The maestro of the Thayer Conservatory Orchestra went to Junior’s school along with a brass quartet for the 3rd and 4th graders, and he decided he wants to play a brass instrument. He had talked about the trombone, which is an excellent instrument, don’t get me wrong, but I’m pretty sure I’m not running out to buy a trombone for an 8 year old with the attention span of dog food. Plus his arms aren’t long enough; that’s what’s saving me.
He changed to trumpet, which he’s also too young for, but I have to say that I’m in a kind of deja vu about the whole thing. In a freaky repeat of my own childhood, I was a year older than him when they brought my class into the music room and had all kinds of instruments out to demo for us, and then we could choose which one we might want to learn to play. And I chose…the trumpet. I’m sure my parents were thrilled with my choice, but the choice was all mine, as was the responsibility for practicing every day for the two years I played. I even played a solo in the annual talent show – Close to You by the Carpenters.
Luckily, there wasn’t any cost to them because I used the school’s trumpet. Have you actually priced band instruments? I went to a going out of business sale that had saxaphones at half price for a thousand bucks.
SO, he’s actually going to start taking piano lessons, and when he’s a little older, if he want to try trumpet he can. My point about all this is that if anyone behind the project financing to have the quartet visit the schools wants to know if it was a good idea, you’ve got at least one little boy who is now signed up for music lessons as a result of the visit.
Good call, Jody. I wish I played an instrument, and the time to learn how is when you’re a kid.
So true, although I think there are parts of it that you pick up MUCH faster as an adult because they aren’t foreign concepts. I imagine teaching the concept of a quarter note works better on someone who already knows the concept of a quarter of something.
I had really basic piano lessons and the trumpet lessons. Oh, and a year of guitar lessons (it didn’t quite stick) when I was in college.
We let him do [at least] “one thing” per season as long as we can handle the scheduling. We didn’t get him signed up for soccer in time (and the practice schedule was VERY iffy for us anyway) so I offered him music or swimming or something else like that. He did swimming until it reached a point where he’d be working on being a competitive swimming (perfecting strokes, speed, etc.) and quite frankly, I can’t have a kid in a sport he needs to practice every day of the week. I don’t think we’re going to do the formal ski lesson thing again this year. This will be his third year skiing. If he wants to try snowboarding [crosses self] I’ll just sign him up for a private lesson or two.
Hey Jody I have 2 trumpets if you’d like to use one. Let me know. Update from the badminton coach, girl that stole the phone, suspended and kicked off the team… GO TEAM
Get out! Are you kidding me? We’d LOVE to borrow a trumpet! I am SO GLAD they figured out who stole the phone! We never blamed R for that, by the way. If you can trust badminton players, though, who can you trust?
Mr. D can pick which one he wants to take next time he’s getting the kids. It wasn’t hard to figure out who stole the phone. The idiot took a picture of herself and called her mom from the phone before Mr. D had it shut off. Didn’t think you blamed R for it, though it was a good lesson for her. Fortunately it ended up to the good for her, she was lucky a dumb badminton player stole it.
If the maestro is still Mr. Wada, he is such an awesome performer /conductor – I went to school with his older son Paul. I can remember when they did demonstrations for us grade-school kids, and I convinced my mom to buy me a brand new flute which sadly I didn’t stick with for too long, although I DO still have it. You can also find reasonably priced instruments on Ebay, if you decide you want to dish out the money for a trumpet. I purchased a reasonably priced violin there recently.