Violin Lessons

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My DD is 8 and is devastated that her friends are being offered violin lessons through the school, but she wasn't picked. I would like to let her take some private lessons, but they all seem incredibly expensive and long. An hour is really too much at the moment I think. Does anyone have any experience in booking/taking violin lessons?

is there a wait list at the school? When DS started, a couple of kids dropped out after a couple of weeks or three and kids from the wait list made it into the lessons!

Think they have to be chosen Catherine. She went thru 2 auditions with her friends but was not chosen, so maybe not showing enough natural talent. Her sister does the lessons and said the teacher does not have waiters, just takes those who have passed the auditions.
Think private lessons only way to go for her, she is desperate to try!

How disappointing for your daughter. I would definitely not make assumptions about 'natural talent'. When my daughter was that age, we were very sceptical about her natural musical talent but luckily, her school didn't require auditions for instrument lessons. Show now plays two instruments, is still really keen and is planning to do her Music Higher next school year, playing both.

My DD was not one of the "chosen" ones and was devastated. 2 years ago she begged me for a violin for Christmas (she was 12). I bought her a cheap violin and
Found a wonderful teacher. She is now flying ahead so much so that she needed a much more expensive violin.

If you want details of her tutor I can give you her email address.

I positively despise the idea of aptitude testing for music. Everyone has a sense of pitch and rhythm in there somewhere, or they wouldn't be able to function. Walking is a rhythmic activity, if you weren't able to keep a beat you'd struggle to co-ordinate arms and legs to get anywhere. If you had no sense of pitch you couldn't carry on a conversation, as you'd be unable to modulate your voice to show emotion or demonstrate asking a question. These tests only measure exposure, or otherwise, to standard Western classical music devices, not any capacity to learn these after teaching begins. Imagine if a similar measure were applied to other subjects - sorry, your child did not score well enough in the letter recognition test to be taught to read and write.

But anyway, even if we assume that music talent is born into people, far more important are the joy of playing music and a commitment to the hard work involved in doing so. So what if the child will not become the next Nigel Kennnedy, will he practise? Will he seize on every opportunity to play in orchestras? Does he swoon with passion for at least one musical genre? It misses the points of enjoyment and personal fulfilment to select children based on some poorly defined idea of 'talent' or aptitude and skip over those children who want to play. Some of the children who are selected for lessons had never given it a passing thought before and then this gift falls in their laps - are they ready for it? If they don't love what they are doing, it's wasted. Life is not only about being super brilliant at things, it's about finding a passion you can indulge to become a rounded human being. Ask any music therapist - some of their clients will never do much more than rock in response to an instrument or bash a xylophone and smile, but those are not valueless moments.

Not to mention that the test favours people who have already been able to afford private tuition, who then move over and fill up the spaces in the school tuition instead of the original goal of widening access. A child with 2 years of Kodaly musicianship classes behind her will get selected as having musical aptitude. It's such a silly system.