books of simple folk tunes out there - Boosey and Hawkes do some very nice ones which come with a simple accompaniment for a second instrument, and also a CD. We often use these books for sight reading. It may help DD to get familiar with some of them for fun, and even if she later encounters them in a different key, she will know the tune and will find it easier to work with that. Also, the easy accompaniment (for a second instrument) will give her ideas for the sorts of things she could play instead of the tune in an ensemble situation.

Look up the Conservatoire Folk Ensemble - they have a website and are on YouTube. This is the best recommendation I can give you for sharing the JOY of folk music and it may rekindle DD's interest after her ordeal this time.

Perhaps she could also just go along and listen for a few weeks, to get familiar with the tunes and watch what happens, before getting her flute out again?

Or maybe she just needs to take a break and try again when she is feeling more confident.

T

PS I fully expect this is what Mini-Folk will end up doing with her years of classical training

minisnowballs im not familier with cym so please disregard this comment if it's not relevant but a couple of things spring to mind.

1. It is probably worth finding out if the leader is happy to give the starting note / key if your dd asks for this or if they expect them to be able to manage without.
2. Will her teacher at cym cover these skills with her? Or is it a case of having to figurer it out on her own?

My now 10 year old flute player was completely baffled last year by being given a lead sheet with chords in a smilar setting and being expected to play, but after some teaching on how to approach it she got it and is now happily playing melody lines and harmonising by ear, no lead sheets just by ear. She doesnt have perfect pitch so theres some trial and error to find the key usually.

Thanks for your thoughts. I'll take a look at the link, folk. She's not a child who is used to not getting it 'right first time' - and she's a dreadful perfectionist so I think it was a shock that she couldn't just do it. She does need a lot of reassurance that she is in an ensemble to learn - not to be perfect immediately, so I shall keep pointing that out to her.

Mendingfences her teacher seems to concentrate on the classical stuff - I think the folk bands are a fairly new addition to the programme and maybe there isn't that much crossover yet. I think it would be an amazing thing to be able to do - but it maybe a little longer before she's ready. The whole thing is a big step up for her anyway, so maybe it was just a little too far from the comfort zone for her third week there. I'll talk to the teacher and find out what's best.

I don't know anything about folk ensemble so can't add any useful word to folk and mending's great advice. But I just wanted to say a few things about perfect pitch.

You don't really need to have it to enjoy playing by ear. What you need is good relative pitch which can be gained by right training. It can get as close to and even better use than perfect pitch. Actually people who has perfect pitch also need some sort of training or at least some sort of exposure to right environment/experience to be able to use the ability - they've got to understand what they hear. They are born with the ability to locate a note without any reference/guide note but they won't know the use of it without some sort of musical understanding. Apparently many people with perfect pitch don't realise they have it simply because they haven't come across right exposure or perhaps they don't play any musical instrument so little chance to find out what they own. It's a totally separate thing from being musical and it's not an indication of one's musical ability.

I just wanted to say this because I sometimes see people claiming they don't own perfect pitch with disappointment and really there is nothing to be disappointed!

Thanks for the How to Blitz recommendation, I've ordered one so we shall see how it goes.

Patricks is right about perfect pitch/relative pitch. I have perfect pitch, but mainly use relative pitch when playing. Identifying notes for me is like identifying colours. It is always obvious what the note is, but not always important/relevant/efficient to know. For example, I was improvising I would be aware of the key by the context and modulations, not by counting sharps and flats. This is something that comes with experience and practice.

Taggie, DS also has hypermobility, which is most noticeable in his hands ( of course!) His index fingers collapse on cello and piano, and his bowing thumb bends in instead of locking out.
I had never considered Alexander technique - thanks for mentioning it.

Can't, that's typical timing! Hopefully, one or other of the colleges will give NB a different date. It must happen all the time, if students have applied to all of the colleges.

Always happy to recommend folk bands 🤣

Just before bedtime, DS told me his violin teacher said she would want him to come to her forthcoming concert. It's relatively a low key concert at a small church and no charge. We'll probably have a moment to talk to the teacher after the concert. Should we bring something for her, such as a bouquet? It's a quartet so there will be five players including the teacher. Should we bring something for all of them even though we don't know them?? We've never been to teachers' concert like that so I have no clue the unspoken etiquet. What's more, it'll be the first time for me to have a contact with the teacher (we haven't exchanged any email/phone call nor haven't met face to face yet!)... Any advice would be very much appreciated!!

No you wouldn't normally take anything patrick, just enjoy. They might have a leaving collection for something (church funds etc).

(Quartet, 5 players?? What's up there?)

Really? No flowers? That's easier than I thought! Thanks, cat. I am also a bit confused by the name of the group vs the number of the players. But there seem to be two violins, two violas and one cello and they say they are 'quartet'... I'll find out what's up when we are there, I suppose!

Patrick - they are probably an established quartet, who have drafted in an extra viola for the occasion. Have a wonderful time!

Thanks all re folk. We have listened to some stuff - we've quite a lot of semi folky stuff in the house and hear a bit at festivals, so she's certainly used to the blend of instruments from things like Kate Rusby and Rubber Wellies... but the full on 'sitting in a circle improvising' thing is new to her.

We've established she finds it easier to play by ear on the cello (second instrument) than on the flute - so we've done a bit of that. she managed to play back the skye boat song for me this morning on cello when I played it phrase by phrase to her on piano (I play by ear myself so it's easy to start something like that on any key). I guess if it's a learned skill then this will help her ear? She wasn't watching the keys...

I'll also send an email to the teacher.