ABRSM & Trinity

[Abc000]

My dd is grade 2 (ABRSM piano), she is only interested in learning pieces for exams (to have the reward) but she and teacher want to build her repitorie of different pieces rather than just the three grade pieces.

One suggestion her teacher has given is to alternate her grades with the different exam boards e.g. Grade 3 Trinity, Grade 4 ABRSM, Grade 5 Trinity etc. Has anyone any experience of this? Does it work? Or having done Grade 3 Trinity you have gap for Grade 4?

I was thinking of suggesting Grade 3 ABRSM followed by Grade 3 Trinity, Grade 4 ABRSM followed by Grade 4 Trinity etc.

My dd is not phased by the double amount of exams, she likes the idea of the certificates at this age (8) of course this may change as she gets older and grades get higher but then can always be changed in the future.

Would this work?

Have you got any other ideas?

No, I have never heard this, and don't think this can help. You can stick to one of the board and expand her repertories.
Try best of grade 2 piano (up to grade 5),by Faber. It contains about 20 grade 2 pieces in different style, all frequently chosen from previous syllabus.
You may use sight reading material from another board, which we did, but found Trinity was slightly easier overall.(I would not say Trinity is easier than ABRSM overall.)

When myself and DCs were learning instruments, we only ever did one set of exams, which in this area was ABRSM.

Can't really see the point in doubling up like this, financially it would cost a lot especially for the higher grades

You can mix exam boards, and you can have 'gaps'. For instance in piano DS2 has done ABRSM Grade 1, Trinity Grade 4 and ABRSM Grade 5.

But surely your DD needs encouraging to build her repertoire and just enjoy playing. Find something she likes, we've had some nice Disney books. With some creativity you can create goals and rewards for her to mark progress.

What about a local music Festival? We have one local one each year that my DC play in. They like the performance opportunity and there is a focus.

We spend a fortune on exam fees anyway (3 DC, 8 instruments).

My dcs do suzuki violin, so have a huge repertoire. They work through the suzuki books, do lots of review, orchestra pieces, and their exam pieces each week, so have a lot of new things to do all of the time

Dd did ABRSM grade 2, 4 and 5 and she will do 7 next year. She has plenty of new music to keep going with, without doing exams at the moment. I can't see any reason to do a grade in both ABRSM and Trinity - I would just play for enjoyment in between exams.

Also forgot to say both dcs are now working on festival pieces as well, which is definitely something to work towards.

Our local festival is exam pieces for piano (not for other instruments).

Dd doesn't like to play for enjoyment between exams working for exams is the enjoyment.

Well, my view would be that you should be trying to find out how to increase your DDs enjoyment of playing.

My kids lost interest in doing exams beyond Grade 5 as they weren't interested in playing classical pieces and their teacher was rather old school and didn't let them play anything trendy.

Now my son listens to stuff on YouTube and then works it out for himself. I guess he'd be about Grade 8 standard by now but unfortunately only has the certificate to prove he's passed Grade 5

Try supplementing ABRSM with jazz syllabus from any of the exam boards? Grade 5 jazz piano is even an acceptable substitute for the theory requirement at grade 6 practical. One caveat is that if you stick with ABRSM for jazz as well, you may need to be past grade 2 in general piano before attempting grade 1 jazz as the requirements are quite a bit different. To begin with, you could use LCM jazz piano and just learn the pieces for a video-submission 'performance certificate' rather than the full exam, although I would recommend still learning all the technical requirements.

Another suggestion is to use some music from the Rockschool syllabus, or from the "Upgrades" series in between one exam and the next.