Singing - how do I work out Grade?

Oh dear... seems we have a lot of catching up to do
Not necessarily - please do not despair! It sounds like she is really talented and if she is interested she'll pick up the other stuff. To be honest, I had a rather unconventional musical education but it instilled in me a love of music I still have today. In stark contrast many of my friends who had a classical musical education now have zero interest in music. There is no better foundation for developing her musicianship if she loves what she does!

In terms of keeping it fun, have a dig around on youtube. My son has just started playing the piano, and it turns out there's a lot of fantastic videos out there (not particularly technical, but aimed at "here's some things you can try and here's how they work out in practice and how they sound " ).

For instance - this one on a site called Pianopig:

It's much more approachable than books I think (though would need to be supplemented with books to help you get your head round it in a systematic way).

Hi OP Thank you for explaining the background - that makes perfect sense. If she would like to take a more serious approach to her music and possibly look towards a future career in that area you might want to look at a teacher who is used to teaching young people. It sounds like whilst her current teacher may well be ensuring she does not develop bad habits it doesn't sound like he is teaching her other essential aspects like how to read music and sight-singing. And if she's going up for music scholarships she'll be with kids that have been reading music as long as English and have had that classical training. Sounds like this is an ideal time to have a really good think about how she wants to move forward.

The best thing for her sight singing would be a choir of a fairly reasonable standard where they work through a lot of repertoire. What "voice" is she? Treble/soprano/mezzo or alto? Because the former have it easy (they get the tune) while the altos have to be really good at reading (I know, I've done both to a fairly high standard for an amateur).

Also, what's the competition for the scholarship likely to be like? My guess is if this is 11+ the good news is she won't be competing directly with former cathedral school choristers and the like, because they typically move on to secondary at 14+ (but if that is the pool of candidates she's competing with, it will be very, very hard, as their sight reading is incredible!)

Things you can do to help (based on my experience of working for auditions for good choirs - the sort that sing with professional orchestras):

Work on intervals. Not having perfect pitch doesn't matter (very few people have this). Relative pitch is crucial. Make sure you can play a note on the piano and ask her to sing a 5th higher, or lower, a minor third, a major third.

Work on picking notes out from inside chords (this is actually fairly basic work for the aural tests for higher grades on any musical instrument, not just for singers) - play a 3 note chord and ask her to sing the bottom note, or the middle note.

Work on rhythm - this is actually the single most important aspect of sight reading (particularly because even if you fluff something up, you have to be able to retain a sense of where you are in the piece so you can recover later). Get her to clap out the rhythm of the music without worrying about the pitch.

(When I auditioned for my quite posh choir back in the day, I didn't have a piano at home - I did all this with the help of my ex and an acoustic guitar!)

Important to remember - this is incredibly difficult to do at first, and can be really dispiriting, so only do a tiny amount - 5 minutes a day - and offer loads of encouragement. But do it every day - it's the repetition that matters.

It would be difficult to grade her as she hasn't worked on her sight singing or theory. You can't move onto the higher levels of singing grades until you've done your Grade 5 Theory.

So I'd imagine she'd be somewhere between 1 and 4.

You can go on to the ABRSM website and they have a list of songs for each grade. Maybe work through some of them and see what she can cope with?

I think most people find sight singing the hardest to build. There are plenty of books on Amazon or MusicRoom though that can help. And really the only thing that helps is practise. In the beginning levels, she will be singing mostly in 2nds and 3rds, and maybe an octave interval. The beginning note is usually the tonic of the key signature the music is in. It's important to read the accompaniment music too as that is quite often where you can find your musical cue.
She will need to work on her scales too and learn her intervals.

And if you want to help her with theory I strongly suggest you get the ABRSM book on theory by Eric Taylor. They used to be divided into 2 books. You can get practice papers and everything.

This was book/CD was useful for sight singing- but for my DDs ( who have good ears, but not perfect pitch) it was a long haul to get them sight singing competently. In the lower grades the only times they did well was when they were handed the score for a song they already knew!!!

www.amazon.co.uk/Sight-Singing-Made-Simple-Book/dp/0793599733?tag=mumsnetforum-21

For the scholarships, they want to hear two contrasting pieces, plus aural tests (no problems with any of that) and then there is sight reading. How does that work for singing?
Exactly the same as any other instrument. To be honest, I'm surprised she hasn't been taught sight-singing as she's been having lessons for so long.
I am slightly concerned that you think aural tests will be no problem if she is only just learning terms like names of notes. Again, you need to talk to her teacher about this and look at the requirements for aural tests in the grade exams. That will give you an idea of the sorts of tests she will get.
Sorry, I am not meaning to sound like a Debbie Downer but speak from experience.

Sight singing is a requirement for the classical grades, so that may limit the level. IME it's the aural/music theory/sight singing that make all the difference, after grade 5 especially. However, LCM do musical theatre exams and, depending on range and performance, she could well be Grade 6/7 in those, the theory is more about knowledge of shows, composers etc.

Her teacher is a professor at a university teaching final year degree students, and coaches professional adults on the side (DD is the only child on his books) and does the same exercises and aural tests with her as with his degree students. He's trying to work it out as well
All he needs to do is look at the syllabi for each singing grade and determine where the pieces she's singing fit into the grades in terms of their difficulty. It's not rocket science!