6 year old having her first lesson this week; Me: "As you can see the keyboard has black and white keys". Girl: "Oooh, it's stripey like a zebra!" how sweet!
7 year old boy, 1st lesson after the hols. Me: "can you remember the special name for the black keys? It begins with a sh." Boy: (hitting 2 low black keys defiantly) "Sharks!"
Anyone else had any 1st-week howlers???

Not the first week, but I asked one pupil (Aged 8) did he know what syncopation means, and he looked shocked and replied "Is it something to do with the toilet?"

I've had the sharks one as well!

And when I asked a girl aged 7 at that time, what were those exercises where you played all the notes of the tonic triad only up and down? Guess what she replied?
"Apple juice!" in a very happy voice.

Not cute, just wonderful.

Oscar has come for a violin lesson on his 11th birthday. He is a tough boyish boy, youngest of 4 brothers. After his lesson he is going shopping at the Trafford Centre (awful shopping mall place, open late, heaven if you are a kid with birthday money to spend)

He arrives late as the traffic was awful. I tell him he can finish at the regular time if he is in a rush to go shopping or we can have his 30 minutes if he wants as the next student has cancelled. He asks to have the whole lesson time please. He plays beautifully, asks great questions, laughs at my bad jokes. Packs up and says as ever, thanks, see you next week. Leaves.

Half way down the path he stops, turns, comes back, rings the bell and asks

"You did remember to give me a bill didn't you?"

GREAT KID!

Wow, indeed wonderful! I wish all the kids were like him!

I have one 13year old who often arrives with a cheque in his pocket....... and gets home after his lesson with the cheque still in his pocket.
His mum has threatened to write it on the back of his hand....

I suppose it would help if I remembered to ask him for it on the week I need paying....

The parent of one of my eight year old pupils phoned to say she was stuck in traffic and would be late picking him up. He's quite keen on "The Entertainer" (they all are!) so on his request I played a few other Joplin pieces for him.

When I finished he said "Wow, you must have loads of money!" I assured him I didn't, but he was unmoved - "but you should have loads of money if you can do that!"

If only life worked like that

xxx

Kids are so great, they say things exactly as they see them. I remember a consultant surgeon at work saying that kids were so much better as patients, because they would just say "it hurts here", rather than adults that say "I think it might be ......." and try and diagnose themselves rather than just saying what their symptoms were.

That one cracked me up.

The concerning part is that at 16, I'm still coming out with some comments along these lines!!

I was teaching my 5-year-old sister the names of some composers.
Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann and Chopin.
My sister asked, "Are Schubert and Schumann twins?"
I nearly died laughing!
Later, she said, "Chop-in, that's easy to remember!"
I replied, "Sis, its not pronounced that way!"
Isn't young children adorable?
Gosh, I couldn't stop laughing yet trying to appear stern everytime I teach my sister music!

I know what you mean! In my A'level mocks I accidentally described a piece of music as "homophobic" rather than "homophonic" The teacher read it out to the class!

xx

Bless!


How embarassing!

As a fairly new visitor to the forum, I was just checking out old topics and came across yours. Hope I'm not too late to share this with you: I once had a little American pupil who came for her lesson and very excitedly showed me a new scale she'd been told about - a "dramatic" scale!! I also once had a young student who wanted to play his "atomic triads"!

I once had a pupil tell her Grade One examiner that a semibreve was a semi-detached.

Last night my first pupil arrived 10 minutes early when I was practising myself, so I suggested he might like to listen for a few minutes instead of starting early. I played him a Chopin Nocturne and got as far as the first page turn when he said, "Hey, there's no way that was only one page! Are there many pages to go?" Appreciation, eh?

Understand one kid once wrote 'a crotchet can be divided into two quakers'

I asked one of my younger pupils yesterday to describe what a minim looked like.

His reply? 'A disembowelled crotchet'

A friend of mine was sitting in the waiting room of the doctor's recently and pointed out a fly on the floor to keep her young daughter amused. "That's not a fly" she said. "That's a walk!"

I love these posts.....Keep 'em coming

Haha, I use to think Schubert and Schumann were related! My dad pronounces Chopin exactly as zongyi describes, "Chop-in" in jest of course. He loves to say it to antagonize me!

When my six and a half year olddaughter had been learning the cello for a couple of months the girl who had her lesson immediately before her was away and we arrived to find her teacher practising. My daughter stopped open-mouthed in the doorway and her teacher asked her what the matter was. To which my daughter replied "I didn't know you could play like that, I thought you were just a teacher!"

A 13 year old girl student of mine asks me to play for her at the end of her lesson sometimes so that she can 'Hear what the piano sounds like properly'

I pronounce it like that too.... How is one supposed to say it?

kind of ... show-pan - only with a French accent - the "o" is less anglicised and the "n" is nasal - don't know if that helps... hope there are no French experts reading this

I was talking to someone to day and they were on about a piece of music and they said "I can't play the colon staccato's"

They meant crotchet

Well I found it funny

I used to pronounce it Chop-in, and I also pronounced Rachmaninoff as Ratch-im-in-off .

I never did french. Spanish, German and even a bit fo italian, but never french beyond numbers and j'mapple Rosemary7391. (if thats even right!)

It is Je m'appelle Rosemary7913

Edit*** I think

You're right

Errr...



What actually is the name for the black keys which begins with "sh"?

SHARP

Eh?

But they're not necessarily sharps...

If they aren't black notes begining with a 'sh' then they are black notes that begin with a 'fl'

SHARP / FLATS

Ships and Farts you mean?!



Amber
x

Tut tut Amber

One of my piano pupils this afternoon told me that a quaver is what you stick in the top of your ice cream !

It's OK as long as you can take his hand along to the bank to pay it in.......


My dad and I used to refer to Poulenc as Plonk.......in fact, sometimes as Plonkety Plonk.......

Another parent quote, as opposed to a child one -

I rang my mum one day as I knew she was going into town, and asked her to go to the music shop for me to get a book of scales and arpeggios. She wrote down what I wanted and couldn't understand what the shop assistant found so hilarious about her note, which said "scales and/or pejios"!

Arpeggios is one of those words most people get wrong. My mum used to call them Arp-egg-ios, with a hard g

Often wondered what she was on about

Same with a certain conductor I know - fine with french, sllightly hard to understand Italian tempo directions though.

This is one of the best I've had:

New pupil, aged 5, 1st lesson, pointing at the 3 pedals on my piano:

"Are those the brakes?"



Lucy.

Aw, sweet!

This is one of the loveliest threads!



Amber
x

I call Poulenc, Plonc

My mum did similar when I asked her to order 'Stairway to Heaven' for me - she came back and said they'd laughed at her when she asked for it in 'staff rotation' ("but that's what you wrote...!"....nope that was staff notation, mum... )

Not a musical one, but the other day I showed my grandson the picture online of the castle my daughter has booked us into for our holiday in Ireland. Elijah took a quick look, and said ' I'm definitely not sleeping there'. I asked him why, and he said ' We can't sleep there because there's no roof on it'.

My daughter has just started having piano lessons and proudly announced "I am a pianoist now." I said to her "You don't say pianoist you say pianist." To which she replied. "No, I'm still a pianoist. I'll only be a pianist after I've had lots of lessons."

Kerioboe - is this your little girl who is a selective mute? It sounds like her actual language skills, when she feels confident about using them, are really quite creative! I hope she continues in this manner!

Yes, it is. I found it really hard to believe that she wasn't talking at school. She is bilingual and started speaking in both languages in full sentences at a very early age. She has a huge vocabulary in both languages, loves playing with words, enjoys making puns. She makes up stories, poems and songs at home and yet doesn't talk elsewhere.