Summer Term Music and Music Exams Thread

Great advice Oneothegiants. Exam pressure getting hold of us right now. Daughter (10) is sitting G4 piano later this month. Has been learning from Jan 14 and we have been at 'over-cooked' stage for a while, even to the point of taking 2 weeks off all syllabus work where she learned a popular piece to detract.

Now the scales are so bad, we are all in pain each morning (including the neighbours!), it's as if she is purposely making errors to make me react. As already mentioned, she would NEVER be disrespectful to a school teacher if they had asked her to learn something, so why does she treat her piano learning this way? I would be fine if I knew she had reached her limit, but every exam so far in both piano and violin has resulted in distinctions, and she is very competitive.

I asked her this morning is it a) she just can't do scales or b) she can't be bothered. I did get an honest answer that it was the latter. I personally (even though I was not musical) think that scales should be valued the same as pieces and tire of the teachers complaining about her focus on pieces alone.

Resulted in a sad morning today with me sending her going to school contemplating dropping the piano if she can't pull her attitude together but typically she was very upset at the thought. I also think I should let her learn to 'fail' this time as not reaching her usual standard will give her a wake up call? Or am I being too tough - I know I too have a high bar!! I fund a lot of extra curricular activities, all of her choosing but am finding myself resentful if she cannot value the support and give it her best, or conversely make a decision (with my support) to drop if there is too much to cope with.

Oneofthegiants as I see it you've got two issues, one covering the period to July and then the longer term. I have a resident 14 year old and I know first hand the "later, later, too late now" approach. Here homework/scales are always planned for later/tomorrow and to his surprise often seem to get squeezed out by more interesting things. I have a set speech on priorities and time management and I don't know why I bother with it because it's clearly not having any effect.

What worked for me in the run up to exams was agreeing together a practise schedule - from now to the exam it's (say) fifteen minutes every school night/twenty minutes three times a week/whatever. I found mine would happily agree to a short practise because it's nothing is it? If you can get regular practise sessions it's a small step to getting longer sessions. Let her choose when is convenient for her looking at her other commitments. I found that once he'd agreed that there was a need to practise and decided what nights he was going to do it then I'd just remind him when he got in from school and he'd get on with it.

There's enough time between now and July for this to become a habit. With a bit of luck (or you could tip off her teacher) she'll get some praise in her lesson for the noticeable progress she's making and she'll see that the work she's putting in is having a result. If after that she still isn't practising then good intentions are all very well but she's wasting her time and your money. In her other school work she'll be used to a taught lesson reinforced with homework - why should music be any different?

(Your basic violin trumps my school chime bar, I dropped out before making it as far as recorder.)

Well, I'd better pass mine as I'm the one paying for them!!! ;-)

That might be worth a try, thank you; I think we've seen something like that in the "preparing for you exams" booklet, too.

Doesn't help if she never gets her act together to actually practise, though!

Somewhere on the ABRSM website the marking criteria area listed. I've been sharing these (that is, the distinction criteria! ;-) ) with all my students, even the 8yos. It may help if your DD can see how she will be marked, especially at her age, and if she can record her playing and then mark it against the criteria?

Just found this thread and happy to find somewhere to ask questions! I'm not particularly musical - sang in the school choir, but never did any exams and only learnt very basic violin - so am still finding my way through this world.

My DD (14) is resitting her ABRSM G3 piano in July (no date yet), having failed it in April (she got 93 with a pass mark of 100 - not miles off, but not great). She failed basically because she wasn't ready, because she didn't practise. I'm now concerned that the same thing will happen again .

She is full of good intentions, says she is going to practise, but then starts doing something else, forgets and runs out of time (organisation is not her strong point). If I remind her she's likely to get cross about being nagged, dig her heels in and refuse to do it - so that's counter-productive. She's not massively talented (though seems to play reasonably well), but insists that she wants to carry on learning, and that she enjoys it - it's just not high enough up her priority list for her to put the work in, unfortunately.

Anyone got any suggestions?

Just got DD2's grade 4 flute result Very pleased for her - she was a bit concerned because she felt she messed up one of the pieces and went into the exam low on confidence having been sick the week before but it all turned out nicely in the end. Next up grade 5 singing and grade 1 piano in July.

Will anybody else be glad to see the back of Melodie? gr4 violin.
I hate the screechy piece, even played well its awful.

There are some lovely pieces in this syllabus, but I hate that one.
Her other choices are Bridegroom and Bride, and Musette which sound great.

Wafflenose I remember having a word with mine before his first exam (7), telling him that the examiner did not want to be hearing about his guinea pigs, Pokemon or his holidays. He was a talker and I had some concerns that the examiner would struggle to get a word in edgeways. When we got to the centre the examiner was having a cup of tea and came over to talk to us then carried his instrument across to the exam room for him. (We'd not thought about the logistics of small child + big instrument) He did not have a care in the world, he had a lovely afternoon off school and when we came out an ice cream van was parked outside which made for a perfect day.

I hope your daughter has a similar first exam experience on Monday, no worries just a different sort of a day.

Less than a week to go. Things are ramping up here. The only time I have seen miss 10 so stressed was on the run up to grade 5 theory.
I don't know whether we have an examiner fresh off the plane or whether he or she has done other exam centres first.

Morethan - scales have improved! Pretty much as soon as I posted the problem on here, scales clicked! However, she is a little unreliable with all her playing at the moment, so we'll have to hope she has a good day on exam day. At the moment she loves playing rounds with dd1 on clarinet and dh on trumpet more than practising scales and pieces and that's fine.

Waffle

Don't worry, she'll be fine, they all handle the stress of exams in their own way, even the laid back ones.
My dd is so laid back she's almost horizontal, never gets openly wound up, excited or nervous which is quite unnerving for those who know her.
With a competition on Saturday, today she complains of a sore throat.
She'll be fine, I hope.
Good luck for Monday

Schilke

How are the scales coming on, or do we not mention them atm.
I think it can be stressful when you know how hard they work and the effort they make.
For dd singing comes naturally, this doesn't necessarily make her technically good and she does tend to make it hard for herself by choosing challenging pieces, although one sounds easy enough.
I am fed up of hearing scales and arpeggios and that flippin violin may be found wrapped around her neck before the exam.
The sax is ok she loves this and finds it really easy.

Good luck to all you early birds and hand holding for those later in July.

No, none of that here. DS did Edexcel. It included Handel's Messiah, Capercaillie and Electric Counterpoint amongst others.

Glad your DD was happy too.

DD was pretty happy too. May have been a different board though: Rag Desh doesn't sound familiar. They had some 70's disco, a german Lied and a sunrise!

How did your DD get on View? Ds 1 thought it wasn't too bad in the end. He said he was the only one who chose to answer questions on Rag Desh.

Raspberry - music GCSE here tomorrow too- good luck to your DS. DD1 not at all inspired by having to learn about trance and dance music. Then grade 8 flute on 30th June and the odd surprise concert has appeared for good measure. Grade 8 piano next term and DD2 grade 1 clarinet, probably with DD1 accompanying.

DD2 has grade 5 singing and grade 1 piano (she only started learning about 6 weeks ago!) on the same day. Luckily it's the second half of July (exams are always late here) so she has plenty of time. Except for the Big Show (the one with the barricades) all the kids are in at the end of June which is taking up a huge amount of time for rehearsals etc. Nightmare. I'm just letting it all wash over me and pretending it isn't happening.

DD has July 2nd gr4 singing, saxophone and violin around 16th July.
Concerts, auditions, competition, workshops, lots of extra rehearsals.
This is where I start meeting myself coming back.

Hmm July 5th for Gr7 violin for ds2 and Gr2 trumpet for dd2. Not a great day as it's my birthday so the morning will be filled with stress instead of me relaxing with coffee &cake! Of course dh has gigs both days. Bah humbug!

Ooh, concert - I forgot about that! We've got the music centre concert in June as well. It's time to rummage in the wardrobe and look out those unloved Christmas presents that I put aside for future raffle prizes.

Good luck everyone.

I should be weaving they try and give the results within 2 weeks which is great.

DS1 has GCSE music on Monday, I'm hoping he has done as well in the composition and performance as he thinks as he doesn't seem to know any of the stuff I'm testing him on this afternoon!

After that I'm enjoying just having concerts to look forward to this half term now, apart from the rest of DS1s GCSEs.

ealingwestmum it is a constant juggle isn't it. Ours tends to be between different instruments and priority goes to the instrument that needs it eg before an exam. But teachers don't always see it like that.

The husband is changing jobs so said that he couldn't do his exam after June 20th. The initial date given for his G7 piano was the first week in July (sigh). We are now on for June 19th which is the week after junior's contest so it's worked out quite well, I wouldn't fancy having both of them gearing up for a performance in the same week. I have no idea what I'll be listening to from the 20th but I'm looking forward to the change of repertoire.