Mothering Forum banner

Gifted in the Arts

4K views 61 replies 18 participants last post by  dessismama 
#1 ·
I know other people have expressed the desire to have the Arts (by "art", I mean fine arts, music and dance) included in the sticky, but I thought perhaps a good start would be a thread in this forum dedicated to the Arts in particular. This might be against the UA, or against the sticky, or against something, or horribly offensive to someone, but I am willing to throw caution to the wind here.

When I came back and found a forum set up for G&T, I was happy to see it but a little surprised that it did not include any of the arts. I suppose I can understand why, given our history here at MDC with this topic. I have heard the arguements that art is subjective, a quality that cannot be tested and measured with a number placed on a bell curve. My intent here is NOT to start a billion page thread/arguement about being gifted in the arts. It would be nice to be able to show the MDC community and admins that this is a valid issue in need of support and discussion in this forum.

Ahem. Both Dh and I come from families with strong musical talent and fine art ability, but I don't think either of my kids are gifted in the arts. Certainly, neither of my kids are on the level of some brilliant young artists I have seen.

Well then, I leave this to the experts; the artists, those with art inclined children, and those who support them
 
See less See more
1
#55 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by LauraLoo View Post
Your son is my son's hero! My ds has been begging for violin lessons for about 9 months now. His Grandie is getting him a violin for Christmas and I just signed him up for lessons starting in Jan. this afternoon. I took him to a music store with an extensive orchestral section for the first time last weekend. I've honestly never seen him happier or more excited -- not in a toy store, at an amusement park or anywhere else. It completely blew my mind.
Excellent!! So happy for your son and you!!


Also, it is better to rent the little string instruments and save money for a good 1/2 later...
 
#56 ·
Re: Little violins - I would definitely second renting the fractional ones, at least up through 1/2 size. We bought our first violin, a 3/4 size, here in Germany and my dd (10) is about to use it. My ds (13) now plays on full-size violin - a big investment (sucks in breath...)

Enjoy - it is a great ride, and although I have some reservations about Suzuki, it was a great way to start violin for both of our children.

My ds is obsessed with the violin. He plays in two orchestras now - he was in a rage yesterday because the better of the two had their last rehearsal of the year Friday. They are doing Gustav Holst's The Planets, and all he wants to do is listen to it or practice it. Jupiter from the Planets was the first piece of music ds 'fell in love with' - he was 3, so he is overjoyed to be playing it. When he can't get something just right he stamps and screams (behavior learned from his teacher here?). He is equally determined to play the Mozart concerto he is working on in a studio recital next month -- he is even willing to play it with the metronome (in spite of his hatred for what he calls its 'mocking click'). He doesn't always want to *start* practicing at home, but when he does, then he is hard to stop if he is working on something. Ah, passion! Most days I love his intensity, but sometimes... Well... His teacher is leaving Friday for a vacation in Austria - that should be good for a two- or three-day bad mood.

I've been reading a lot of material lately about right- and left-brain dominance. Does the right-brain dominant / musical connection ring true to those of you with musical children? From what I have read, my ds is absolutely right-brain dominant. Any anecdotal evidence to share from your experiences?
 
#57 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by eilonwy View Post
I used to do that!! Wow... I wonder if he uses the same notation that I did. Mine was almost (but not exactly) based on the octave system, but it was more of a hexadecimal notation.
This is so cool! But why hexadecimal??

Quote:
It was weird. Yeesh, I can still remember strings of numbers.
I've never heard of anyone else doing it, but when I was taking calculus and I learned about [mathematical] harmonic progressions, it kicked into place for me.

Yes - I'm also convinced that things like ritardando/accelerando and crescendo/diminuendo sound "right" when the rate of change is a perfect calculus curve. Of course, most people look at me like I have two heads when I talk about this stuff.

Quote:
It's fascinating, though; the people that I have known who were truly gifted in music (as opposed to highly skilled and/or proficient) have all been mathematically gifted as well. I've only met a handful of mathematically gifted people who were not also musically gifted. Very cool stuff.
Yes, it's all that visual spatial stuff. Interestingly enough, when ds started doing hands together stuff on the piano he had a math explosion, and went through three years' worth of math curriculum in a year.
 
#58 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by catgirl View Post
This is so cool! But why hexadecimal??
Well, the sixteen numbers allowed for a complete octave in half steps, plus "extras" to indicate things like up or down an octave, etc. I usually used the distance between the numbers to indicate how long the note was held. It was weird. I did it for several months and then someone else in orchestra saw it and thought I'd lost my mind, so I stopped.
She was a much stronger violinist than I (Suzuki lessons since she was three) but she didn't understand the way that my mind worked and thought that mixing math and music was silly when you got beyond algebra.
 
#59 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by Profmom View Post
My ds is obsessed with the violin. He plays in two orchestras now - he was in a rage yesterday because the better of the two had their last rehearsal of the year Friday. They are doing Gustav Holst's The Planets, and all he wants to do is listen to it or practice it. Jupiter from the Planets was the first piece of music ds 'fell in love with' - he was 3, so he is overjoyed to be playing it.
When I was allowed to go into town on the bus for the first time (I was 10), I wenrt straight to the record store and that was what I bought!

The first piece I fell in love with was Brahms Symhony # 1, but I had to wait till I was 25 to play it! I finally got to play the beautiful violin solo in it a few years ago, at age 43.

Ds fell in love with the Mozart Requiem when he was three and insisted on watching the DVD every night for about a month. He still listens to parts of it every so often.

Quote:
I've been reading a lot of material lately about right- and left-brain dominance. Does the right-brain dominant / musical connection ring true to those of you with musical children? From what I have read, my ds is absolutely right-brain dominant. Any anecdotal evidence to share from your experiences?
Yes, up to a point. Music is definitely ds's first language and he has more trouble with the verbal kind of language. He's also strong in math and says he thinks more in pictures than words.
 
#60 ·
I finally found the article I wanted to link!

http://giftedhomeschoolers.org/artic...shereally.html

This is SO my ds! He doresn't "look like" many of the gifted kids we know. Yet recently when he did his Suzuki Book II graduation, he played like an artist (his teacher's words), and he had written (or rather dictated) this amazing story with three chapters which linked the whole thing together, which he insisted on reading aloud himself as well as performing the 16 pieces....I said to dh afterwards, "You couldn't do something like that without having a pretty powerful brain."

His teacher just gave him a Bach 3-part invention to learn (something a way beyond his current level) which has required some really intense practice - I was concerned that it was really too much for him, but at his lesson we discovered that (after a couple of weeks) he had pretty much memorized each of the three voices independently (including the parts he had only gone over a couple of times). My mouth was hanging open - I had no idea he could do it but I guess it was percolating under the surface.
 
#62 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by Profmom View Post
...for those with musically gifted children. The other day I saw a long series of numbers written in one of my son's (13yo) school notebooks. The letters were messy and curved all around the page. I was curious and asked him what it was. He told me that it is his Bach Sonata - the one he is learning on the violin at the moment. He was bored in class and was thinking about playing Bach and jotted this down. Then he tried to explain that he memorizes music as a string of numbers (not finger numbers like in Suzuki). He can still remember and play music he learned 7 years ago, so this must work for him. Have any of you ever seen/heard this before? I am fascinated. It makes no sense to me.
It makes a lot of sense to me...it is a coding system, just like notes, but a system that makes more sense to your son. In math we call such correspondences isomorphisms if they preserve the basic structure of the objects we study. So we can think of the same object in various ways that are quite different at first sight but have the same basic structure.

I asked my son how he remembers music-he says he remembers and hears the sequence of sounds in his head, and his fingers remember where to go (no mention of the bow though he probably remembers this too!). He makes a lot of finger substitutions in his Suzuki pieces, and his teacher actually wants him to spend more time "reading" the music. I asked him if he ever thought about using numbers and he said he only did it when he was learning the tenor clef (I am assuming he was translating from bass clef).

It is fascinating to see how their minds work, isn't it?
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top