We have been very blessed that A1 has been able to learn music here for next to nothing – this truly is God’s favour as we received a funded place for her to learn domra. This is a traditional Siberian instrument that has about 1,000 years of history.

Learning domra, she is also required to learn piano, attend choir and learn solfeggio. The latter has been quite a challenge. In Australia we learn the ABC’s of notes. Perhaps you remember Ever Good Boy Deserves Fruit? These mnemonics are useful if you’re learning in English, but not so great when you’re learning in Russian and they use the Solfeggio—or Do, Re, Mi—and not even exactly the same at that. In Russian it’s Do, Re (don’t forget to roll the ‘r’!), Mi, Fa, Sol, Lya, Si, Do. When you mix Si with C, it gets a little confusing! And, unfortunately all the little rhymes to help learn sight reading are in Russian and don’t make that much sense to a language learner. Although she has a brilliant ear and can learn a piece of music by ear in no time flat, her note reading is really a struggle, and unfortunately some of the teachers get a little impatient, which doesn’t help. There is quite a different style of teaching here, which takes some getting used to. So, we are working very hard on trying to ‘get it’, so piano lessons can be enjoyable again.

She has been enjoying choir though and is learning to sing in Russian. It’s quite interesting to hear 🙂

Here’s a little treat for you. After literally just a few short weeks of learning domra, this is a sample of what she’s learnt.