Any Music teachers around?

[MerylSqueak]

My son is in y10 and plays electric guitar. He joined GCSE Music late because the other subject he was doing no longer had a teacher and he's struggling. The curriculum seems to be based on piano notation ( I am not a musician!) and he doesn't get it. I asked his ( in school) guitar teacher to prep him for the music theory that goes with guitar but he doesn't seem to do so.

Examining board is WJEC.

How can I best help him to make the jump from guitar notation to piano? I bought the ABRSM grade one theory book and we do a page a day but I don't know if it's going to be enough.

Yes work through the discovering theory books. They are very clear and explain concepts well.

grade 1-5 ideally

the series come with an answer book

anything not understood take to guitar teacher

can guitar teacher extend lesson time to include weekly theory?

We can book a maximum of half an hour, which he has. The teacher doesn't seem to want to do it.

Thank you for the reassurance about the books. I suppose I'll be able to learn at the same time if it just goes step by step.

Many people offer online theory lessons. Some guitar teachers may not understand the theory side themselves. I know from experience. Ofcourse many would.

Many schools have instrumental teachers that teach theory in addition to their instrument.

I have pupils that come to me from other instrumental lessons purely for the theory side. Ask if this is the case at your school.

otherwise there is loads of teachers who offer online theory. Theory does help enormously with GCSE so you are on the right track.

WJEC or Eduqas? Eduqas is the English schools side of WJEC. I teach this specification in an English school.

Your DS would benefit massively from being able to read from staff notation, but for GCSE decoding is enough. He needs to be able to recognise notes on the stave and work out what they are. Tab/guitar notation is ok for rhythms, but GCSE students do need to be able to read and write simple staff notation. The set works for GCSE require students to be able to work out treble, bass and alto clefs (Eduqas - not sure what the current WJEC ones are). My students can generally read one clef reasonably; pianists can do treble and bass, but very few are fluent alto clef readers, but it doesn't matter. As long as they can work it out to be able to identify chords, it's fine.

This is going to sound mean but teachers like his guitar teacher annoy me. They should be able to cover basic theory. It's not rocket science. I teach grade 5 Theory as a lunchtime club which I advertise as "I will teach you how to pass it". We don't work through the books because they are tedious - I work on the basic premise that everyone has covered reading notes at KS3 in my school and I show them how to tackle each sort of question.

I would look into some theory teaching from a sympathetic person to fill in the gaps. The WJEC/Eduqas courses do not require grade 5 knowledge - they are more akin to grade 2 or 3 in ABRSM Theory, but there is not an exact correlation as the specifications are different. Happy to advise by PM if you prefer.

Thank you for your advice. I really appreciate it.

He is doing WJEC. His set works are Anitra'sDance and The Manic Street Preachers. To my untrained eye, it looks to me like he can simply rote learn a lot of that material.

I'll have a go with the books and look into tutoring if we don't get on.

I am annoyed with the guitar teacher. He shouldn't have said he would do something he had no intention of doing. There also doesn't seem to be any direction to the classes. I thought he'd be prepped for grades but nothing of that sort seems to be going on. But that is by the by really.

I’d definitely recommend out of school music lessons - both because you’d have a different (hopefully better!) teacher, and less chance of time pressures squeezing it into the school day, running late etc.

I feel for your son! It’s horrible to have something looming like that. Music theory is a great thing to know and it’s actually fun when taught in the right, non-daunting way.

IMO you want at least an hour lesson a week, half hour guitar and half hour theory.

On top of that here are some very good music theory YouTube channels, particularly Sharon Bill, Rossella Rubini and Music Matters, all of whom work through the Discovering Music Theory books if I remember rightly. Very good to have an in-person teacher alongside this too though. Music Matters is a fab YouTube channel but goes very in depth so just make sure you’re using it efficiently / keeping at the level he needs.

Also if the teacher can help him understand that learning theory might be really dry but in the long run it makes music make SO much more sense and gives you so much more freedom and creativity then that’s ideal!

Thank you very much. I will look at those. I suspect it will come down to out of school teaching because of his performance element next year.

He's on composition now and completely lost, but we might just have to accept it's not going to be a great mark. I'm going to talk to his GCSE teacher who is great. He says she's always busy in lesson, which I'm sure she is because she's really hands on, but she might expect my son to be able to cope because he's pretty bright and he probably won't push for attention in class.

Do you have a local music service?

We do. The children have had instrumental lessons with them.

The guitar teacher may not be that confident in staff notation. To be honest, their role is to prepare them for the performance elements, not the theory. I would have a look at the specification and see what is required. There are lots of very helpful people on the extra curricular music thread who would know how to approach the theory elements.

Why is he lost on the composing @MerylSqueak ? The 1st one is a free composition, so my advice for this is always to play to their strengths. If he is a guitar player, compose a song or piece for rock group (guessing here as if it's classical guitar it could be a study). The briefs for the other composition are released on 1st September as that piece has to be composed in year 11. We gets ours composing throughout, so hopefully they have the outline of something already that can be adapted to fit the brief. Submission is an audio file which could be computer generated, or could be him playing it plus either a score or annotated lead sheet. So if notation isn't his thing but he is good with e.g. GarageBand, use that. Many of the packages will convert to notation.

Happy to carry this on by PM if you think it might help.

He has just started with a theory teacher who I have asked to focus on the free composition. He seems to have a plan.

I'm not sure why he's so stuck apart from the tab/ staff issue. Also, he has refused to use Garage Band as his teacher has told the class that it's more difficult for them to reach the higher grades which, from his teenage point of view, makes it pointless.

I know the first composition is supposed to be done but it isn't so hopefully they will let us still submit it. I know when DD did it a year ago they didn't start until y11.

It doesn't actually matter when they complete them. Until our new HoD arrived last year, ours mostly had them in draft form then tinkered, sometimes right up to the last minute. The only stipulation for timing is that the briefs are released on 1st September of y11. We try to get one essentially done in y10 now to take the pressure off because all performances also have to be recorded in the school year of submission (y11) so having half your composing done seems to help.