piano grade 1 - sight reading and aural

[sevenseas]

DD has her grade 1 piano coming up at the end of term. She plays her scales and pieces quite nicely but I have discovered she is struggling with sight reading.

Not sure why her teacher hasn't pointed this out before, just a throw-away comment last week along the lines of 'she's okay as long as she gets her hands in the right place' which made me sit down with her (DD) (which I realise I probably should have done before). She really does seem to struggle with recognising the notes/finding the right position on the keyboard. Is there anything I can do to help her with this?

DD also says she hates the aural part of the exam. I can't remember what this consists of at Grade 1 but again is there anything I can do to help?

[puglet123]

Practise practise practise!!
There are sample sightreading tunes in an ABRSM book and also the aural books.
First thing to look at with sightreading is what the key signiture says - what sharps or flats there are. They as your DD works the piece out she can play it practising it before the time is up and the examiner asks her to play it.
You DD will have to sing 3 short echos played by the examiner, be able to identify 2 or 3 time and clap along to the beat (3 time sounds like bum cha cha, and 2 time sounds like marching), be able to identify a change in either rhythm or pitch in a short tune played by the examiner ( I would recommend that she claps the difference if it is rhythm as it is very hard to describe) nd then lastly she will have to listen to a piece of music played by the examiner and tell him/her what the dynamics were - ie. loud or soft, whether it gets louder or softer and whether at the start, middle or end, whether it is legato (smooth) or staccato (detached)etc.
I hope that your DD does well - just remind her it is 12 minutes of her life - she doesn't have get every single thing right, but what she mustn't do is ever stop. Once she starts playing she must carry on - even if there is a wrong note etc. She is judged on a performance not on every little quaver or crotchet rest!!
Examiners want pupils to pass!
Best of luck

[sevenseas]

Ah, so she is allowed to practice the sight reading? I think that should help a bit (esp if I can help her with getting the start right). Do you know how much time they allow?

Thank you too for the advice about keeping going - I must remember that.

The aural she should hopefully be okay with, she just hates singing and doesn't like to sing out loud...

[ImNotaCelebrity]

You can buy a practise book for the aural tests, and they even do them with a CD now so you don't need to be able to play yourself in order to help out at home!

There are little tips to help with sight reading. Teach her patterns to look for. For example, notes move in steps, skips or leaps. A step is a move up or down from a line note to a space note or vice versa; a skip would miss one note (so finger 1-3, 3-5, 2-4, etc.) and be a line note to the next line note, or space note to the next space note. Once she can recognise those basics, she'll start to recognise wider leaps, but this is generally a good starting point. Also, make sure she knows her little rhymes for remembering the note names.

Another tip with sight reading for piano is to play the piece through 'on your lap' in the 30 seconds you have to look at it.

You can buy flashcards, which can be used as little games for recognising notes. And you can also buy mini whiteboards with musical staves on them for practising writing notes, which can also help.

And maybe buy some prep test standard music for her to practise sight reading at home. You need a wide variety of books to play from. Get her trying out as much as she can - not just whatever she's told to practise for lessons.

Ooh - long post. Hope some of it helps!

[ImNotaCelebrity]

You can buy a practise book for the aural tests, and they even do them with a CD now so you don't need to be able to play yourself in order to help out at home!

There are little tips to help with sight reading. Teach her patterns to look for. For example, notes move in steps, skips or leaps. A step is a move up or down from a line note to a space note or vice versa; a skip would miss one note (so finger 1-3, 3-5, 2-4, etc.) and be a line note to the next line note, or space note to the next space note. Once she can recognise those basics, she'll start to recognise wider leaps, but this is generally a good starting point. Also, make sure she knows her little rhymes for remembering the note names.

Another tip with sight reading for piano is to play the piece through 'on your lap' in the 30 seconds you have to look at it.

You can buy flashcards, which can be used as little games for recognising notes. And you can also buy mini whiteboards with musical staves on them for practising writing notes, which can also help.

And maybe buy some prep test standard music for her to practise sight reading at home. You need a wide variety of books to play from. Get her trying out as much as she can - not just whatever she's told to practise for lessons.

Ooh - long post. Hope some of it helps!

[sevenseas]

Thank you so much. I have printed off the rhymes she needs to know (found a slightly different version on the internet which I managed to amend) - she 'learnt' these a year ago but has completely forgotten them.

The cards/game sound great. I will see if they have them in the music shop. She has a book of 'sight reading' pieces to practice, which is how I discovered just how bad she is. Like the idea of her playing the piece through on her lap and will try that next time we practice (later today).

Will leave the aural for now and concentrate on her sight reading.

[1234ThumbWar]

Slight hijack - can I ask how long it took your dd to be ready for grade 1? Dd has only recently started lessons, but Im just curious.

[sevenseas]

Hi, she's been playing for 2.5 years now, Since the age of 6.

[Vegeromum]

One of the important things to concentrate on is rhythm - many people think it's the notes that are most important but actually keeping a steady, rhythmic continuity is even more crucial than getting all the notes right.

[toutlemonde]

when you do get round to thinking about the aural bits of the exam, my DS found hofnote really helpful for his abrsm grade preparation - he took the violin module for his grade but they have ones for piano too.

[maggiethecat]

slight hijack but it may help OP too - are there any sightreading books for a particular grade that come with cd in the same way that aural books do?

I know that I could buy a music book with cd and perhaps let her play then listen back to cd to see how piece should be played but I just wonder if there is something more specific to the grades and the related required level of sightreading?

[ragged]

You can view specimen videos showing people doing sight reading for piano grade tests on Youtube. It really is very simple, I best she can do it; I consider myself terrible at sight reading but I found those vids very reassuring.

They are allowed to make mistakes, too.

Maybe specimen videos of the aural test, too. Just type that into the Youtube search engine "ABRSM specimen grade one aural" etc.

[ragged]

aack... zombie thread