I agree about the spelling, but my problem is that I have developed major hang-ups about at least three of these words! My pupils go HS for hand separately or if I am in danger of writing the word in it's entirety, they get sep. I have spent so long wondering if I have spelt it correctly, it now always looks wrong! Similarly I have become madly paranoid about practice and practise...I now run the sentences in my head with advice and advise to check them!!!

Considering I have 30 pupils with 30 notebooks, this is only slightly ridiculous!!!!

It is amazing how much of a knot one can get into trying to be correct.

To remember this one, just think about having to "pay rate(s)"

Nice one! I like it!

Any more suggestions like this, folks?

'Separate' is symmetrical: e-a-a-e. Easy peasy!

Oh, 'detached' is another one. Like you, I always find it looks wrong and wonder if it should have a second 't'.

Without stopping.

R hythm
H as
Y our
T wo
H ips
M oving

'With a looser wrist' (for piano, and possibly string, teachers).
Or 'without shattering it this time' (for singing teachers).

Only to onlookers. The one who does the professing feels smug, superior and probably lots of other things I can't begin to imagine since I don't know everything. Not by a long chalk.

Non-musical...but I remember at one of my driving lessons my driving instructor making a note that next week we had to go through all the manoevres. Manouvers. Maneouvres. The next week we came to my lesson, and she said to me "Were they really that bad last week?" to which I had to tell her no, she didn't write it down three times for emphasis, it was just that she couldn't work out the spelling.

I do remember at quite a young age my mother saying (with irony) that it was easy to remember how to spell permanent because it has man in the middle (and the other vowels are e).

I'm sayin' nuttin'.

I wish that all woodwind players and teachers would learn how to spell the word "tongue".

So it involves nuts??

that's wonderful!!!!

java script:add_smilie(%22:woot:%22,%22smid_37%22)

i was trying to add a smiley - how do you do that? Is that a stupid question? Please don't shout at me..................

Just click on one of them on the left when you're replying. They're all there under "Clickable Smilies" - see?

I'd like to add "metronome" to the spelling list - son's teacher always spelt it "metranome" which just looks wrong!

My young students think I'm very clever when I play their right hand part with my left hand!!
They also think it's fun when I ask them to play their right hand part and I play with my hands on either side of it - I call it 'putting them in the sandwich!'

Oooo i can help a bit with this one My grand dad taught me this when I was little:

"I write with my right hand so this side is the right,
the Other hand is the left, so that side is the left"

I really dont know what to do about Left hand persons

My spelling issue (And I am an English teacher!) remains Practice and Practise which is the noun and which the verb. I just cant remember it *Hangs head in shame*

just hold both hands in front of you and make a right angle with the thumb and index finger. the left hand will make an 'L' shape.

Just remember that the verb has "is" (which is also a verb) in it.

Being dexterous I do write with my right hand, however having a sinsiter husband he does not. As for the L thing that does not work with people who really can not tell the difference.

I am an absolute dunce at spelling any Russian composer's name - assuming I can even remember which ones are Russian.

Ok. I admit it. I can only stir in an anticlockwise direction.

I'd have said you were off the hook on the Russian composers thing - I'm not sure there is consensus across the rest of Europe on how to spell them either .

Me too!
W

I had that question on my Grade 5 Theory Exam... and I got it wrong. It was the only question I got wrong on the whole thing. You'd think I'd remember the difference now... but nope! I know what each one of them looks like and how to play them properly. So it doesn't particularly matter if I can't remember what each one of them is called.

Fortunately, we don't see them often in trumpet music and I'd look it up if I needed to.

I don't think teachers can be expected know EVERYTHING! There's nothing wrong in admitting you're not sure about something and showing a child how to look up the answer in a dictionary or on the internet.

did that work!?

Oh I see it did - this topic has taught me something! Thanks

My piano teacher has, on several occasions, spelled (or is it spelt ) staccato with an 'o' instead of the first a.

Sorry, but you need to see Czerny's spelling list! (No offence!)

Please help me - I have only one Right Hand - how do I play a piece called "primo"? (And why is it all written on the right page of any pair of pages?) I know dancers can have 2 left feet, but can pianists have 2 right hands?

I found this a little ironic, given the context.

Alexander Pope:

A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.

One of those quotes that people rarely get right...

Wow - you really do learn something every day on here! Thanks, Alder - I'll remember that!

Whilst 'A little learning is a dangerous thing' is the correct quotation, 'A little knowledge is a dangerous thing' is also a well-known saying, and equally valid. To try and argue against the latter being said is merely pedantry and nit-picking.

Acciaccatura / Appoggiatura

I thought of: the one with all the 'c' s has the top 'c'rossed out.

Not exactly helpful when you're working out what each means, but sometimes useful in a theory paper I hope.

Can I just throw a philosophical spanner into the works here and suggest that sometimes a little knowledge/learning can mean that the one with the knowledge/learning is able to see the wood without being hampered by the trees? "Intoxicating the brain" with a little understanding can provide purpose and intent that will see no obstacles, and therefore the person with the 'little knowledge' will not be hindered by the psychological barriers that might deter the trouble-shooter...?


But we're getting too serious here, folks!

Sorry, PianoDoodler.

My question - Why, oh why, do I have to keep saying "Cb! Remember the Cb!!!" when we all know that it would be remembered so much more quickly in practice and performance if I just said "Tippex them all out and change them to a ####### B!"

Cor! I remember doing something like that in my late teens and getting hauled over the coals by my teacher....

My piano teacher wasn't too pleased when I changed a load of E#s into Fs a couple of months ago. MY argument was that it was a stupid idea to write them as E# given it was a piece of modern atonal piano music, so it wasn't even that E# made more sense in the context of the key

Thank G#d you didn't actually answer the question. I couldn't have faced that at this time of night.

Yes, and quite right too. C flat ain't B. It might look like it on a keyboard but a B it isn't.

even on the recorder, when it is feasible to make different sounds for Cb and B*, I'll write, but in pencil, over the offending note to remind myself which fingering to do....

* the Cb is, if I've remembered this one correctly, sharper than the B

<pedant mode on>
I didn't realise it was a question, as you didn't put a question mark at the end!
<pedant mode off>


Tsk! These recorder-playing purists....

As a mere organist, one couldn't possibly expect you to appreciate these subtleties...

You may indeed be a mere organist, Sue, but don't underestimate me....

I'm glad I'm in good company!

Touché!

Och, that's rather sporting of you to take it that way!

Shakes hands and offers a cup of tea.

(And may I recommend "The Pedant's Return - Why Things that You Thought Are Wrong Are Right" by Andrea Barham. Fun book...)

I'll look it up! Thanks.

From the horse's mough, here in Italy (double consonants are hard to remember even for some native speakers). Both "c's" are double, that's how you can remember!
So: acciaccatura

I confused my oboe teacher totally doing this in a piece of contemporary oboe music with which he was unfamiliar. He uses "F" to indicate that you need to use a forked fingering (whereas I use "2" to avoid confusion with the note name). When he tried to play the passage to show me how to articulate it he kept using the wrong fingering everytime he saw an "F."

Surely it depends how much you sharpened the pencil???

I have pencils in sharp and flat varieties
Does that make me a useless teacher or an over-organised one?