Sort of stealth boast but also a warning !

[Helenluvsrob]

Dd2 did grade 8 recorder today. Went ok she thinks , except she and the accompanist realised that they'd only rehearsed 2/3 movements of one piece , at which point dd realised she wasn't actually expecting to do that movement at all 😱

Fortunately she had studied it somewhat as was planning it for a2 recital anyway so she wasn't too shaken, though as she said " the ornaments were very spontaneous !

The perils of a blind teacher I guess. BUT we should have been on our toes, dd1 did a singing exam once when fairly small and didn't have a folk song prepped. Her teacher gathered her up and thrust her back in with instructions to " Go sing the ash grove " and again was fine :)

And now dd2 who has been practicing scales really quite a lot for her, is just blasting through old repertoire. It's really lovely, however she's supposed to be coming on a music course in the summer with us and she's not going to fit in I fear as she's really very good at the moment !! Bodes well for A2 recital as long as we don't get a recorder hater.

Only another 2 grade 8s this year..... eep. though are their really advantages for a non music student to have grade 8 piano? She's approaching that from " underneath" iykwim and it's not her natural strength ( and teeny hands lol). I wonder if I can persuade her not to bother...

I think this sort of thing happens more than we'd imagine. I did it once - I picked two pieces from List A and one from List C for my DD1's Grade 2 Recorder exam, instead of one each from A, B and C. She was only six!! I realised with about a week to go. She managed to learn a new piece super quickly, but there were floods of tears about not being able to play both of the pieces she loved. I encouraged her to do the better one, and save the other one for a concert, so all was well in the end. Incidentally, the new piece scored more highly than one of the other!

I think Grade 8 is always satisfying to have, whatever the reason. Wow, she is going to have quite a few! We're not there yet, but I'm expecting DD1 to take two next year.

That made me laugh. I learned my lesson with G1. The clerk asked my son whether he wanted to do the lip flexibility exercise before or after the pieces. What exercise? What's a lip flexi thingy mum? Our teacher's previous G3 candidate had been equally clueless so the clerk was not surprised. DS spent his warm up on it and did it well enough. After that I was word perfect on the syllabus for every exam.

If she's at a point where she could take G8 piano then I'd do it. You never know what the future holds but you can be certain that you will never be disadvantaged by having it. If it's going to be a major time suck and there are better uses for her time then it will still be there when she's forty.