Music at Tommies

[elizabethsherborne]

Can anyone tell me what the music provision is like at Tommies please?

We looked round but it didn't seem to be a major part of the school. I note that only 5 students took music GSCE.

Can anyone help desperate to find out if it will provide the opportunities for a very musical boy.

THanks

[muminTewkes]

I cant really help and its not high on our list as my ds1 isnt musical really(but wants to have a bash)but the three times (!)we've looked all the boys that showed us around HAVE been very musical and the last one wasnt until he started at STRS and is now doing grade 7 drums(ds was fairly impressed with that!)
It seems to be there if you want it-not if you done..like many things I seem to feel at Tommies?

[Amber]

There are certainly facilities for music at Tommies. When we went to look at the school, we stopped in the corridor outside the music practice rooms and because there was a glass window on one, we could see clearly 2 boys inside, practising combat by instrument case (some sort of brass, possibly). The noises they were making were not entirely musical, and because they were rather loud, they were oblivious to the little gathering outside, appreciating their performance. I asked the teacher accompanying the group in front of us what they were doing: he told me that this was music practice. I invited him to take a closer look. Though this might sound like a negative anecdote, we were all very impressed with the way he dealt with the miscreants when he was in possession of the full evidence. It gave us all a laugh, too.

A word of caution re music GCSE - it's not necessarily a great measure of how seriously music is taken at a school. Many musical children, as I am sure you know, will do Grade 5 music theory - you need it to get beyond Grade 5 practical with ABRSM; they will therefore not necessarily want to take the GCSE, which can have a heavy contemporary element and involve lots of composition on computers and the like.

[capers123]

A word of caution re music GCSE - it's not necessarily a great measure of how seriously music is taken at a school. Many musical children, as I am sure you know, will do Grade 5 music theory - you need it to get beyond Grade 5 practical with ABRSM; they will therefore not necessarily want to take the GCSE, which can have a heavy contemporary element and involve lots of composition on computers and the like.

Gloucestershire Music run 'fast track' theory courses either over a week or weekend to get pupils up to grade 5. A good way to get it over and done with, though not necessarily a method that will help the child remember the theory when they actually need it.

At Stroud High, the music department have keyboards linked to PC's running Sibelius notation software (2 pupils per keyboard in years 7 & . They get really good results in composition, in a very enthusiastic music department. On the open day, my DD2 had great fun playing one of her G4 piano pieces and watching the notes appear in Sibelius, then replaying what she'd typed in. I hadn't the heart to tell her that we can do it at home on the electric piano & Sibelius on my laptop, but it's too much faff to set it up (I tend to enter notes using the computer keyboard).

[Amber]

Presumably they must have already got some background in music theory to get to Grade 5 over a weekend, Capers? My DD managed it in 11 or 12 lessons last year from very much a standing start - because the knowledge is cumulative you need to plough through all the Grades 1-4 stuff before you can get to the lovely Grade 5 intervals, transposition etc. It was quite hard work, but not too awful in the big scheme of things. We certainly had a good bonfire when she learned she had passed!

[Milla]

With a musical son, I have to say that I am deeply disappointed in the music provision at Tommy's. There is, however, now a new post, filled this term, for the Head of Performing Arts which I am praying might make some difference.