Trinity or ABRSM?

[ILovedThe90s]

DS will be starting towards piano grade 3 and I have to decide between ABRSM and Trinity. I've also seen ABRSM do jazz piano.

DS likes playing pop music. He likes composing his own pieces. He's joined a band at secondary school. If he does the classical music syllabus with ABRSM I'm worried he'll lose interest.

Does anyone have any recommendations?

Thanks x

He won't lose interested in performing and writing pop music or composing generally by taking either ABRSM or Trinity exams! What you get out of studying for graded music exams, especially in classical music, is an excellent grasp of the technique required to play your chosen instrument, which is totally transferrable, especially with a versatile instrument like the piano/keyboard, to any type of music.

Conversely if you just do pop, or even jazz grades, you run the risk of ending up with a technique that will damage your body in the long run.

ABRSM is regarded as being slightly more demanding than Trinity, that's all.

Thank you Pirate, that's exactly what I wanted to hear! I have told him it's the process of learning so he can apply it to whichever style he chooses. I think I got myself confused about what would be best. His teacher doesn't mind either Trinity or ABRSM so I felt a bit lost! Thank you for the guidance xx

My mums a music teacher. ABRSM is much more highly regarded especially as you get higher in the grades. Between her and her colleagues they talk about Trinity as more of a recreational option.

I am a professional musician - don't teach but play full time in an orchestra. Both my kids learn instruments ,though. I actually think the Trinity syllabus is far more enlightened and up to date in approach, and that the ABRSM syllabus is more 'old school!'. Your son can present one of his own compositions for his exam! He can choose to improvise as part of the exam! I so wish that I was encouraged to do all these things when I was learning my instrument years ago! I disagree that ABRSM is more highly regarded!

With Marv. Trinity have a more appealing selection of pieces including jazz and modern, as Marv said they can play their own composition. They can choose from various tests, one of which is improvisation. No singing is required, which might appeal to self-conscious teens.
They also do a rock and pop keyboard exam option.

How is LCM in comparison of above two ? just curious to know and wants to know people opinion.

DS does Trinity Jazz syllabus for clarinet and saxophone - because his route into music was via jazz.

However both the county senior jazz band, and, perhaps more surprisingly given Pirate's comments, the county senior youth orchestra, are equally happy to accept his qualifications as showing he is of a high standard.

It seems to me that the technique you acquire is down to your teacher - a good teacher will teach correct technique whatever pieces it is applied to.

Where the two differ - noting that DS has chosen the jazz route for Trinity, not the classical one - is the range of skills he is required to / has the choice to show on top of the pieces. Studies based on scales / arpeggios rather than scales / arpeggios themselves. Musical knowledge and improvisation as options rather than aural tests. The style of the sight reading.

It seems to me that, as long as the teacher teaches sound technique, the choice of board is down to the preference / target of the child concerned. I also have a dancing daughter, who does ISTD Imperial Classical Ballet (the 'Trinity' option of the dance world) rather that RAD (the ABRSM option). The grades are equivalent, on average - harder at some points, slightly easier at others - but one depends critically on the knowledge and skills to be able to dance unknown dances set on the day by the examiner, the other on absolutely perfect execution of standard set exercises. They are not 'greater' or 'lesser' skills, just different, and will give the examinee a slightly different skill set in their future life.

My understanding of Trinity / ABRSM is similar - a jazz musician doing Trinity will have the skills needed for jazz playing - improvisation etc - to a greater degree than a musician doing ABRSM. However the latter will have greater experience of strictly 'classical' aspects of music such as aural tests. Which a child does should be dictated, to an extend, by their musical ambitions.

I wouldn't worry regarding the board, both boards have a classical and a jazz route and you get the same amount of UCAS points in higher grades for both boards.

My understanding is that it is a matter of teacher preference, each board has its advantages and disadvantages such as a huge amount of scales and aural singing for Abrsm compared to a staggered approach by Trinity (to scales) and no singing in aural but they do have technical exercises and own composition which Abrsm doesn't. You also need to pass grade 5 theory to do grade 6 practical with Abrsm which isn't the case with Trinity.

Personally I couldn't care less which board Dd is doing her exams with (between these two) and I would go with the teacher's preference.

I say this as a parent of a dd who's doing the Abrsm exams. If her teacher would switch to Trinity for any reason I wouldn't worry.

If they are both valued the same and Trinity has more choices for pieces then I can see ABRSM must do something otherwise it will die:

1. Theory G5 pass before moving to G6 and above, for some young children theory can be hard. Trinity doesnt need it.
2. There are alot of scales, they still eat more than 1/2 our practice time. There are only couple of scales I believe.
3. Aural is funny, mine hates singing and never sings however the points are very little, you can hymn. None in Trinity.
4. You dont know the result until 10 days later or more.
5. There are not many distinction for G7 and G8. I was told by my teacher that you have to play much above the requirement, not mentioning knowing and playing all scales perfectly by heart, plus aural (and ofcourse sight reading).

I dont know why we are doing ABRSM to be honest(I will ask our teacher if we should switch to Trinity in the next coming exam. We have 11+ next year and not have to learn scales would be our deal breaker, save a HUGE amount of time and whining). We had theory done though, even if you choose Trinity, I personally think taking above G5 theory is important to help the child to read and understand music better. My daughter used to find sight reading hard(she has a good memory, she just "accidently" remember them), we failed sight reading and found it hard. After studying G5 theory for couple of months, sight reading is now her strongest. She can sight read almost everything given to her(up until G7 as she is planning for G7 piano).

I think they are just different. Ds has recently sat trinity grade 7 and chose not to do the scales but the orchestral excerpts option. He will still learn his scales and will need to know them all for grade 8 anyway but we feltthat trinity suited his current needs well and the orchestral excerpts have really helped with his prep for his NCO course

Music teacher here.

My mums a music teacher. ABRSM is much more highly regarded especially as you get higher in the grades. Between her and her colleagues they talk about Trinity as more of a recreational option

This is about 20 years out of date! ABRSM and Trinity are now regarded as largely equally prestigious by most music teachers and - perhaps more tellingly - Music colleges / conservatoires.

LCM, however, is far less demanding. Now that really is a recreational option! The differences in the standard required (more than in the difficulty of music) is especially noticable in higher grades. LCM diplomas are easier to gain than ABRSM / Trinity Grade 8s!

Many differences between ABRSM and Trinity are well described above. I use both ABRSM and Trinity. Increasingly I slightly favour Trinity, but am still a fan of ABRSM. I often recommend a particular board for a particular pupil, but am happy to go along with parental preferences, and there are still some parents who assume that anything other than ABRSM is inferior.

The biggest difference is pre Grade 1: Trinity's Initial grade is much harder than the ABRSM prep test. Not only is the music a fair bit trickier, but it is also graded (i.e. you can fail), as opposed to the Prep Test which is an ungraded certificate with feedback.

Trinity for us offers a more accessible option for my young daughter. I disagree that the theory requirement of Abrsm is a swaying factor because trinity include it in their exams. They have a musical knowledge section as one of the options which my daughter has done in all her exams and means she keeps up her theory but in a more accessible way than a sat down written paper not aimed at a young child. She learns every grades scales but often chooses the exercise option for woodwind exams- scales are compulsory in trinity piano grades though. Trinity exams are well regarded by the junior department she's just got into and are equally rated by UCAS. Her teacher is a trinity examiner after being a staunch ABRSM teacher for a long time. She is says the sight reading for trinity is slightly easier in the earlier grades but this swings the opposite way in the higher grades. She is of the mind also that the boards suit different children. Trinity suits my daughter well and we will be sticking with them for the time being indeed.

Worth noting (without entirely outing myself ;-) that theory grades can be very useful in and of themselves -- several top universities now take students onto Music degree programmes without having A Level Music at all if they have Grade 8 ABRSM or Trinity theory.

FWIW we treat ABRSM and Trinity as essentially equivalent, while recognising their differences in terms of content.

We did ABRSM piano all the way till g7 then changed to Trintiy for g8 because of the choice of pieces. Trinity g8 was not easier. Scales requirements include playing them with lots of different dynamics. You have to play three orchestral excerpts on top of pieces. Aural was tricky even if there's no singing. DS liked the experience and his examiner was nice and wrote very nice comments. I liked that they break the points for a piece in three sections so you can see how you did musicality wise as opposed to technicality. His result was the best he's ever got, with full marks in two of the pieces. Probably because he prepared for more than a year! So our change to Trinity was very positive.
For Orchestral Percussion there was no question, as when it comes to percussion Trinity are more respected in the profession. ABRSM has not changed their percussion syllabus in centuries.

He could combine classical with Rockschool keyboard? Same UCAS points.

I don't know enough about music to be able to say which is better. I think, based on our very limited experience, that the two are very different in how they assess performance.

This is sort of what I meant when, on the August thread, I stated that DS3 is musical. Anecdata of course. He has taken grades 1 to 5 on piano. All AB apart from Grade 4 Trinity. Middling passes for all the AB exams, 95% high distinction for the Trinity one. Only dropped one mark on one piece, 2 on the scales, 2 on the musical knowledge. He plays very expressively but not always accurately but obviously played a blinder on the day.

DS2 took up the bassoon and had lessons for a year. His teacher used Trinity and he sat Grade 5. On his AB exams for clarinet at around that level he was getting middle merits. He got 95% for his bassoon exam, similar breakdown of marks to his brother on the piano. He complains that he should have got 97% as he dropped 2 marks on the musical knowledge. The examiner commented that the answers were correct but sounded guessy. DS2 says that was the tone in his voice as he couldn't believe how simple the questions were!

So...I don't know. I didn't think that either of them were any better prepared for those two exams than they were for any other, yet they received massively better results. Not the same sitting or examiner either.

What I have been told is that the pieces weight more on the final result in Trinity and the expressiveness weights the same as the accuracy (you can see that because of the breakdown). DS was getting distinctions with AB but Trinity's was the highest. And there were more comments on the expression and emotion conveyed than he used to get.

Ds has only sat 1 trinity exam grade 7 . He did incredibly well in the he aural ( full marks) and the sight transposition 8 out of 10 but that was because these were new/ weaker areas for him so he went in very well prepared and worked hard on these aspects in the run up to the exam. He got distinction marks for all of his pieces - but 19 , 20 and 20 - which was lower than the full marks that he had scored for his pieces on previous exams. It was reassuring to see that his musicality for the pieces still scored full marks, the marks lost were for technical accuracy. His teacher was a bit upset I think as the comments were all positive and didn't really bear any relation to the marks for the pieces , Ds didn't care as he still got his distinction but certainly his experience was that it isn't easier to score well . I guess it probably depends on a number of things on the day - I don't think ds's massive coughing fits in between each piece can have really helped !!

Very interesting trumpet . Still it feels nice when they break it down and you see full marks in musicality for example, it's helpful. And with Trinity we got the mark sheet in 24 hours! The coughing was out of nerves or a cold? Poor thing.

Ha, drummer yes. I definitely do love the speed of trinity results. For a variety of circumstances we had to wait a week for her last piano trinity result and it felt a lifetime compared to the three hours of the previous clarinet exam!

I personally don't like the splitting of marks up for the pieces, I think the holistic ABRSM approach is better - of weighing up all the elements against each other. It's certainly true that technical issues can be a deal breaker in terms of the mark, because as a listener, it can be so bad that any expressive qualities are obscured. Similarly, a piece can have issues but they may be outweighed by really expressive playing - the ABRSM method of marking allows an examiner to look across the 5 criteria and balance them all up on a case by case basis.

Drummers the coughing was because he was really ill poor boy luckily 5 weeks later it has almost gone now . I don't think there were really any issues to do with accuracy or technicality but I think he lost 2 marks for the odd slip that he made - though the comments didn't really indicate any issues which is why I think his teacher was a bit disappointed for him ( I was just relieved that it was out of the way - he only prepared for it for three months if that so it was VERY intense - no exams here for a while now !!)