Mandolin Grades in the UK

[montana]

I noticed an older thread about mandolin grades in the UK as a form of mando education. I was wondering if anyone out there has gone through this form of study and what are your opinions of this type of mando education.

[Ivan Kelsall]

I'm assuming that by grades',you mean certain 'levels of achievement' on an instrument ?. In the UK,if you begin to take formal lessons from a music teacher,you can progress from grade 1 through to grade 8 both in music theory & practical skill on your chosen instrument.These are grades achieved by examination & are pretty darned hard to attain. They're certainly NOT for 'casual' players & are an internationally recognised standard of acievement.
In my home town of Manchester UK,we have 2 of the finest music colleges in the UK,''The Royal Northern College of Music'' & "Chetham's School of Music" (pronounced Cheetham's).To gain entrance to either of these,you need to be at the top of grade 8 to start with,& considering that the lowest age of acceptance for Chetham's is 8 years of age,that's a pretty tall order !.
Personally,i don't know of any Mandolin teachers at all,let alone ones that take pupils through the varying grades.
I can only address you question theoretically. Any form of music training / tuition has to be a good thing (IMHO).If you intend to become a professional musician,being able to read music also has to be a good thing. You can do it if you need to,if you don't well,you don't !. For instance,Chris Thile attended Murray State University in Kentucky,where he became a music major. The result of his musical training is there for us all to see & hear.
Ultimately,it all depends on how serious you are re.your playing.If you wish to become a fully fledged concert performer,then formal musical training,both practical & theoretical, HAS to be the way. If you aspirations aren't that high,then set your sights lower & decide what you actually NEED
to do to be able to achieve your desired goal. You can be a Mandolin 'genius' or a '3 chord trick merchant' & all stages between.
As a final personal note - if i could have found a Mandolin tutor,to get me back to reading music as i once did & to guide me through the skills needed to play,i'd have gone for it. As it is,i rarely actually see ANY Mandolin players from one years end to the next,except at any Bluegrass Festivals i might attend,
Ivan;)

[Martin Jonas]

The BMG (Banjo Mandolin Guitar) Federation in the UK has developed a grade syllabus for formal examinations in Grades 1 to 8 for the mandolin, together with one of the major UK music colleges (Guildhall, I believe). Such examinations are a rather formal approach to developing skills and monitoring progress that is common in the classical world but fairly irrelevant in more informal genres. For orchestra or solo players in the more mainstream classical instruments, having the grades is pretty much a requisite for admission to music colleges and beyond that for getting into orchestras etc. In the mandolin world, their use for demonstrating to others that you can play is in my view rather dubious, but some people may welcome the structure it gives to study and practice while others may find it restrictive and overly formal. Details of set pieces, exams, teachers etc can be had from the BMG, I believe, and some have been posted here. Cafe member Ian Pommerenke-Steele can provide further details, no doubt.

Martin

[Ivan Kelsall]

Martin - Many thanks for the up-to-date info.,
Ivan;)

[Ray(T)]

To pick up on Ivan's comments on Chris Thile, I don't think he actually studied mandolin at music college I seem to remember reading that he studied trombone/French horn or some other wind instrument, no doubt someone will correct me if I'm wrong. The other point is that musical grades are generally aimed at people with classical music aspirations. I'm not aware that they necessarily give training for other idioms so, in order to play as an individual might want, some other input will be necessary. Over the years I have had many contacts with classical musicians. I used to play with a fiddle player, who had played with the Hale, but never realised that you could play in G by simply playing a tune written in D a string lower down. We also once asked the chief percussionist from the Liverpool Phil' to back us on drums but he said he couldn't do so without the dots.
Ray

[JeffD]

Over the years I have had many contacts with classical musicians. I used to play with a fiddle player, who had played with the Hale, but never realised that you could play in G by simply playing a tune written in D a string lower down. We also once asked the chief percussionist from the Liverpool Phil' to back us on drums but he said he couldn't do so without the dots.


Anyone who can play the achingly beautiful Beethoven String Quartet No. 5 gets a pass from me regarding not being able to play without music or to improvise.

They do their job and I do mine.

[Ray(T)]

Personally, I can't stand Beethoven, I prefer the British Romantics - but I understand where you're coming from. The trouble is that there are two sorts of musician; those who play from the heart and those who can only produce music written down by others. My (limited) experience of the grading system is that it focuses on the latter.
Ray

[allenhopkins]

..there are two sorts of musician; those who play from the heart and those who can only produce music written down by others.

There are two types of people reading this thread: those who agree with the above statement, and those who don't.

I don't. Accusing a classical musician, whose repertoire consists of "music written down by others," of not "playing from the heart," is unduly dismissive. Listen to a great violinist, pianist, classical mandolinist, or any virtuoso of that genre; you can hear the musician's "heart" in every note.

This doesn't mean that a person can't be a great musician without learning theory, sight-reading, "proper" technique, and a fixed repertoire. We all know and admire "unschooled" musicians who play inspired, technically advanced, and heartfelt music. There are many roads to reach musical excellence; some take one road, some another. But suggesting one road is authentically "from the heart," while another is uninspired repetition of someone else's inspiration, seems wrong to me.

[Ivan Kelsall]

My mention of Chris Thile being a ''music major'' wasn't to imply'that he did study Mandolin,only that he studied music.
I'm the opposite of RayT (in one respect) as Beethoven is my favourite composer & his Violin concerto is one of the all time greats of classic Violin composition & along with the Bruch Violin concerto,my 2 all time favourite concertos. I always wondered re.the soloists playing from memory & the orchestral musicians needing the music,that is until you realise that the orchestral musicians are called upon to play dozens,if not 100's of orchestral works,whereas the soloist may 'specialise' in maybe less than 20 major works.
''Playing from the heart'' - All classical musicians who play the great works have to learn them from the music score. But listen to any recording by the virtuoso Violinist Fritz Kreisler, & tell me that he doesn't play from the heart. During his lifetime,he was renowned as being possibly the most expressive Violinist on the planet !.
It was said by some musicologists that if Kreisler & Jascha Heifetz were to record the same piece of music,Kreisler would put so much into it,he'd be drained at the end of it,whereas Heifetz could play it over & over again,exactly the same.The inference being that Heifetz was perhaps a little 'cold' by comparison. All a matter of personal taste once again though.
With due respect to the OP - we've (i've) strayed from the path. If you have the chance to take formal music training in order to first of all, read music,then do it.It won't necessarily make you a better Mandolin player,that's your job,but if you ever come to learn any other instrument,the music's all there for you,as well as the music for the Mandolin,
Ivan:cool:

[Dave Hanson]

In a film called ' The Magic Fiddle ' Yehudi Menhuin said one of his great regrets was because of his classical training he was unable improvise at all.

And not a joke but an old Irishman in a pub once asked a well know fiddler if he was gifted or did he read music, no answer to that then.

Dave H

[Ray(T)]

Allen - perhaps my strive for brevity has left something to explain. I didn't mean that there is a rigid divide between people who read music and those who don't. Obviously, there are musicians who can read and interpret music "from the heart" but there are also musicians who simply reproduce what is written on the page without any form of interpretation. The point I was trying to make was that the grading system seemed to lead to this type of musician and that further study in other directions might be necessary.

As Dave has mentioned Yehudi Menhuin, you may recall the duet he played on TV with Stephane Grapelli? Grapelli's comment on his playing, afterwards, was that all the notes were there but it didn't swing.
Ray

[JeffD]

Personally, I can't stand Beethoven, I prefer the British Romantics - but I understand where you're coming from. The trouble is that there are two sorts of musician; those who play from the heart and those who can only produce music written down by others. My (limited) experience of the grading system is that it focuses on the latter.
Ray

Ohhh man. Let me disagee, with all respect. In in a slightly different way from Allen, I think.

Yes there are two or more sorts of musicians they both play from the heart.

One sort sees no need to be simultaneously a musician and a composer. This sort sees its job as faithfully interpreting the music of great composers for all future generations.

Another sort of musician also plays from the heart, but embraces a different kind of music, a kind of music that contains a more improvisational style.

Different musical goals, different musical expecatations, different musical culture.

Playing music and composing music (and improvisation is just spontaneous real time composition in public) are two different things. Being critical (or even pejoritive) of a musician because he or she is not also a composer would be as ridiculous as criticising a trombone player because he is not also a band leader.

But your main point applies, I think, that the rating system applies to classical musicians.

[allenhopkins]

As Dave has mentioned Yehudi Menhuin, you may recall the duet he played on TV with Stephane Grapelli? Grapelli's comment on his playing, afterwards, was that all the notes were there but it didn't swing.

And perhaps if Grapelli and Menuhin had played a Paganini concerto together, Yehudi would have said of Grapelli that he really swung, but all the notes weren't there...

"Swinging," improvising, playing freely, departing from the score, are not the fortes (pun intended) of the trained classical musician. Some can do it, others aren't as comfortable. In the immortal words of VP Cheney, "So what?" The trained musicians express themselves by virtuosic interpretations of the music as it was written, seeking perfection of attack, intonation, tone and dynamics. The really great ones leave a personal imprint on the music as they play it.

[Tosh Marshall]

I think the thread has diversified somewhat away from the original question. As Ivan has mentioned there are the classically based graded courses at the Royal Colleges of Music (Manchester & London) Cheethams (Manchester) Guildhall (London) and Trinity College (London where Alison Stephens is the tutor).
But there are courses for traditional musicians at Newcastle University (where Laura Beth Salter, mandolinist of the Shee attended) http://www.ncl.ac.uk/undergraduate/course/W340/Folk_and_Traditional_Music and in Scotland at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music & Drama http://www.rsamd.ac.uk/undergraduate/sm/
I think it is down to where you want your playing to go and what you want to get out of it. The main music universities here are still heavily classically based, unlike Boston in the States, where you can learn most styles.
The BMG are running a teachers course in Scotland http://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/showthread.php?t=55065 where one of the tutors is Nigel Gatherer. As he states in the thread, he has no musical qualifications but his knowledge and passion for Scottish Traditional Music surpasses any qualifications in my book.
As regards classical music and 'feel', the BBC did a Masterworks series a few years back and the BBC Symphony Orchestra led by Sir Andrew Davis performed Vaughan Williams' 'Tallis Fantasia' in Gloucester Cathedral. The piece and mood and the setting knocks me out every time I hear it. I am not a classical fan but this piece is special to me. I think it's more down to passion for the subject rather than qualifications and being open and getting something out of most styles.......Then there is always Ted http://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/showthread.php?t=55289

[Ivan Kelsall]

Yehudi Menhuin readily admitted that he didn't have much of a capacity to improvise. He did a recording with Stephan Grappelli many years back & he stated at the time,that his 'improvisations' were actually 'scored'. Now there, you have two polar opposites - Grappelli & Menhuin. One a supreme Violin virtuoso in the field of Classical music & the other an equally adept Violinist in the field of Jazz. I could listen to either SEPARATELY,playing within his own musical genre. But i've heard the recording,& Menhuin is stiff by comparison with Grappelli,from whom the music simply
flows with effortless smoothness.
My favourite English composer is Vaughan Williams,who wrote some incredible music for strings.
His "Five variants on Dives & Lazarus" is awesome. Another wonderfull piece for strings is "Sospiri" (sighs) by Sir Edward Elgar - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_JvCKBRpFA
For me, it doesn't get more expressive than that,
Ivan

[Matt Hutchinson]

Ultimately grades are, like almost all forms of measurable examination, an educational device. If you want to learn about European history you can do a degree in it - alternatively you can spend all your free time traveling and reading and end up with an encyclopedic knowledge of the same subject.

I'm a big opera buff and go to the Royal Opera House as often as I can. I also read up on the history, performance styles etc of opera. Last week I started attending a course on opera one evening a week run by Birkbeck in London. If I do all 4 years I'll get a certificate of some kind which has an academic value yet the qualification is immaterial to me.

My point is this - learning about something by doing it is fine, learning about something by formal study is also fine. If you ignore either path you miss out on something so a combination of the 2 can give you the best of both worlds.

Seems to me that music, unlike many other popular art forms (and I mean non-classical music here) has some kind of odd stigma attached to it where we're supposed to be able to proudly claim 'oh yeah, I'm completely self-taught' like this is a badge of honour. If I want to learn about something and someone knows more than I do (or just knows different stuff) then I can learn from them. Buying a Sam Bush DVD to learn his tunes is exactly the same - learn 'Brilliancy' note for note and it allows you to play 'Brilliancy' note for note, no more. Apply the things you learn by mastering that tune to the way you play other tunes and, bingo, you're progressing.

At the end of the day, any form of learning an instrument that teaches you how music works on it and gets you playing to a level beyond constantly thinking 'where does this finger go next' can only be a good thing. How you apply that knowledge to express yourself is what makes the difference. Music, like any other language (and it is a language), is most expressive once you learn how to speak it without thinking.

We can all learn enough Italian (for example) to order a coffee and buy dinner but knowing a language to the point of being able to express how you feel in direct response to others doing the same (ie having a conversation) is surely the goal. We don't all have the time (or the inclination) to do this - if you only need enough Italian to order dinner then that's fine and you're to be commended for learning it rather than pointing at the menu and talking English but louder!

If you want to understand music and play some at any level then it's a great thing and knowing 5 tunes that you enjoy playing with your friends is brilliant. If you aspire to being fluent and expressive then the more you understand your language the better.

That's my take on it (and I couldn't have written any of that in Italian!)

Matt