It's not strictly an oboe summer school, but I'm going to Dartington for a week - I've signed up for an oboe masterclass and (easy standard) wind chamber ensemble as I haven't had the chance to play anything like that.

At some point, I'll probably get to a just oboe thing maybe at Benslow, I plan well enough to do that this spring.




Probably

That's what I want to do (either Benslow or Jackdaws) but the dates have never yet been possible. As a lecturer I have no flexibility whatsoever during teaching and exam periods and I would need not to be working on the Monday afterwards for it to be feasible.

I had my grade 8 today and my first piece was affected a bit by water in the key between B and C. The examiner was a flautist so I think he would know about this problem and I'll only get marked down for the things I played wrong and not the watery notes. All the rest was fine in terms of there being no water in the keys

Do flutes have the same problem? If it didn't then I'm worried the examiner will really mark down the piece.

[quote name='lizbun' date='Mar 26 2009, 06:32 PM' post='807639']
I had my grade 8 today

What pieces did you play?

I shouldn't worry overly much about your note problems! Oboes are notorious for not doing as they're told at stressful times!!

I played the Telemann sonata in Bb 1st and 4st mvts, Saint saens sonata 1st mvt and the Bach sinfonia.

I hope I only get marked down for errors other than the water bubbling sound

I played the Saint Saens!! (Only nearly 20 years ago!!) Have played the rest of the rep since! Love the oboe, love being an oboist, love teaching the oboe! Best of luck with all your future plans, inc. specialist school! Chethams or Wells - what a choice! City or country? Not sure which I'd choose now!

I played the Mozart Quartet (1st mov), Hindemith Sonate (1st mov), and two Ferling studies for my Grade 8 (when I was half my present age!). It was a nice experience. Can't imagine myself going through the whole process again.

Well done on getting through it Liz.
I'm double your age and even in perfect circumstances, fluffed a little in my Grade 1 a couple of weeks back. Anyway, got my results today and it was a good pass - only a couple of marks short of the merit. Curse those shaky nervous hands, they cost me that merit!
Grade 3 next, I'm skipping 2 because I was playing grade 5 pieces when I packed it in as a teenager and need to make up time after losing all those years not playing.

Well done for passing grade 1 If you used to play to grade 5 standard then the jump from grade 1 to 3 shouldn't be bad.




I wish the Mozart was in the current syllabus. I haven't done any serious work on it but it's a nice piece.

Ooh well done on getting into Chets/Wells Lizbun, must have missed that on the other thread!

I think the Mozart Quartet (1st mov) is easier to play than the Mozart Concerto (1st mov). Too bad the Quartet hasn't been on the syllabus for about 15 years. Perhaps it's coming back soon?

I think it's an excellent idea to skip some grades. I only took two graded exams on the oboe, and it saved a considerably amount of money while didn't impede my progress (I still had to do all the scale for Grade 8!).

Claire, do you remember on your advice for a slow piece to work on I bought the Mathias Concerto and you had this to say about the third movement:


It was my last lesson before a two-week holiday today and my teacher thought it would be a good idea for me to spend the holidays working on the 3rd movement.

My initial impression is that it is even worse than I thought it was and trying to play the correct rhythms was made even harder by the fact that the light in the room was flickering on and off in a very regular way like the light on a metronome but not at the same speed as I was trying to play. (My teacher cheerfully told me that this is a way of distinguishing professionals from amateurs - professionals can keep a steady pulse no matter what is happening around them).

Any tips on how to practise it? My teacher said to play it very slowly phrase by phrase making sure everything (notes, rhythm, articulation, dynamics) is in place right from the beginning and it will speed up by itself in due course. I suppose this makes sense (although I am not convinced about it speeding up by itself) but I'm not sure that I am patient enough to work like that.

If I remember rightly (and it's how I work with most tricky fast music), I did it like this:

Find a metronome speed you can comfortably play it correctly at - even if that's ridiculously slow. Then go up one notch on your metronome (presuming you have a metronome that goes up in notches - 60,63,66 etc. Some of the modern electronic ones just go up one at a time which is a bit too extreme!). When you're completely happy playing it at that new speed, go up another notch. And so on and so on until you get up to speed. Never go up more than one notch per day, but if necessary take as long as you need per notch.

The advantage of this way is that you barely notice yourself getting faster, but when you do get to the much faster speeds you can still find yourself falling over your fingers. In which case, go back a notch, and do all those boring practice things which I'm sure your teacher has told you about, of breaking each phrase down into 4-note groups or whatever, and moving along them slowly.

Good luck!

At my own much more modest level that's exactly what I do. I start slowly and speed up in 4bpm increments. It's surprising how far you can advance in one session before it all falls over.

I do do this but usually there are only a few passages which are causing a problem and I concentrate on those and then integrate them back into the rest of the piece.

The 3rd movement of the Mathias Concerto is five pages long and my initial impression is that I can't play any of it. The idea of learning something this length phrase by phrase and speeding it up phrase by phrase seems (at the moment) very daunting. It doesn't even have any bits which are repeated later on - when rhythmic phrases are repeated they are in a different tonality (and because it is contemporary there are accidentals all over the place instead of a key signature making it harder to read anyway). As I said to my teacher yesterday I am used to being able to make a decent stab of sight-reading a piece and this one just defeated me. Yesterday's lesson was along the lines of "well they were the right notes, can you play that bit again with the right rhythm?" followed by "the rhythm was better that time but the notes were wrong" and on the odd passage when I managed to get the rhythm and the notes right "well yes but that was all supposed to be staccato."

(Having tried it myself, I am now all the more impressed that my teacher managed to sight-read it at its proper speed when I first brought it along to a lesson).

How about just learning one page at a time? It'll obviously take you longer but at least it's a bit less dispiriting along the way.

Sounds like your teacher is really pushing you a bit here!

Wow, an oboe thread!

I've been playing the oboe for 6 years, started at age 13 in concert band - almost by accident, really. I put my hand up when they asked who wanted to play clarinet (didn't know what I was talking about, couldn't tell a trumpet apart from a flute), but by the time they got to me the clarinet section was full to bursting, so I got put in oboe. Got off to a dodgy start as my only teacher was just a year older and equally clueless, but eventually got a professional teacher, learned the right techniques and have been having an awesome time of it.

I went to a symphony orchestra performance lately where they played Rossini's Italian Girl in Algiers Overture as well as Schubert's 'Great' Symphony in C Major and I just plain melted at all the gorgeous oboe solos. My friends find it hilarious how I literally start vibrating in my seat when an oboe solo comes on.

I'm currently cheating on my oboe with cello - but I've yet to be convinced that anything will truly compare to the oboe. I'm working on the Dittersdorf G major concerto now. The third movement's my favourite, the first movement's a killer, my lungs love to pick inopportune moments to run out of air, especially during that 'B' section with the slurred broken chords. I've yet to figure out how to play that section in a single breath.

I really need to get round to getting new reeds soon (or actually learning how to make them). I keep breaking them, klutz that I am.

Rock on, fellow oboists!

His cheerful parting shot as I was going out the door yesterday was "It's just a question of confidence" .

On a slightly different topic, this evening we finally got round to playing the Vivaldi trio sonata with a cello for the basso continuo and I really enjoyed it - it certainly is a different experience playing with a cello instead of a piano and now that I've tried it, it is something I would like to do more of.

I would say a page at a time or even a phrase at a time if needs be...it will be a slow process but will pay dividends in the long run

Andrew

I started at 13 too but I've only been plying for 2 1/2 years lol. I luuurve the oboe as well
My reed-making is progressing very slowly. The scraping lookes easy when my teacher shows me but I still can't scrape well. I can scrape in terms of adjusting reeds that are already done but I tend to break reeds when scraping it from scratch when getting rid of ridges.

Came across this video today, which is quite interesting - how to make an oboe!

You probably know this already but you're getting ridges because you're digging the knife in rather than having a regular scraping action. (I know this because I used to get ridges too, or "pavement edges" as my teacher calls them in French).

Two things helped me to stop getting them. One was my teacher putting his hand over mine to guide it while I was scraping so I could feel exactly what I was supposed to be doing, the second was buying an expensive knife which is much sharper and means I don't have to press down at all while scraping.

In the meantime, if you get a ridge, I would temporarily stop working on the reed and ask your teacher to remove it for you at the next lesson and then carry on scraping - that's what I used to do and it saves wasting a reed.

thanks. Yep I think I put in a lot of pressure and it doesn't help

I'll soon have lots of cheapo cane from ebay to practice scraping on instead of the 10 that I got origionaly from howarths so I'll see how it goes...
My teacher showed my what to do when a ridge comes up but she made it look so easy that I forgot

You just sort of "push" it out (again easier with a really sharp knife). The reason I suggested leaving them to your teacher to remove is that by the time I'd learnt to reliably remove ridges, I'd more or less stopped making them (I only make them now if something disturbs my concentration, like the phone ringing and my hand "jumps").

I think its one of those catch 22 situations: when you've got the knife control to remove the ridges, you've also got the knife control not to make them in the first place.

Wow, you've been playing for like, a third the time I've been playing and you're making loads more progress than I am. I'm almost halfway through preparing for grade 6 and you're already gone on to grade 8, and you're already learning making reeds while the furthest I've gone with that is mentioning to my teacher last lesson, 'I think I should start considering making my own reeds...' Props to you for making such fast progress!

My grade 8 oboe results is in ... Hope it was the right person's because it was online...

139

Well done Liz that's wonderful.

Bravo Liz well done to you...I bet you are very happy..

Andrew

Well done! Thats a fantastic mark! you beat me

Congratulations to you for your excellent result! Are you planning on taking the diplomas next?

Thanks!
Probably eventually after expanding repertoire. Not for ages and ages though lol. Grade 8 and DipAbrsm is a huge jump. I did find grade 7 and 8 quite similar in terms of standard though

Hmm that's interesting.

Now I like making lists, gazing at (usually meaningless) statistics and vast spreadsheets. So, in the knowledge that you went from beginner to G8 in 2.5 years, could you tell us how long it took you to get to each grade level and which "jumps" you thought were the biggest?

Purely academic interest as I know no two people are alike, so it wouldn't really prove anything.

It's interesting you say that because years ago there was no grade 7 for woodwind instruments (and the exams only started at grade 3).

Considering you've done beginner to grade 8 in two years putting a ratio on it it should take you a much shorter time to make it to dip standard than somebody like me, say.

I'll try the grade thing but I can't remember that well

Grade 1 after a couple of weeks
Grade 2 after a couple of months
Grade 3 after about 4 months (quite a bit jump I think)
Grade 4 after about 5/6 months
Grade 5 after about 7 months (not a huge jump from grade 4)
Grade 6 after a year and a bit (a bit of a jump)
Grade 7 after nealy 2 years (quite a big jump again)
Grade 8 after 2 and a half years

Going from a different angle, that of teaching, I'd put it something like this:

Grade 1, 2 and 3 all fairly close together. A lot of people can skip at least one of these.
Bit of a jump to grade 4 (average time grade 3 to 4: 1 year)
Slightly bigger jump to grade 5 (year +) - however, this could just be my personal prejudice, as I feel that someone doing grade 5 should have developed their tone a bit further, so if someone can wiggle their fingers but still sounds too much like a 'beginner', then I will hold them off doing the exam for as long as it takes.
Grade 5-6: about a year again.
Grade 6-7: year to year-and-a-half. Another point where their tone should be taking a step up.
Grade 7-8: quite close together (year).

Do you find previous experience on another instrument makes a difference and if so at what level?

Yes!!! HUGE difference. If someone can read music already, they will progress quite quickly - quicker than someone who can't read music. For instance, I'm teaching a 13 year old currently who started last September, and who already plays piano; she will probably do grade 2 this summer, she could even do grade 3 if she worked hard. But it makes even more difference if they already play a woodwind instrument. So another 13/14 year old, started last November, is grade 5 flute, is slightly ahead of the pianist, and could probably have a better stab at grade 3.

On the other hand, I've been teaching one girl a couple of years (also 13/14), who doesn't play anything else, and she's only doing grade 1 this summer.

It is definitely a good idea to take lots of time before you tackle the diplomas. Expectations are much higher for diplomas. A friend of mine got 132 on his grade 8 flute, and a year later he failed his Advanced Certificate (predecessor of the DipABRSM). I got a mark midway between yours and 150 for my grade 8, and I didn't take my DipABRSM until 7 years later (although I stopped learning for 5 years in the mean time).

One of my pupils has grade 8 flute, she started learning the oboe in october and I would say she is about grade 3 now, so yes it seems to make an enormous difference!

It definitely makes a huge difference. I was preparing for my grade 8 oboe when I took up the bassoon on my own, and less than 2 years later I won a bassoon competition on a grade 7 piece. Wouldn't have been possible if I didn't have my oboe experience.

Reading notes, rhythm, tonguing, breathing etc. can all be transferred from one woodwind instrument to the next. Fingers are more nimble with practice also.

Emsoboe is about to take Grade 7 after 4 years and I would very much agree with Claire21.

Emsoboe didn't take G3 but 1 and 2 were very close together, 4 to 5 is a bigger gap. Can't really comment on 6 and 7. She was going to skip 6, played some of the pieces and started preparing 7 and then did 6. I would think Claire has it right though, the points identified is where tone needs to be developed.

I don't know what will happen over G8, it will depend if she's still in the same situation come September.

I am a little curious here ... is it common in the UK (or elsewhere) for students to take almost every graded exam? I only took Grade 5 and Grade 8 on oboe, although at that time (1992/1993) we only had one exam session a year in Hong Kong. I took my Grade 5 after 3 years (could have done Grade 6 but I didn't have the theory) and Grade 8 the following year.

I find that tone comes with time only. I didn't really make an 'effort' to develop my tone but it came naturally with different reeds and long notes and still should improve. (even if it's only a bit) The examiner thought it was nice though

Try different reeds and if you have a decent oboe and reed the tone should become good gradually. I think the reed has to be a strength that is very comfortable to play with and you need to concentrate on how the oboe should sound to get a nice full tone (lots of diaphragm) consistently.




The only exams I took are 5,7,8 for oboe and 5,6,7,8 for piano

I also took only two grades (4 and 8) (way back when... late 1980s actually). My pupils now often skip the lower grades, but then work fairly consistently through grades 4 to 8. It all depends on what kind of level they're at when the exam deadline comes round; there's no point them doing a particular grade if they're actually halfway to the next one already.

Plus, of course, some people don't like doing exams that much so they just do the 'important' ones like 5 and 8.

It was purely down to the teacher in our case also things maybe a little different when the person is not quite 10 when they start playing. I guess there's the chance that they will give up more so than when it's a student with a little more maturity.




Emsoboe doesn't have a tone problem, but I still think that there is room to improve as there is with any instrument playing. She only has to listen to her teacher to know there is still a long way to go. I think Claire's was saying that there are points between grades that tone needs to be developed before moving on.

I don't think it matters how fast or how slow it takes someone to work through the grades there will come a point where they have to take stock, play catch-up and develop their playing and it won't be done overnight on any instrument.

Well, that goes for a lot of people. My teacher has a gorgeous tone and I've got some way to go but my tone at the moment was apparently enough for grade 8/wells/chets 1st round. It could always be better

Your daughter's taking grade 7 in June? Good luck with that. Think of it as a prep for grade 8.
What pieces is she doing?

She's taking G7 on Friday. Playing Cimarosa 1st and 4th movements, Schumann Romance No1 and Gallop.

Grade 8 is a different proposition and like Recorder may be some while away, there's no rush as she's only just 14. Lots of aspects of her playing need developing not particularly because of specific weakesses, more to progress as a player. She is the first person her teacher has taught to a higher level, he's done a good job. There's scope for much more musical playing, which at the moment gets a bit overlooked, for G8 this needs to be sorted and she'll want to do more than play 3 pieces to the required standard.

I'm sure you've put lots of work into improving your tone and you should be very proud of where you are at. When will you know about Chets/Wells?

oh. Good luck then . Musicality is something that can't be taught I think. If you're naturally musical, then your lucky. If your not or only a bit musical, it's not a worry but examiners can tell... You can learn all the dynamics, phrasing, articulation etc. like a professional but it would still be wooden. I personally don't like comments about musicality from examiners/adjudicators because I don't know what the word means (apart from it's definitely something that can't be taught) and it doesn't matter.

Your right about playing more than the 3 pieces. I played quite a few other pieces alongside the 3 pieces since deciding for grade 8.

I really really want to stay in the cornwall youth orchestra next year so if I can it would be Wells. I did get in and I accepted the offer (I'm allowed to change my mind though) but the finance isn't easy to deal with whereas if I go to Chets I would get the funding but I won't know if I got in for ages and I can't be in the CYO or it would be difficult...

I'm not expressing very well what she needs to work on, the missing bit is something that can and should be taught. It's about playing the piece to the highest standard possible for a particular person, which may not always be the same. It's something her Piano and Recorder Teachers do. I think some of it will resolve itself with maturity but for now she's busily sorting things out herself. There's just not enough time in a half hour and that's part of the problem.