I get it. Yeah, a teacher should help a pupil to polish the piece to the highest possible standard for them. Half an hour isn't much. I got 1 hour lessons after grade 7 though so I managed.

I agree with Lizbun, half an hour for someone at grade 7+ level is ridiculously short!! I would say she should be having at least 45 mins by now, if not an hour. My students tend to go to 45 mins when they get to grade 6.

It's difficult as the lessons are free through the Music Service, there's alsorts of problems with getting the room opened and setting up so I don't want to pay for the half hour before, it'd end up 15 or 20 mins and the price is high. It's also a very tight timescale for food etc after school. At the moment the Teacher runs over to compensate for some of this. Her teacher has tried coming to the house every other week but generally doesn't have time.

I realise that come September things will have to change,

How did it go? (a bit late but never mind lol) hope it went well

hey guys! i was justin serching for some info and found this forum. Pretty nice

heres abit bout me:)

I just turned 14 years old:)

I HATED music for pretty much most of my life until when i reached high school.. there was an music instrument try out night and i went along to try things out. or rather mum made me

And thats when my oboe began.

i was told i could learn oboe cause the teacher reconed i had good breathing...

so i started learning and things went rather slowly as they do in schools.

that was 2007.

and mum started complaining that i was going 2 slow, not learing quick enough. bla bla bla...

So she talked 2 her fwend and her son learnt oboe wif a guy named seng tong, he used to play in so big orchestra in china and his wife sang opera.

His son.. David Tong is a famous pianist and lives in USA now.

and so i started learning from him. this might b boring 2 u guys but im pretty pround of it.

It was basicly a new start from there. i had been playing for 3 terms and only knew an octave of notes. which i might add couldnt i play very well

But soon, after about 3 months or so... wif no previous musical experience i started to learn really fast.

In about 3 months from learning wif Seng, he told me i was good enough to ace grade 4.

And it was around then that he had an idea for me to try and do a scholarship exam..

i was like how could I?

im about grade 4, dont no piano or anything else. GET A SCHOLARSHIP FOR OBOE???

so i said okay....

and he got really into it, he told me that i didnt need to do my grade 4 exam, it would b a waste of time wif about 2 months to go b4 the scholarship exams, so i droped that and started learning my pieces.

I played for my scholarship exam 2 pieces.

I played Hayden in C major==> grade 8 (5 pages)
and i also played sonata no.1 by GF Handel. (2 pages)

I learnt and mastered the 2 pieces in 2 months.

usually the schools only gave scholarships to students over Grade 6 on an instrument.

but suprisingly, both the schools i tried out ACUALLY GAVE ME AN OFFER!

i tried 2 private schools
and i recieved 30% from the 1st and 50% from the 2nd.

I was really amazed. I who hasnt done any grades, nor any theory work. didnt play another instrument, was given a scholarship

and from there my oboe career blossomed.

a few months after the scholarship exam i did grade 6 oboe and got a A.

my teacher was extremely proud of me. I had finished a few oboe books and learnt 4/5 7/8 grade pieces during that time.

And now, 1 year after the scholarship exam, i am preparing for my 8th grade exam:)

Alot of people dont believe me but it is true:)

But none of it would have been possible without my teacher Seng. He really is amazing, he's got heaps students all the time and each year a few of us would get a scholarship.

That was my story. Happy oboeing

You are to be congratulated on your scholarship offers..may I ask which schools are you considering..

The Haydn C major Concerto ( I presume you mean the 1st movement) in two months is quite an achivement..did this include the Cadenza in the printed edition or did you play another Cadenza?

All that aside well done to both you and your teacher who has quite literally performed something nothing short of a miracle..

You sound like your whipping up a storm there.

What pieces did you do for Grade 6? Are hoping for an A in your Diploma?

Congrulations on your rapid progress on the oboe. I suppose you played the Concerto in C by Haydn, not HaydEn?

Ouch

[quote name='A.U.K' post='818624' date='Apr 22 2009, 12:37 AM']
You are to be congratulated on your scholarship offers..may I ask which schools are you considering..

The Haydn C major Concerto ( I presume you mean the 1st movement) in two months is quite an achivement..did this include the Cadenza in the printed edition or did you play another Cadenza?

All that aside well done to both you and your teacher who has quite literally performed something nothing short of a miracle..
[/quote]

yes i did play the 1st mov. and the cadenza in the printed version. thanks:)

[quote name='notmusimum' post='818712' date='Apr 22 2009, 04:04 AM']
You sound like your whipping up a storm there.

What pieces did you do for Grade 6? Are hoping for an A in your Diploma?
[/quote]

haha im only 14... i did the marcello pieces and 2nd mov of sonate by saint saens, i would have done the 1st because it was easier but it didnt sound too good.

[quote name='Wai Kit Leung' post='818750' date='Apr 22 2009, 06:02 AM']
Congrulations on your rapid progress on the oboe. I suppose you played the Concerto in C by Haydn, not HaydEn?
[/quote]

yes, my mistake XD


o and by the way i am in australia so the pieces for each grade might be different

[quote name='A.U.K' post='818624' date='Apr 22 2009, 12:37 AM']
You are to be congratulated on your scholarship offers..may I ask which schools are you considering..

The Haydn C major Concerto ( I presume you mean the 1st movement) in two months is quite an achivement..did this include the Cadenza in the printed edition or did you play another Cadenza?

All that aside well done to both you and your teacher who has quite literally performed something nothing short of a miracle..
[/quote]

camberwell grammar school and trinity grammar in Melbourne Australia



o and by the way i am in australia so the pieces for each grade might be different

[/quote]

Well congratulations Frankie and welcome to the board...As notmusicmum said you seem to be whipping up quite a storm..you obviously do a lot of work and are very determined which is all good..your teacher must be very pleased with you

Take things steady and concentrate on your tone quality throughout, work on long notes and develop good control through the dynamic range from PPP to FFF all this will add to your playing immensely..(and impress your musical colleagues)

Good luck and keep us posted...and once again welcome to the ABRSM Forum...not sure how many Australians we have here you maybe the first..nevertheless all are welcome...

Regards

Andrew

well thanks, I do 15 minutes of long note practice everyday which is playing scales expressively, my vibrato is excellent arcording to my teacher and my school conductors this is a exellent way of lifting an oboist mouth strength.

Is the Saint-Saens only grade 6 these days? I played it for my grade 8!

I think it's quite similar to the abrsm and trinity. With both of them it's pass, merit or distinction though and it's out of 150 marks for ab.



The Haydn and Marcello and Saint saens are all part of the grade 8 syllabus in one or both.

no in Aus for grade 6 you can only do mov 1 or 2 for saint saens but in grade 8 which im doing now you can play all of it, i dont no about other grades cause i just did 6 str8 away, now im doing 8 in a few months, i cant quite decide between the poulenc piece which sounds good but i never learnt b4, or just play my Hayden in C which i am very familiar with.

Which exam board are you with? I don't understand why any would set the same piece at two different grades. The whole object of the ABRSM and Trinity exams (plus some smaller ones) is to give the candidate the opportunity to present a varied program. It's strange that you seem to be saying you are only doing one piece for G8. I suppose playing a whole concerto or Sonata might prove more satisfatory to aome candidates. Do you not need to play a study or unaccompanied piece?

I've not heard that said before. Why would that be?

i am with the Australian exam board

Okay, fellow oboists, here's a question:

How competent do you think a grade 4 oboist should be at tuning? (Either with a piano, or to herself).

I've just had a student of mine do grade 4, and the marks came back today: the examiner made no less than FOUR separate comments about her 'problematic' tuning. (See the 'Is this examiner an idiot?' thread in the teacher's forum if you want more details.) Personally I think her tuning is completely normal for someone at her level - not perfect, but tuning is hard and only comes gradually!

I'd quite like a bit of reassurance that I'm not an incredibly lax teacher by not insisting on perfect tuning from grade 1...

I am wondering if the examiner meant the student was out-of-tune with the piano, or out-of-tune with herself. If she had good internal intonation but was out-of-tune with the piano, that's different from if some notes on her oboe were out-of-tune with the rest.

I tend to think that the examiner was concerned/annoyed by the intonation, rather than trying to act like an idiot. I have had one idiot examining me, but I would think it's not the case here.

Hello Claire...

Sounds like the examiner had a bee in his or her bonnet about tuning...As you have not told us how old tne pupil was it is slightly difficult to comment but I am going to hazzard a guess at 10 years old and work from that..

Most children have tuning issues in my experience not just on the Oboe but almost all all instruments and singing ( god knows I heard some shockers audition for shows)...my old voice coach called it lazy listening inasmuch that the child wasnt really listening to the sound or tone they were producing but playing by rote..this in itself is fairly common. Nerves have a lot to do with it and playing sharp due to tension in the lip or flat due to poor diaphragm support again due to nerves is to be expected..panic sets in and all the technique goes out the window...

I suspect that nerves were the issue and that the tuning slipped now and then...dont worry unnecessarily about it just check next lesson and have a good listen you will be the best judge...maybe the Oboe was cold, maybe the child tensed up...maybe the reed wasnt great...there are so many outside influences that could have caused this problem...I sincerely doubt it was anything serious or to do with your teaching method..

I am sure that any problems however small will correct themselves with a little time...but dont get fixated over it or the pupil will sense it and possibly make the situation worse...keep it all very relaxed and let it flow.It wont hurt to remind the pupil to listen to themselves and see what THEY think...if there are any serious tuning issues making them conciously listen to themselves should do the trick...

Andrew

im not much of an expert at this, but shouldnt your student be allowed time before the exam to acually warm up b4 the exam so that the oboe is nice and warmed up and in tune when the exam begins.

Andrew, thanks for your long reply which I won't quote in full, but points taken on board... This kid actually had a lesson with me this morning so I was extra carefully listening to her tuning, and there is really nothing wrong with it.

Anyway, what's annoying me more at the moment is that (as some of you may have noticed) my thread on this issue in the Teachers forum has quietly disappeared!! Obviously someone overreacted to my (rather mild) language and reported me to a moderator. What annoys me more than that, though, is that the moderator hasn't even had the courteousy to message me and tell me what the problem is, exactly. I have experienced over-zealous moderators on this board before and this is one more instance; and their lack of communication is just not on. But I should probably stop there before they delete this posting as well.

I dunno, it makes me want to give up on this board. Or at least only talk to the lovely oboe people.

HAHA, oboist are the nicest people in the entire orchestra. There is not 1 oboist you find who isnt nice. Ive played with over 20( not much really) but all of them are quite nice. i dont think people who are not nice can acually play oboe, its true. When i just started there was 5 in our group but then 3 left, and they were not nice people And it is a fact, i think most people would agree with me

Dittersdorf G major concerto 1st movement is really a killer but sounds really good

@Claire21
I wondered whether it might be that once the examiner noticed it once, it jumped out at him straight away. I'm not sure that a G4 player in the middle of an exam would necessarily be able to correct the tuning if it started going wrong - especially if they were out with the piano.

Don't worry about the moderators, I didn't think your post was bad but stuff like that can get deleted anyway. Any moderated board has issues like that from time to time, it's difficult to get it right and I think with some people it makes it worse trying to explain why their thread is deleted, so they have a blanket policy not to discuss it. I'm on another (non-musical) board elsewhere which is not moderated at all, and that has worse problems.

Oboists are weird. It's just that they are weird in the right way.

i had an interesting problem last year when i took my scholarship exam, if u read my 1st post...

my ###### oboe(excuse meXD) screwed up, i had it all cleaned and ready to go, but on the day i was really feeling the pressure, what would you expect, i had only played for half a year or more, no grades, never did any music in my life before the oboe, and i was playing 2 grade 8 pieces, my accompanist was making me play again and agin for an hour, my mouth was sore as ######. and in frustration i droped my oboe, about 30 cms from the sofa(soft sofa) onto the sofa. That was the end of it. Off we went to the scholarship, 10am in the morning, i was still anoyed. And innnnn to the school I went, and got out, went into the warm up room. And Suddenly! FK:JKSDFSDJF; My oboe screwed. The wire inside the long tube thingy from where the left hand f, E flat, Low B And B flat was had bent. my first ever bad treatment to my 3 months new oboe...

Mum went BONKERS! so we told em what happened and of we went to my oboe teacher... 30kms away MUM went non- stop shouting at me, and so we got 2 my teacher and he said that he couldnt fix it, didnt have the right tools. Lucky me that he didnt get all agro at me. I was 12 years old, annoyed and a little frightened. So we went to the emergency rescue center( the shop where the oboe was purchused) a few hundred meters from my teachers home. And we walked in, my teacher has conections there and no word said, they went to fix it staight away while trying to cheer me up. so a few hundred dollar repair ended finished in about 30 minutes and it was all for free. the shop dudes really liked me and plus my teacher always bought a few oboes from their shop each year for his students. So it was all good and that afternoon i went back to the school and did my scholarship exam...

And i got a 50% scholarship:) woot woot lucky me

Shame no-one else understands us, though!

If I can chip in as a G3 to G4 student (albeit an adult).
My teacher reckons I have a pretty good ear and good intonation, but I am only too aware that things can go badly wrong. I do know that under stress or when a bit tired my pitch tends to rise.

When I took G3 last December, I felt everything was pretty much under control and indeed the examiner commented positively on my intonation with a couple of slips noted. I had been very careful to warm up immediately before going into the exam and kept my oboe shoved down my down duvet (it was very cold in the waiting room).

A couple of weeks ago I took part in my first adult learners concert and the experience couldn't have been more different. I didn't warm up properly, didn't take advantage of the offered rehearsal time (having rushed in from work) and whilst previous players were performing I didn't take care to keep my oboe warm. The result was that when I got up, I found it hard to initially tune to the piano and my first piece was definitely flat despite struggling manfully to get back in tune. I know I should have spent a couple of minutes making sure all was well before I started - but......

So in my experience it can go badly wrong when you (or your teacher) are not expecting it. One lesson is that I now certainly appreciate the importance of warming up properly and will do so in future and hopefully it won't occur in an exam.

Sorry to interrupt but I want to know... Does a ring key system make the D above 2nd octave C difficult?
My cor anglais is ring system and I find it difficult and I tried a ring key system oboe and also found it difficult.

And look how polite we are too.

Sorry Lizbun, I don't know but I'm sure someone around here will. It might just be that you need to modify your fingering (experiment with different right hand fingers?).

I can't answer your question but I'm sure you are not lacking in anyway as a teacher. I guess on Oboe it's the nature of the beast. I've noticed a couple of Oboists recently that play with their heads on their chest when in a stressful situation.

I'm thinking back to Emsoboe and she definately wasn't perfect with her tuning at G4 or even 5. It's som,ething thatthey will progress towards surely. Maybe the examiner was a pianist and not used to Oboe and all it's little ways.

Ooops (I'm a G4 clarinettist)




I had a similar shock when I got my G4 result (albeit clarinet) so I thought I'd tell you my experience.

I did pass, but only just, and I got a lower mark than your student. I thought my A and B pieces had gone really well, and both during and after the exam, I'm sure my teacher/accompanist had thought they had gone well too. The pieces got a pass, but only just, and most of the comments were about my tone. As I said in my thread at the time (like you I was so shocked I started a thread), I knew my tone wasn’t very good but I didn’t expect it to be marked so harshly at Grade 4.

When I looked at the marking criteria in "These Music Exams", I did feel that the examiner hadn't marked in accordance with the guidelines, and that too much emphasis had been placed on tone, with not enough credit being given for all the other aspects of my playing which went well.

In the end, I decided that because I'd passed, I wouldn't pursue it, although I might have taken a different view if I'd failed. I decided instead that I'd take on board the examiner's comments and I concentrated on improving my tone for the next few months. It did improve, and I had a further breakthrough when I changed my ligature from a metal one to a fabric one, although I don't think this would apply to oboe.

Incidentally I heard that at least one other person had had a much lower result than expected. I'm sure examiners *try* to mark fairly and consistently, but human nature being what it is, I'm sure there must be times when their judgement goes one way or the other off what they would normally mark, and that they're not even aware of doing it.

I know tone is even more of an issue on oboe than on clarinet so my story might not be relevant, I don't know, but for what it's worth....


[... and I just like talking to you nice oboists sometimes ... ]

Was it tone or tuning Skylark? I think it would be a bit silly to be too harsh about a beginner's tone (i.e. quality of sound) but I think it's fair to be critical (in a constructive way ) about tuning (i.e intonation). I agree with Claire though that at lower grades (ours ) tuning is still going to be a bit wayward and I would hope examiners would appreciate the difficulties.

I figured having played viola years ago that tuning on the oboe would be a doddle, just press the key and blow. Boy, was I wrong.

Why thank you.

The examiner said "Tone needed greater purity of focus" and "Tone needed more subtlety and intonation was approximate in places".

He said various other things that I thought were quite harsh for G4, and it was a very negative mark sheet. I've got over the shock of it, but I think the result and the negativity of the mark sheet affected me for quite a long time.

whats an Ring system?

Open hole system. Lookes more like a clarinet?

Like this

sort of old fashioned but lovely to play on

Hmm, that's a bit abstract.

Ouch, that's rather cutting.

Oooh, I've got one of these-type-things... Or at least I seem to have acquired one anyway. Whether or not it is actually playable is a totally separate matter

Has your teacher tried it? This is my fool proof way of deciding if something is me or my oboe/cor anglais. What do you mean by difficult? Hard to get out? Out of tune? When you play the note by itself or when you come from other notes and in which case which one(s)? And is it the same if you slur to the note or tongue it? Do you also have a problem with C# and Eb? (It is second octave D and not 3rd isn't it?).

The only two things I can think of is that either you might not be covering one of the holes properly (the action of rolling/lifting your first finger might be making you very slightly uncover one hole). Or (depending on how the cor is made) you might have to roll rather than lift your first finger to half-hole.

On a completely different topic...
I managed to find a copy of Gillet's Etudes for £5 in a second-hand bookshop in London last week. It is very old (the date inside is 1909) and in very poor condition - a series of loose pages but they are all there and none of them have any writing on them. It was priced £15 inside which I thought was a bargain compared to Howarth's price of over £50 but when I came to pay for it the shopkeeper said "I can't charge you £15 for something in that condition" and sold it to me for £5.

It's been in for repair (not major) and just came back so my teacher will try it on tuesday hopefully. I think it's better now i'm getting used to it again lol It's quite a stretch for me but I can just about manage it

That was a bit of luck! Well done you!

You Jammy devil...what a stroke of luck..good for you

I got a merit in my grade 8 oboe!! I think my poor oboe's had its time now... time to get a new one I think...

Congratulations you must be very pleased.

Woohoo, well done. Sounds like a perfect excuse to reward yourself with a new oboe.

Many congratulations Stephie

Thanks !! My minors let me down unfortunately... but our examiner failed 12 people so I'm pleased anyway! Any recommendations for a post-grade 8 oboe??

Well done! thats fantastic



Don't get them started!