just out of curiousity......re piano grades

[paisleyII]

i wondered how well my dd was doing at piano as i have nothing really to compare her to as her teacher says she is gifted and one of her three prize students, she turned 9 last week. she has been playing piano for two years and is just about to take grade 4 & grade 1 violin which she has been playing for 6 months. she knows a girl at school who has already taken grade 4 although she started to learn 2 years younger (at 5). just curious is all.... :) we are quite laid back about her playing in as much she does it because she likes it and tbh doesn't practice much, lucky if i can get her to do ten minutes a day

Do get her started on theory. I loved it. I virtually got full marks at grade 7 bar one - misspent teenage years? Anyway it was fun. I''ve taught ours theory and if you do want the chidlren do grades early they cannot do beyond grade 5 unless they have grade 5 theory so it can be a good idea to get on with that (and if they are applying for music scholarships which mine have exams for next week I don't think it does any harm to have high grades early although even if they had not done a single exam they could still enter and do well).

Some children like exams and certificates like brownie badges and others don't need that motivation. Our older who got a music scholarship at 12 had a grade 8, a grade 7 and a grade 6 and he won it. These younger ones have a grade 7 each (age 13) and grades 6 and 7 respectively in something else (and the theory). There is certainly no advantage in doing the exams early unless people want to .

You do get university UCAS points for examps 6 - 8 and if you get merits and distinctions in those you get even more UCAS points. My 20 something graduate daughter for post grade job applications recently had to hunt out grade 8 cello cert etc as that was needed to tot up her UCAS points for the job application.

The bottom line for us though is it's fun and I am so lucky every day to be able to accompany the younger chidlren on the piano. It is often the nicest bit of my day although I'm not saying I got as much fun when they were on the earlier grades in terms of personally enjoying the music.

blimey xen - your family sound TRULY musically motivated, true scholars. i don't think our dd is anywhere near as motivated or gifted as your brood. there is alot of music and fun in our house, dh is a musician, she has been inspired by watching him tour and playing to a fair few thousand over the years, always impresses me as sad as i am as well as watching her granny play in the orchestra/concerts, she also likes to watch the proms on tv as well as 'young musician of the year' prog which is inspiring to her. i don't think she is motivated enough/bit lazy and scatty to get the sort of results your children have but she is bright and seems to love music and have a natural leaning towards it. i think playing an instrument can help them get a job down the line, certainly opens up possibilities ie teacher, playing at weddings (!) and so on, thank the lord she has never mentioned anything about wanting to be on x factor, we never watch that in our house....

It is just all about parental interest more than anytyhing else and they are in a culture and schools where they would be learning latin, singing church music etc etc. I love to accompany them on the piano so it just happens.

I do think starting her on grade 1 music theory and going through the theory book with her at home would do no harm at age 9 if she might want to take a grade 6 at 11 for which she must have reached and passedgrade 5 theory and be very disappointed to have to wait until her theory reaches that level.

She will get the grades because of parental effort. Most music teachers will tell you that if you're sitting with the child every day for 10 mins of practice they do fine. If they don't practise from lesson to lesson they often give up and are hopeless. A lot of it is just practice. The book Outliers examined people who succeeded. It found effort was the key. Bill Gates put in 10,000 hours plus of programmnig. The beatles played 6 hours a day 6 days a week in Berlin - 10,000 hours plus. Mozart put in 10,000 hours plus. The stuff I'm good at is mostly about having done hours on it more than any natural talent. Most parents won't make the time or they just say - go and practice and you get some at the other end of the scale who force them too much but every parent picks their own level which suits their personality I suspect.

xe - that's really interesting. oddly enough i sat with dd, in the room but was reading a paper, when she did violin practice, it made all the difference, she seemed to like me being there, she seemed more enthusiastic. i asked her if she wanted me to go out of the room and she didn't. i would pipe up a few times when something sounded awful and that she needed to focus on that bit rather than go over the complete song over and over etc and it seemed to work. if it takes me sitting in the room & having to listen to some seriously bad violin moments :) then i am happy to do this, she seemed to do more work than if she was told to just go and do it which is what normally happens. i am pleased actually if this is all it takes for her to do a good 20 give or take minutes work!! then great. i am normally too busy however jan & feb are very quiet working months for me. thnks for your post

I certainly found (and their father who is a music teacher has) that if the parent can sit with the child it helps. Good luck with it all.

Yes, ds2 always practices longer and more thoroughly if I stay in the room and show some vague and general interest. I don't stand over him or dictate what he does, but just make encouraging noises at appropriate places!

But it is quite a time commitment and restricts what I do (he's studying 3 instruments at the moment) and I keep wondering when he will be completely independent!

I'mn ot sure ours ever were but that was partly because I would accompany the pieces most days on the piano (and because I like doing that). It tended to mean that the pieces which had piano accompaniment ended up better than the others. I do make them do a few scales for me first. When we had 3 older children with 2 instruments each per night and homework I think (a) they wouldn't have practised each one each night and (b) some of the practise would be alone.

When he sings I always accompany him; when he does organ practice I go with him as I don't like to be in an empty church by myself, so don't want him to be. But he just does that 3 times a week. With piano he sometimes practises on his own, but usually does that when I'm around too.

That sounds as though it works well.

(My "the practise" should be "practice" - I just winced at my post - when a verb - "to practise" has the s; when a noun - the practice has a c... How dare I get it wrong?)

Your dd has progressed quickly, but might slow down. My ds2 plays the violin and got grade 1 after 10 lessons when he was 8. He flew through the early grades, but his teacher said there would come a point when he would slow down. My dh is a classical musician and also thought this would happen and it has. It could be the same for your dd.

Interesting debate about benefits of cramming those grades in when young. My dh would agree that it makes no difference if you get grade 8 at 12 or 18. Dh made slower progress as a child compared to some of his high flying music friends. Yet when he looks at his friends who went off to music schools and NCO, he is the only one left playing now. Perhaps they were more sensible and went for a career which actually earns a decent wage!!

Compared to the average, it is very quick progress, but we all know the average is meaningless as most of them dropped out sooner or later.
I am very interested in Xenia's message about hard work,how much practice do you think is good enough effort ?My ds1 is working on grade 6 now.

sch, without wanting to showing off I could have been a singer. I wanted a reasonably well paid career instead and I know my chidlren's father (organist) regrets his father not pushing them to accountancy or things like that. he did not exams except grade 5 music theory and grade 8 organ and piano I think before his music degree. Most of all I want our children to love music and of course if one was determined to make it a career I would not stop them.

I suppose ours did lots of exams young as (a) it can have a slight bearing on music scholarships at 11 or 13 (b) they seem to like the certificates, the competitiveness of it like showing off your brownie badges I suppose (c) I find they work harder at it and I spend more time with them on it if there is an exam coming up (d) they are likely or are in careers where exams matter a lot as that is our background and culture and learning early the discipline of exams and that you can indeed fail at things and that hard work leads to things does no one much harm.

How much practise is good effort for grade 6? It's impossible to say. Their own teacher wll tell them that. I've always thought my lot practised about a fifth of any one else but tended to do a bit most days. it's when we stop for a few days that it seems to go backwards. In terms of my own self I just played and sang a lot as a teenager as I loved it.

on the issue of ages and grades having had 3 teenagers already I know that it gets harder to have children do what we want as they get older and tha'ts naturla and right - they grow away from us so they can grow up so I suppose another part of my thinking is that if you want them to have higher grades for whatever reason, job applciations, UCAS forms, music scholarships or whatever it is massively easier to get younger children to do that than disaffected stroppy teenagers.

Crikey Xenia I don't know how you get them to practise! My ds2 loves playing his violin in the orchestras he goes to, but not keen on practising on his own. I can probably get him to do 20 minutes every other day - possibly 10 minutes on the other days.

I love your comments on wanting a well paid career! Ds2 says he wants to be violinist when he's older....dh had a look of panic on his face. Dh's family has a history of lawyers and dh often wishes he had pushed down that career line.

I am in year 28 as a mother so I think I just got used to how to get children to practise. What tends to work is it is at the same time every day, not very long and I sit with them and play the piano to it. That seems to work for us but it's not possible if I'm out nor would it have been when we had 3 doing 2 practices a night plus homework (to sit with them).

I think the exams help them to practise too in a sense - if one is coming up that's something to work do, scales to learn etc

If you are successful in business or a profession you can even sponsor orchestras and groups as well as playing. I would encourage them to pick careers where they can in a sense buy and run their own orchestras rather than earn the pittance most musicians earn.

sch - your post made me smile. i met dh as i worked for years for a major record company in the department that looked for and signed new talent. dh was in one of the bands we signed :), love at first sight even though it wasn't very professional fratenising with the 'talent', i worked on his band for a few years before we actually got together. we had little money, i know EXACTLY how the money works in that sort of industry if you are a signed artist, probably different totally in the classical world but the bottom line was he dropped out of a good public school to persue his dream of music even though his parents are both classically trained but they supported him as indeed did i in the beginning as it was his love of music that mattered more than money. i still stand by that actually, music has been a joy for both of us, truly thrilling over the years although he has a 'proper' job now and only tours when the danish band he plays with have a new album out!! if dd chose a career in music i would be happy for her, at least if she can play something she has that choice, i wish i had