Music for a beginner French horn player.

When we decided on home education, one of the few things that I was slightly concerned about being able to provide, was the opportunity to make music with other people, particularly at the early stages of learning an instrument.  M started learning the French horn 10 months ago and has got to the stage of playing pieces of around about Grade 1 standard.  Playing music in orchestras was a very big part of my life from about M's age until I left school, but it was mostly in the school orchestra to begin with, certainly at the stage that M is now, before joining a couple of youth orchestras a bit later on, so I hadn't anticipated this being an option for a while yet. 

Music for Everyone is a fantastic organisation, that provides just the sort of opportunities that I wanted to make sure K & M had access to if they were interested.  I've already been to a few of the Blow the Dust Off Your Instrument workshops with my viola and really enjoyed them.  Some of K & M's friends have both done the Vocals weekends, which K & M did consider but decided against, and also Bandwise, which M joined for the first time this year.  There are three levels of Bandwise and no auditions, but the guideline of around Grade 1 to 2 for Bandwise 1, Grade 3 to 4 for Bandwise 2 and Grade 5 upwards for Bandwise 3.  M's French horn teacher is involved with the organisation and gave her a leaflet about it, but she was a bit unsure whether she wanted to go or not to start with.  However, after talking to her friends who have taken part previously and also C, our friend who used to teach them piano, she decided to give it a go and she really enjoyed it.

M was one of two French horns in Bandwise 1.

The music is sent out in January, along with an audio cd (or you can download it), so there is plenty of time to practise and go over the pieces with music teachers.  M got rather frustrated and worried when she tried to play along with the cd, but was reassured by her friends that they couldn't manage that either, but were fine when it came to playing with the others in the band.  There is a weekend with rehearsals both days (just in the afternoon for Bandwise 1), which was last week and then today there was another afternoon rehearsal for a couple of hours before an informal concert for family and friends.  As well as the children (there were over 100 of them over the three bands), there are quite a lot of adults who played with them and helped them along (very handy when you have lots of counting to do, as it's easy to lose your place!) and everyone was very friendly.

M was a bit nervous about the concert, so we talked about the worst that could happen.  The scenario that she came up with was that it all went horribly wrong and sounded awful.  That was easy to deal with and I told her about the time at a school concert when just that happened and our music teacher just stopped us and we started again and it was fine on the second attempt. 

Nearly ready to start.

The three different bands each played their own pieces and there were various other smaller groups from Bandwise 2 and 3 that performed their own things too, for example a flute group, a double reed instrument group and even a percussion group.  Then for the finale of the concert all three bands performed together in a very cleverly arranged piece, which had sections where each of the three bands were playing on their own and others where they all played together.  The concert was really very good, even without taking into account how short a time they performers had all had together to rehearse and the whole event was incredibly well managed.  If you have a musician in your family, I really can't recommend it highly enough.

M is now talking about joining the Nottingham Youth Band when she gets to around Grade 2 level, although it is the same night as Scouts, which she also wants to start.  Logistically it's just about manageable to do them both, although she's rather worried she would find it too much.  I've suggested she not worry about that just yet, as she's got 6 months to go before she can start Scouts and it'll be another 6 months or so after that before she would be the right standard to join the band.