Spring /Summer 25 - Music thread

[northerngoldilocks]

Time for a new thread for spring!

Come and talk about music lessons, choosing instruments, exams, auditions, specialist schools, orchestras or whatever other music activities are going on. Everyone is welcome, from those with total beginners to those whose children are studying music at advanced levels. Ask for advice or share successes or struggles.

Yeah, we’re doing live for the next one!

Hi - can anyone recommend any fake nails for teen classical guitar players that can be removed easily? (This is such a niche question…)

Not fake nails as don’t know any that would stay on but be easy to remove but what about nail wraps on natural nails. Fab designs and won’t affect playing. Lots online. I’ve used ‘oh my gosh’ ones!

Has anyone done the audition for Future Talent development programme? Was does the live audition (stage 3) involve?

Not got any experience of that one but other auditions have just included some chat about music they like, orchestras they play in etc. Hope it goes well.

@achangeofnameisasgoodasarest I would also be very interested in the Army Corps course. I can’t find anything about a course this year, though. Maybe it has been discontinued?

Is anyone else waiting for Royal Youth Opera? We submitted a video on an impulse, singing an exam piece, but would say it was good rather than mind-blowingly amazing

@Solasum it's definitely going ahead - DD2 has a place, I got the email yesterday. Check instagram for details I just emailed the link on there and got an application form.

Thanks @achangeofnameisasgoodasarest how odd it is on on Instagram (showing my age!)

DS isn’t quite old enough or that level yet, so another year maybe

Hi all, I posted some time back about my 5 y/o who was in the process of picking her first instrument. At the time she was keen on guitar, but in the end she’s going for violin. The music school follows the Suzuki method, which I wasn’t familiar with at all, but reading up on it it sounds quite interesting (although a quite different process to the way I learned my instrument). Does anyone on here have experience with it? Did you/your children like it?

@NeedSomeComfy Im sure there will be some experienced Suzuki parents on here!

My DS started violin at just turned 6, almost exactly a year ago, and hasn’t been following the Suzuki method, but his teacher has used some of the Suzuki books with him and the early ones at least seem really good.

I hope your DD enjoys it! My experience with DS is that the violin is immeasurably harder as a beginner than my own (brass) instrument was, but DS has loved it and it’s been amazing watching him progress.

Suzuki can be great if you get the right teacher

Thanks! By all accounts this teacher is very experienced and seems very nice. Do you have experience with the system? What instrument was it with?

@Compsearch Interesting - why do you think that the violin is harder? I see it a lot as a beginner instrument for small children (there are some 3 year olds in the music school my daughter will go to!), so I assumed it must be an 'easy' instrument to start with.
Great that your son gets on so well. Hoping my girl will too. She's pretty excited so that's a good beginning. 😍

I always think strings are hardest as you have to 'create' the total sound. The interaction between string and bow, and the precise placement of the fingers. With wind and brass, the keys/valves do the tuning for you, within reason. And with the piano, you just have to press a key!

@NeedSomeComfy that's great your child is going to be starting the violin, I hope it leads to a lifelong love of music.
I'm not a violin player but a double bass player so have some string experience. There's so much to learn - posture, bow grip, moving the bow, string names, finger numbers, tuning, timing, reading music. It's great to start learning young. There are other instruments children start a bit older and can be successful on but starting violin as a young teen is challenging.
Also, it can be hard to make a nice sound initially, although I believe Suzuki teachers focus on this from the start. So many young children learn violin young because it comes in tiny sizes, unlike most brass and woodwind which may only have a plastic junior version which is lighter. Also it is relatively cheap for a basic tiny one. A small bassoon is £3,500.

@NeedSomeComfyMy DS started young but he didn’t do Suzuki because we don’t have any teachers in our area. It’s great that your DD is going to start Suzuki. I think/read that it’s very good for the little ones. I hope your DD loves it.

@NeedSomeComfy yes as @herbaceous says there is so much more to think about with strings at the beginning than wind or brass, and intonation is much much more difficult. But the flip side is that it’s helpful to start them young so that all of that is ingrained, and they come in small sizes unlike most other instruments.

Plus Suzuki is obviously geared towards teaching very small children to learn to play so it is definitely possible. I think the parental engagement aspect is key - I was much older when I started (10) and was totally self-directed with no parental involvement whatsoever, whereas I sit in my DS’s lessons and supervise all of his practice, which is very necessary, for him anyway!

My DD mostly studied with Kodaly teachers but we had a Suzuki teacher at one point. DD was around grade 5 or 6 so not a beginner and perhaps not a very relevant example, but the main difference I noticed was her teacher requesting us to listen to pieces as much as possible every day to start playing from memory within a couple of weeks.

Also, DD didn't do as many technical exercises like Galamian etc she had to do with other teachers, but lots of scales every lesson and listening very carefully to perfect the intonation and what they call "tonalisation" which I understand as the quality and beauty of sound. I guess when they start, the little ones do just this - learn to focus on listening and develop music memory which I think is essential for the violinists.

I don't think they learn how to read music that much - at least DD's teacher kept removing her music from the stand and saying it was distracting. I guess it's part of the method.

They follow Suzuki books so it's not like you can pick and choose whichever pieces you want to play. The repertoire was fairly standard baroque and iirc some romantic pieces. Book 6 as far as I remember is entirely baroque whereas ABRSM grade 6 has Bizet's Toreador, Shostakovich, Debussy so much better for exploring other styles. I guess they limit to baroque because they teach technique mostly by playing pieces so book 6 for example is focused on particular shifting. Other methods require a lot of extra technical studies on top of playing pieces.

DD's friends who were with Suzuki teachers from the very beginning now have more precise intonation (enviable! :) ) but often not as fluent reading music (piano and lots of ensembles would help with that in any case).

My DD started cello at 6 and it was tough at the start but she’s still playing now in Y9. I think they really start to appreciate it when they can finally get it to play a nice sound!

We had friends whose children did Suzuki. They had to be VERY involved, which absolutely would not have worked for us, but they all did brilliantly while they were doing it and I'm sure it bonded them as a family.

I just couldn't believe the commitment, which involved things like going on special suzuki camps with the kids and all sorts of holiday things. Obviously the joke's on me now because none of their kids have continued with any music at all whereas I'm trying to work out whether dd2's bassoon is insured for a trip to Europe on Sunday..

DD2 did cello for a while, from the age of 8, just some little school lessons. Has grade 5 and was playing grade 7-8 stuff when she gave up. Strings are HARD.

Not sure she'd even remember how to hold it now, but it did teach her lots of useful things about sitting/tenor clef/tuning etc. And actually the bassoon plays a lot of the same repertoire - definitely at least one professional bassoonist used to play cello.

Think her school friends now would be amused by her £50 3/4 cello in its fabric case.... it's still on the wall at home, I should probably work out what to do with it!

Thanks for this, really useful info! One thing that also struck me about the method from the little I have heard/seen is the deemphasis on reading and instead more memorisation. Very different to how I was taught the flute many moons ago, but I see how it can work.
One of the main draws for my daughter was having group classes with mixed ability kids right from the beginning. We went along to one of these and it was pretty cacophonous 😅but she was really captivated. She is a sociable little thing and very motivated by groups so I think this will be very helpful for her. Of course it's an extra time commitment for us, on top of the individual class and a musical appreciation class which she's supposed to attend weekly 😯

Thank you @sittinginachair for the heads up on this. DD is going to be in the children's chorus. She's quite introverted and it's the first time she's done anything like this, so I'm super proud of her for pushing herself out of her comfort zone.

Thanks again to others for all the suggestions for summer schools too.

For those with younger children - up to about 12 I think - the Royal Opera House is running some children's courses which include the opportunity to audition for children's chorus for upcoming productions - a bit fairer than always going to the same private school and not passing the opportunity around - looking at you Glyndebourne.........

Yes my eldest 2 kids did Suzuki violin with a teacher who was great for them.
But she completely didn’t “get” my next kid and told me they would never be able to learn to play an instrument! 15 years later with multiple Grade 8s under his belt he went on to do his Oxford Music degree…
It made me start teaching though so that was a good thing to come from a bad combination of personalities.

Suzuki groups can be wonderful and these days many teachers teach reading earlier than they once did. Suzuki repertoire isn’t very exciting but again, many teachers supplement it now and also prepare kids for ABRSM exams.

In England I still find Suzuki a bit of a cult. I’ve worked in other Suzuki communities which are much more holistic and probably truer to the original ideals.

Go in with your eyes and ears open.