Friday, February 08, 2013

In No Hurry

It's the time of the year where we pull our socks up (both me and the son) and get really serious about practising. Yes it's exam season for my strings pulling son and somehow, by default, I get dragged into making sure that he is 1. doing it and 2. doing it right.

A year ago, I made a conscious decision for him to change his teachers. I deemed that learning music should be an enjoyable process and not like being in drill school. I opted for a young chap who's a music protege, with little teaching experience but with a mild and friendly disposition, that is able to engage my son's interest. In doing so, I can see that he's started to enjoy attending lessons and in turn, play the violin in a much more confident and precise manner. 

Teacher S recommended that he takes his second grading this March and so we have been going through the different aspects of the exams. The husband, without a music background, left it all to me to make sure K knew what he was doing. 

Overall he's been rather cooperative. You see, he has three songs that he needs to perform. Two of which he was good at but the last one, was the tricky one. He would always squirm out of it whenever I ask him to. 

Being constantly distracted by the other two kids, I normally just let it go but with the exam in a month, I knew I better sit down with him to work through it and thankfully I did. We sat and listened to the CD, looked at the score and slowly worked through the technicalities of the parts he was not familiar with. And after weeks and weeks of hmms and huhs... he got it. Within 30 minutes. 

Which kinda taught me a good lesson that sometimes I really need to slow down and spend quality time  with them one on one, instead of rushing through most things all the time. 

Lesson learnt. =)


  1. Hi, I'm thinking of starting my girl on music lessons. Would you recommend a home tutor or a group class? She's 5, going on to 6.

    1. My boys are currently attending private lessons in a music studio. I do prefer one on one attention but group lessons are great too! You can then gauge if she is keen on the instrument before deciding if one on one is more suitable for her. =) HTHs

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