I haven't played violin for a while, last exam I took was Grade 5 about 3 or 4 years ago. I studied for Grade 6 but didn't actually sit the exam. Now after a years' break I've come back to lessons and my new teacher has put me on Grade 7.

But I'm really struggling! The pieces from this years' (2005-2007) syllabus seem really hard (for me anyway) and I can't get them sounding anything like decent music. I'm doing A:2 (Allegro from Sonata in E Minor by Mozart) and B:2 (Scherzo from Sonata No 3 in A minor by Schubert) - haven't picked out a third piece yet!

The position changes are difficult for me and I am really struggling with these pieces. But my teacher says "well if you were finding it easy I'd suggest you do Grade 8"! and doesn't seem worried. I just think I'm not good a enough player to be tackling Grade 7. Has anyone else found these pieces hard or do any teachers have any ideas?

I'm not playing in an orchestra either at the moment - my teacher put me in touch with a very good local amatuer orchestra but after I'd only been once my brother (who plays double bass in another amateur orchestra) told me that one of the people in the orchestra I'd been to had said some really horrible things about me (he plays in orchestra with her son)! I was too upset to try going back, although my teacher thinks I should not allow nasty people to put me off and I should make the effort to go back after Christmas.

The worst thing is, my brother has just been accepted to study music at the Welsh College of Music and Drama and although I should be delighted for him I can't help feeling jealous and sorry for myself. I should know that at 33 and struggling over GRade 7 I would never have a hope of ever going to music college (although it is a dream for me!) - but it seems so unfair that I started playing as a child and have worked so hard on music, yet my brother only picked up a double bass about 7 years ago and now he's doing the one thing I'd always dreamed of. My family are not helping, making remarks about how I am the "little amateur" while he has a chance to "go-pro". I feel that I should just give up the violin as I obviously have no talent and can never do anything with it. After all I work in a call centre (and hate it!), what call is there for me to be musical? I would give anything to study music full time.

Hi again Lady Moonlight

Now you can observe how much you're ahead of me. I started the violin 8 weeks ago, and am hoping to get to Grade 1 for the Spring exam session! Imagine that - 38 and barely touching Grade 1! And if you've only just gone back to lessons and are up to doing Grade 7, that sounds pretty amazing to me.

Your violin teacher sounds right, though. You shouldn't listen to other people's comments. And your brother's just trying to stir up trouble, so don't let him!

You say you'd give anything to study music full time - well give yourself time. Time to get back into the swing of practising violin and singing, time to get a few exams under your belt and build up some experience. God willing, you've got a lot of life ahead of you yet, so I'm sure if you really want to go on with your music you'll find a way.

Best of luck

Cheers

Katyjay

Did you fully rebuild your technique after your year's break? To me, this would mean working through all your previous grade technical studies and pieces, potentially starting with Grade 1. It could take several months to re-establish your Grade 6 level I think.

It's nice to have a teacher who has such confidence in you, but only you can put the time on the foundation work. I'd say if you couldn't pass a Gr6 exam today, then you shouldn't be studying Gr7 pieces seriously. You could ask your teacher to concentrate more on your technical studies and ensuring they are fully established, before carrying on with the difficult pieces.

In my opinion, if your teacher says it is possible for you to sit for certain level of exam, surely there is a reason for it. I sat for my first violin exam after 6 yrs of learning the instrument, and that is at grade 7, after much encouragement of my teacher.

As for joining orchestra, you will get a lot of improvement, especially in performing in public, your techniques, etc after you join.Things come through experience.

Don't let what others say stop you from getting into music college. Try your best!

Dont be TOO conscientious. I find that most of my adult pupils feel and think that they are nowhere nea the standard that they really are. They just look at what they cant do. In fact one of my pupils has now passed her CT ABRSM , while she feel she is still only grade 5/6 standard! Have fun and enjoy your playing

The jumps between grades are BIG it always felt to me on the violin, much more so than other instruments I have played... my downfall at that level was simply that my technique was not good enough and teachers didn't make me go back and sort that out. It really is worth doing, especially after a long break.

Do not be put off by anyone, 'talent' accounts for only a small part in playing the violin for most players, you will go further with hard work and a good teacher than you will by relying on talent.
I have a customer who counts as a daily role model; he retired at 65 and took up the 'cello having never played any instrument previously, he worked through and passed his grades, including 8, and was still playing with a local pro-am orchestra at 82. He still plays with friends on a regular basis and only gave up the orchestra because it folded when the musical director went back to Greece to conduct professionally. He does not pretend to any talent but he studied carefully in a well structured way with teachers who how to teach adults. Your teacher obviously has confidence in you, return that by having confidence in your teacher's opinion. Don't focus on the things/notes that go wrong, focus on the ones that go right and I feel sure you will find they outweigh mistakes in playing or flaws in technique.

Thanks everyone. I've been feeling pretty disheartened lately. Feeling too old and not talented/good enough to ever be more than a Grade 5-ish amateur!

The main thing I'm finding hard about Grade 7 is the position changes. I must admit that I have never had a really good teaching or grounding in position changing (other than the basic 1st - 3rd). I played violin as a child from Grades 1 -3, then took it up again as an adult and took Grades 3 and 5 (passed both with distinction) but it was only in Grade 6 that the real position work started to come in. I coped OK with the Grade 6 pieces I did with my last teacher (I moved away for a while and so didn't sit the exam) and then had the year's break. Now I've come back to playing and I'm tackling the Grade 7 pieces, Meditation from Thais and have done some orchestra stuff (not with an orchestra at the moment) and its really challenging (to put it mildly! Madly frustrating might be a better phrase!)

Is position changing generally challenging or is it roundly expected to have been "sorted out" by Grade 7?

You know, old thing, you'll have to come over and be a junior member of the Adult Learners' Forum. You can take over from me as one of the babies of the group.

Heheh well its nice to be called a baby! I will be 34 very soon and I sort of feel like my chances of ever doing anything musical for a career are over! People are even saying that my 26-year-old brother is "very old" to be starting out at music college!

The awful thing about my violin playing is that I started at the age of 7 (you remember those awful school group lessons? I had a cheap nasty violin which my mum bought on what was then called Hire-Purchase - other kids in the class had really flashy expensive ones - and we had a teacher who yelled at us when we made mistakes!) I stuck at it for several years though, played in the local youth Orchestra and the school orchestra and took Grades 1 and 2 (my mum still has the certificates!), and began working on Grade 3. I gave up at the age of around 13 after the teacher we had at high school (probably getting fed up of me being the worst and most useless student she had) tried to get me to change the violin for the viola because the only viola player in the school was 18 and about to leave and the school orchestra would be short of a viola "section"! I was given about 3 lessons on the viola and stuck in the school orchestra as a "viola player", even though I had'nt got used to reading the alto clef yet. It scared me silly and was the end of my violin/viola lessons, until I was 28 when I took up violin again!

I often wonder what I could have accomplished if I'd stuck to playing. Although playing from a child doesn't seem to be necessary to succeed - my brother didn't take a single music lesson at school, only picked up a double bass 7 years ago and is now about to study at a "conservatoire". So there you go - thats where all the talent in our family went!!!

The awful thing about my violin playing is that it sounds like I'm scraping fingernails down a blackboard, my intonation is only plus or minus a semitone and my bowing arm flaps about like a helicopter rotor. I can't practise more than twenty minutes at a time, and after eight lessons I'm nowhere near Grade 1 standard yet

And you're worried?

Heheh I was like that circa 1980. Oh the joys of the "Eta Cohen Violin Method" and a cheap Skylark violin in the hands of an 8 year old! My poor parents!

I don't think I sound much better now, certainly not when hacking my way through the "Scherzo From Sonata Number 3" by Schumann (cringe) or Meditation from Thais which sounds more like a cat dying slowly and painfully as I struggle through the position changes and my not-very-good vibrato!

But I'm sure you'd blow me away when it came to singing!

How about we both cut ourselves some slack on this one? If we could play perfectly from the get-go there wouldn't be much point in teachers teaching would there?

And as I've just got to the stage where a significant chunk of the little income I have comes from teaching, I'd rather there was a point to my doing it......

Actually though I have to say that you're doing well to be considering Grade 1 after 8 lessons, I would have thought you'd need to be playing for about a year or so to have the confidence to tackle Grade 1. I trook Grade 1 as a child and I think I'd been playing for about a year and a half before I sat Grade 1, although I did learn the "Eta Cohen" method when you start holding the violin like a banjo and plucking it before you even consider using the bow, so that obviously added time to the learning. Plus I was only 7.

Keep at it! And practice open strings to get your bowing arm right. Practice in front of a mirror, thats what I do.

Violin playing is so different to singing which comes from inside you - violin playing can be dictated by your fingers and how much they co-operate with what you're trying to do.

Once you get Grade 1 though you'll probably get "the bug" and want to carry on taking Grades!

I've got strong feelings about all this, being someone who believes you should 'drop down' to a grade rather than 'struggle up' to one. It's much more fun that way, and much more interesting too as you don't have to spend so much time on the same repertoire (leaves you time for other repertoire).

My advice:

Tell your teacher you want to do your Grade 6 first; Grade 6 is a milestone in any case.

Tell you her need focussed technical help with vibrato and shifting. There's a specific method for learning a really good vibrato - it probably came from Sheila Nelson; I learnt it from the mentor on the CTABRSM course and have used it with great results ever since. It involves waving, stroking the strings and various other stages and you end up with a nice arm vibrato you can vary the speed of. Ask her if she can teach it.

For confidence with shifting, the Neil McKay books are good. Position changing is challenging only if you haven't approached it systematically, and a word of advice: always make sure your thumb travels with you all the way! See your hand as a train sliding up and down the neck, all of a piece so to speak.

I would also suggest you work through all your scales again, starting with grade 1 and working gradually up, not moving forward till you feel perfectly confident at each level. There's a big leap at grade 4 when the chromatic scales and dominant arpeggios come in, so you do need to be really solid at that level before even thinking of tackling the grade 7 scales.

Basically, I think she's rushing you and that you instinctively know this. There's no harm whatsoever in slowing down, and you'll get much further in the end if you do. Also, if you go for grade 6, you could then miss out grade 7 altogtether and spend a longer time on grade 8, learning more than 3 pieces from the repertoire, but approaching the grade 8 scales via the grade 7 ones.

As you are paying the money, you can call the tune (literally!). If she doesn't like it you could always find another teacher more sensitive to you as an individual. But look, I'm sure she won't want to lose you, and if you tell her you'd rather approach grade 8 via grade 6 than grade 7, why should she object? You're far more likely to get a distinction at grade 8 this way in my view.

As for the pleasure of playing with other people, find someone who plays the piano and get together with them on a regular basis to play sonatas etc, gradually building up in difficulty. Record yourselves when it gets really good! And if you live anywhere near Bath come and visit me and I'll give you a jazz violin lesson for a bit of variety!

Good luck!

Violinia

you should 'drop down' to a grade rather than 'struggle up' to one. It's much more fun that way, and much more interesting too as you don't have to spend so much time on the same repertoire (leaves you time for other repertoire).

Violinia, I only realised how sensible your advice is, this week! My girl's teacher had a student who could play grade 8 pieces very well indeed. I've heard her. Imagine my surprise when he told my husband that the girl has just sat for her grade 7 this week and played very well! He accompanied her this week so he knew. That way, she enjoyed playing with relative ease and confidence and has probably bag a distinction, too!

LM, I do hope you pluck up enough courage to assert your needs (to slow down, amongst other things) and your expectations, frankly!

Tess

I honestly don't think there is ever a time when shifting can be claimed as completely sound. Secure shifting and the associated intonation issue is something all string players battle with at some time, no matter how experienced they are. Muscle memory plays a huge part, but as you've only just come back to playing you cannot expect overnight success; your hands are having to re-train.

Air your concerns with your teacher and ask if you can do some specific work on the technique of shifting. Good shifting is partly about avoiding a death-grip on the violin neck; the more relaxed your left hand, the better and easier you will find it.

Don't be put off by hear-say comments from members of an amateur orchestra. If they've got nothing better to do than talk behind other players backs, then they are the ones with a problem, not you. Playing in an ensemble will bring your playing on in leaps and bounds - even if you do feel you are struggling with it at the moment. Stick at it and don't give up!!

Thanks everyone! I had a lesosn with my teacher this week and feel a little bit more confident with the pieces. Focussing on little sections really. I'm doing:

A2: Mozart: Allegro: sonata in E Minor
B2: Schumann: Scherzo: Sonata no 3 in A Minor

The Mozart has some tricky trills and fast bits in it that are proving problematic for me, although I am practising them slowly to get the hang of the fingering. The stacatto bits and the dotted rhythmns need good bow control, which I have to practice. There's not too much positon shifting in this one.

The Schumann is quite frustrating because it has lots of weird position changed and I find it hard to hit them, plus it has to go relatively fast. It also has lots of those "six notes to one bow" runs, which needs good bow control and intonation. I will have to take it apart and practice in sections quite slowly.

I have found getting the ABRSM recording of the pieces reall yhelpful because I can get the "feel" of the piece, hear the rhythmn and character in the recordings, so I know what I am working towards. I have been trying to play the Mozart along with the cd to increase my speed and improve my timing and intonation. I haven't tried top do that with the Scherzo yet.

I haven't picked a C: list piece (Ilike the look of Dragon Dance!) but I am doing Meditation from Thais as an extra piece. I find that really frustrating! Its the position changes, mostly! My previous teacher wrote all over my score in pencil - marking arrows where I had to change position and I don't know if it helps really.

I think I'll keep going for a few more weeks. If by the middle of January I haven't made enough progress on the pieces I'll ask my teacher if I could do Grade 6. I learned all the Grade 6 pieces for the last syllabus, but didn't sit the exam as I moved away from Cardiff for 3 months last year and when I came back, had to change teachers as my previous teacher has gone back to BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra and cut down on his pupils as a result, so didn't have space for me. The Grade 6 pieces I'd learned were out of date by then. But when I played them for my new teacher he said we might as well go on to Grade 7 (I am now learning with a teacher who plays with the Welsh National Opera and teaches at the Welsh Coll of Muisic and Drama). It would be nice to master Grade 7 but I won't keep banging my head against a brick wall, If I'm still struggling after Christmas I'll ask to drop a Grade.

Sounds like you've got a very sensible attitude to the whole thing - I think the deadline for the next session of exams is the end of Jan. Or why not just give yourself more time and do the exam in July if you decide you're not ready by the middle of Jan? Glad you're feeling happier about it all anyway.



Interestingly, when I observed a lesson at the Junior Strings Programme at Guildhall, the teacher encouraged the pupil (aged 11) to write all her own fingerings on the music. They discussed fingerings and shiftings, and the pupil always had to come up with a musical reason for coming up with her choices; it was one of the things that impressed me the most about the lesson.

I have to admit to writing far too much on scores, and know deep down that if the pupil makes the choices (with discussion and help, but always having the final decision) and writes them in themselves, they feel so much more ownership.

Food for thought, I think!

Violinia

Well, I just took my grade 7 (played A1: Cantabile and Bizzaria by Bonporti, B1: No. 1 From the Homeland by Smetana, C3: Dragon Dance by Polly Waterfield). It's very much different and harder than Grade 6, which is much easier than grade 7. Don't sweat it if you can't get the scales and pieces right yet. Just do etudes to improve your technique first.

Good luck!