Yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I got into my band, I am 2nd 2nd flute, which I am really pleased about.
However, the person who had to mark me was really critical.
I got a low mark for sight reading but I knew I messed up, and I know I am good at sight reading, as for Grade 7 I got 29/32, and I knew I went wrong anyway.
My comments were:
"The 2 pieces were very well prepared, secure and allowed you to display your sensitive and attractive sound (oh my - a compliment from the most critical of people). Just how "molto tranquillo" was the Idylle (I don't know!)Some work on breath capacity/inhaling would really help you retain your poise in performance. Also please spend some serious, careful time on staccato technique.

The last comment - what! I thought I could staccato fine, my teacher has never mentioned it! I am surprised if that is what my sight reading mark down, indeed, he didn't mention the one I completely messed up.

Don't get me wrong, I am REALLY pleased that I got in (thanks for believing in me), but the comments just seem weird.

Anyway, also, I can now say that I don't have a course with my band on the 24th and so hopefully can do the concert

Thanks for helping me get through this audition.

Hehe, a thing that made me laugh, was my teacher wrote out the forms that said what people are in and she has put "[name of choir] and 2nd flute (2nd seat) in [name of band]. Well done!!

Nicki

HEEEEEY !!! SO the postman finally made it !
So pleased for you Nicki. There you go now - after all that self- doubt.

No more cliff-hangers for a while, then ??

Go and CELEBRATE now.

No more cliffhangers...hmm, well I still have my GCSE results to come.

I'll see whether I can celebrate when mum gets back!!

Told you Nicki!

Well done

Hooray!! Congratulations, knew you could do it!

Thanks guys!

Well done Nicki, I'm so pleased for you. I knew you could do it

Well done Nicki, you must be really pleased!

I am pleased but the comments are really annoying me. I know I messed up the sight reading, but about staccato tonguing...hmm.

Great news, Nicki.

Is there any way you can talk to this guy and ask him what he thinks you should do to improve?

Well, he is the boss of all the music teachers. I'll talk to my teacher first though, see what she thinks.

Yay!!! We all knew you could do it!!! Well done!!

Well done Nicki thats fab!

I've been waiting for this post!!!

Congratulations...... Bolly is already on ice in the cafe.

I don't know, you and Nat need a good dose of self-confidence!!!! 'Course you had passed, we all knew you had!

Well done!

Hey Nikki, he wasn't even nice about your friend who did really well's stacatto teachnique so obviously it's a bit of a thing of his!

Still, enjoy yourself, and ignore the grumpy so'n'so!

Congrats Niki !

CONGRATS!!!!

nicki, thats brill! well done, i think you really deserve it after all the panicking!
hoxie
x

YAY! Well done Nicki! We had faith in you - now hopefully you can have some in yourself too! WELL DONE!!!!!!!!!!!

I am never going to have faith in myself, I'll always have some area to criticise.

Well done!

WOO!

lol, so the (official version) of the news has arrived!!! yay!!!

WOOOO!!!!

very proud of you, and knew you'd get in!!!!

just GCSEs to go...and i know you'll have done fine! I just hope our last minute music revision session payed off for both of us!!!!!!! (fingers crossed!!!!)

well, i'll see you soon (because I can say that now hehe!!!!!)

xxxxx

It is nice to see in writing, especially as my teacher, who had written out the forms, put what I was in and then "Well done". Aww, bless.

GCSEs...I am dreading them, I feel so sick when I think about it.

Well done Nicki!

oh ............ yes ............. sorry ...

still, after what you've achieved - piece of cake !!

I don't think so. I am so nervous about them, and I know I'll end up just like I am now, thinking I could have done better and hating myself.

For goodness sake ...... you can stop that right now. ((virtally shakes Nicki)).

You got the news you hoped for this morning. Don't worry about a few less than glowing comments - you got in didn't you ?? There's no way you should hate yourself. You've got loads to look forward to I'm quite sure.

Stop giving yourself a hard time and chill a little !

What is it with you all on this forum???

All these great achievements and you still beat yourselves up. Hey you know (and we know) that you have done well and if by any wierd happening you haven't well it is just "deferred success".

Auntie Jane now makes a confession.......I failed all my "A" levels (all those years ago), and well at the time I *was* devastated, but hey now I think how my life would have been so different if I had passed them and well if I'm honest I'm glad it turned out the way it did. What ever happens it is for the best believe me

DON'T WORRY

I don't know, I have just always hated myself sometimes. I am always critical of myself.

Eeeeeeeeeeeep. Only just saw this. I don't know, it is like an automatic reaction, that I have. Some of my teachers have found out that I do overwork, and I am a perfectionist. Also, when you find out that your old teacher basically thinks you weren't very good, it isn't very confidence boosting.

Nicki, I sympathise, having had both teachers who didn't believe in me, being a crazed perfectionist, and automatically assuming the worst, but some things I've learned over the years (and I know you need to learn them yourself for them to really sink in, but maybe they will encourage you in the meantime)...

- if teachers don't believe in you/think you aren't very good, the best "revenge" is to work hard, do well, and prove them wrong (whether they ever find out you have is beside the point - but you should know from your recent results (exam and audition) that you are a good flautist - trust your teacher when she says you are, even when you don't feel it - if you can't have faith in yourself, at least have faith in her! She seems to have been right so far...

- being a perfectionist can mean that you are never satisfied, but it also means you will work hard. So remind yourself that there IS a positive side, and try to remember that good marks are still GOOD marks even when they're not PERFECT marks.

I'm sure there was a third thing but blowed if I can recall what...

BE PROUD, GIRL!

Congratulations! It's my personal belief that flute is the worst possible instrument to play when you're nervous, because your breath is everything (I know, everybody else is just waiting to tell me how wrong I am!), so I think you did very well!

By the way, when I'm nervous, I tend to hold my breath, ending up with "too much breath" and finding it hard to speak. If it was me, my full-to-bursting lungs would haven been DEATH to staccato .

As for feeling not good enough at things, don't worry, life and shortage of money will take care of those feelings of reticence some day:lol:

My teacher currently, has always believed I can do things, (oh yes, that reminds me, we had a bet about the audition and I lost it). We ended up doing that bet because I was so adament I wasn't good enough to get in. I won't see my old teacher again, but I can't believe it, I wasn't *that* bad when I was with her, I got 1 pass and 2 merits (Scraped - 120). It only came out because my new teacher was talking to her. I do work hard, but also because I am also scared of failure.

Good on her - it seems she's been right so far!


It seems that the problem was with her, not you... if you didn't OK-but-not-great with her then now you are doing great with a new teacher... not hard to see where the finger is likely pointing! Like I said, the point is not to prove it to her - because in the long run whether she ever believes in you beside the point - but just to generally prove her wrong... which you are doing admirably!

Hehehe, I'll have to be buying that Fruit and Nut chocolate bar now!

My new flute teacher is lovely, she is the best I ever have. I don't know whether she knows how not confident I am, but she knows how I beat myself up about things, and she also knows that I want to get better and work hard.

I'm sure that if she is half as switched on as she appears to be, she has noted that you're lacking in confidence, and is probably doing her best in whatever way she can to help counter that as she obviously believes you have talent!

Oh I totally agree!! Shaking hands while trying to play the piano aren't great but hyperventilating while trying to get through an exam/audition/ performance playing the flute - believe me I know how awful that is.

Oh, it is because I don't appear nervous or lacking in confidence, I generally won't say things, but she knows I get annoyed at myself if I go wrong. I am not shy but I am not extrovert. I guess it takes me a while to come out of my shell before I feel happy about a piece or something.

I suspect she does realise, even if she doesn't say anything. She sounds pretty "with it" and switched on!

She is, the best flute teacher I have ever had. I will never be able to thank her enough.
I suppose I should take comfort in when I had my lesson before my audition, my teacher was saying to this work experience girl how well I had come on, and after listening to me, the girl said I was amazing (she was about gr 4 flute, gr 6 harp). That made me smile.

*grin*

See!

I have to admit, I did sound good

YAY! See, that's the first step on the road to self-belief!

(I'm going to save this post i reckon and remind you of it occasionally )

Ok then. Maybe I should think of the memory of playing well in detail.

The room I think was used for ballet, so it was big and bare and empty, so it had a lovely echo. My flute teacher said "Someone has been practicing hard on these pieces", which I had been. She said if I played like I did in the lesson in the audition she said she'd be very, very proud of me. I played the pieces, and she was being very picky, and picking out very, very, very minor details, but she said they were really good otherwise. I felt really happy after that lesson...

You DO sound good ! WELL DONE YOU getting in!

Go celebrate........ you more than deserve it.

As for saving this post... Nicki I think you should make a list of all your good points and achievements. And read it every day! It will help your self esteem loads.

Sounds like a very good idea, and sounds like a really good lessons. You know how you worry over things, ie when something is bad you turn it over in your mind and niggle at bits of it etc? Do it with that good thing - turn it over in your mind, remember all the nice things your teacher said, and the way you felt when that girl said you were amazing, and how good it felt when your teacher said she would be proud of you. That's the positive version of worry, and if you can do it negatively (which I know you can ) then you can do it positively too! Don't expect it to work miracles overnight, but if you think about how horrible negative worrying is, and how manky it makes you feel, just think how much "positive worrying" could help! I don't think you're about to turn into Miss Self Belief overnight, but encouraging yourself to think over positive things like that can really help. So, good for you

Awww thankyou! Come onto AIM!

I'll make a list and post it on ABRSM for you and Sarah! Actually maybe we should make a thread about good points about people (both by themselves and other people saying), and make people more optimistic (I can hardly talk!)

The annoying thing is I can't remember much else of the lesson!! I did my pieces and some sight reading...I was nervous at the start, and she says that I can settle into my pieces really quickly, some people talke 1/2 a piece to settle down, but she said I take a few bars. She said my dynamics were good. I can't remember much else!! Oh yes, and when I was feeling not confident before my Grade 7, she said that she had a recording of me playing last year. She also said I'd walk the audition..

I know as a teacher when I'm able to do this that the main job of practising and getting fluent has been done and I can pick up really small points to "fine-tune" the performance.



There, that's better already !

Sorry - I'm a bit behind here. I have been offline for a couple of hours - got a difficult meeting tomorrow and have been getting a bit of advice.

That's one way I use to know if I'm getting on all right... when my teacher starts to be REALLY picky.