Yamaha JMC's Book 3 Mini Concert

Playing London Bridge & Pretty Bouquet

Group singing LaDiDa while Teacher Lilian playing on the electone

What's in the party box

Party pack ready to be given away

This is a backdated post. I had problems uploading the video clips and finally given up and settled for photos instead.:(

Ian had his 3rd Yamaha JMC's mini concert on the 1st Saturday of this month and that marked the completion of Book 3. Each of them played two songs of their choice from Book 3 and Ian chose London Bridge and Pretty Bouquet. All of them then sang LaDiDa together. They played with confidence after having gained exposure during the 1st and 2nd mini concerts except one girl who did not turn up during the previous two concerts cried from the start of the class, guess she had stage fright as she had to play in front of the audience for the first time. She ended up playing on the electone in front of her and with one hand after much coaxing from her mom and the music teacher. Having said that, parents participation play an important part in group learning as it is impossible for the teacher to pay attention and guide the 10 of them during the 1-hr session. The girl did not continue on to Book 4 after the mini concert.

After 1-1/2 years into JMC, having completed 3 books and less than 6 months before graduation, I personally felt that learning music in group was just not for Ian. He would sometimes bang on the keyboard in frustation during classes whenever he has had problems focusing and hear himself playing as everyone was playing. I will observe and see how things go and decide if I should let him go for private music lessons after JMC Book 4. This boy of mine has been telling me that he wants to learn flute. Well, we'll see.

Parents were briefed on the evaluation outline and urged to brush up and prepare their kids on the areas that would be evaluated end of September. I will be sharing my notes here for record purposes and future reference.

The indivdual evaluation takes 10 minutes and he is expected to:

1. 
   
   Perform a lyric song. Choose any one song from Book 1 - 4 and he is only required to sing one verse of the selected song.
2. 
   
   Choose and play any two repertoire from Book 3 and Book 4.
3. 
   
   Solfege. Teacher plays on the electone and he sings do-re-mi.
4. 
   
   Identify chords played. Teacher plays any three chords and he identifies by hearing.
5. 
   
   Play an accompaniment piece and he fills in the bass notes himself (from any one of the selected songs earlier). This is to assess their key harmony.
6. 
   
   Notes reading. Teacher points at the notes (from the 2 selected songs) and he reads them.

I find it to be quite challenging especially the notation and hearing part, where Ian is the weakest. This mommy had to crack her head hard before coming out with some plans to help him:

1. 
   
   To squeeze in 5-10 minutes every day to play the chords to him while he has to identify by hearing. Well, not an easy task for this mommy who only exposed to music the same time as the son.;)
2. 
   
   Flash staff cards with do/re/mi/fa/so/la/ti/do on both G & F Clef to him. I initially wanted to self make those cards but found the printed copies in his Book 4, saves me tons of work.;)

The JMC graduation ceremony will be held on last Sunday of September 2010 at Yamaha HQ's Festival Hall and the evaluation takes place on a Sunday before that. The evaluation is to mark the completion of JMC and to test how much they had learned in the past 2 years. Those gifted ones will go to JAC (Junior Advance Course) while the rest, JXC (Junior extension Course) if they opted to. According to Teacher Lilian, hardly anyone fails the evaluation unless you go in and do nothing, that is why it is called evaluation and not exam/test.