Singing - how do I work out Grade?

[elfonshelf]

DD is 10 and has been having singing lessons since she was 4 (group and school initially and an hour 1 to 1 since she was 7.5 years). She works professionally (West End etc) but has never done exams or graded pieces.

She's recently started piano, can follow a score, and knows some very basic music theory (names of notes, how many beats in a crotchet etc).

We've been looking at secondary schools and in discussions they have all raised the possibility of music scholarships. None of them are worried about her having done music exams - said it might be an idea to take some for piano but not to bother with them for singing.

However I have been asked for a rough guide-line of where she would be grade-wise. Is there somewhere I can find out what level she is at?

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.

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? DD has a very good ear - if you play her a new song, she'll sing it back to you pretty much spot on after hearing it once or twice; but if they give her a piece of sheet music and the first note she wouldn't have a clue what to do if she hasn't heard it played through.

I'm feeling awful that we have been so busy with lessons (she does 3 types of dance, plus musical theatre, plus drama as well as the music) and her work schedule - plus normal school, that there just hasn't been space to fit in the normal exams, theory etc.

DD also fairly dyslexic so cramming theory not likely to be an easy task - she prefers to learn everything by ear and avoid sheet music... sigh.

Any ideas on how to fast track the missing bits, how to work out what level the things she sings are would be very helpful!

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!

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.

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.

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

Not sounding like a Debbie Downer - very happy to get any help.

We never went into this with expectations of scholarships or anything. DD just never stopped singing and so I got her a teacher to stop her teaching herself from YouTube and potential damage/bad habits.

She is quite happy doing what she does - it's been a bit of a surprise to suddenly find people taking it a lot more seriously at schools.

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.

Cathy&clare - thank you! I'll have a look at that book.

DD hasn't done anything in the way of proper classical singing - just a lot of musical theatre, pop and some classical crossover type pieces (Hayley Westenra ilk), so this will be very good for her (prepares self for battle).

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.

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.

In terms of scales, appegios etc, she does 30 mins a day of those in practice and also in lessons - and doesn't find them hard to do vocally, but she couldn't tell you what note she was singing or any of the technical stuff.

Oh dear... seems we have a lot of catching up to do.

I've ordered the very basic 'fun' theory books from Amazon and the Eric Taylor one.

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).

Those look good - and keeps the fun part which always helps.

I'm seeing the singing teacher tomorrow so we will try and come up with an action plan and see if we can work out where she is in terms of songs.

Primary school does huge amounts of music - but all practical, zero that's useful on the reading music or theory side. Suppose it's a bit like art... lots of drawing and painting but nobody teaches them rules of perspective or anything technical.

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!

FermatsTheorem - sorry, missed your post.

Don't want to give too much info that is outing, but the school that is interested in her specialises in choral singing - but she won't be competing with the choristers.

They seem to be interested primarily in her vocal abilities and feel that everything else can be added by them. They would like G1 theory by end of Y6.

Regarding her voice, I'm pretty sure she will ultimately end up as a mezzo, but her current solid range is B3 to C6. She instinctively leans towards songs in lower registers - has to work a bit harder at head voice - hence my gut feeling she won't end up as a coloratura soprano - but has a lovely sound at the top end.

On the aural tests you describe, she can do those - but wouldn't be able to tell you what it means. Picking out bottom, top or middle notes in a chord is no problem, rhythm tests also don't seem to be tricky.

I'm with your daughter on this one: head voice is hard (I am a mezzo) - it's not just physically difficult, I find it immensely mentally draining. (And you need a good teacher). If she has a really nice lower register, then that's a fabulous voice to work with - though it sounds like she's one of those lucky people who sounds good throughout her range. But the top end is highly technical, and it's the bit you need a really good teacher for (I spent years singing alto in choirs simply because without good teaching I couldn't access the top bit of my range - it came as a huge surprise to find on getting a decent teacher that I'm actually a mezzo/ 2nd sop).

That sounds exactly like her - she says it’s very tiring!

Her teacher is very keen to share her training and feels that proper choral work with specialist teachers would be ideal, he’s also keen that she starts learning the theoretical side - 100% supportive and onboard with that. He’s mainly worked on diction, breathing, balancing and supporting all parts of her voice and the artistic side. He’s also very good at dealing with the odd tantrum when things aren’t going how she wants it to.

If she doesn’t get a scholarship then it’s not a huge problem but would be a big help. I just want to give her the best chance of doing as well as she can.

Boys - we definitely value her love of music above everything else, I will be surprised if she doesn’t want to follow a performing route career wise but it’s very easy to put children off if there is too much “formal education” about it unless they are that kind of child to start with. I still have mild anxiety over my miserable violin lessons and have zero desire to go near one ever again!

When thinking of songs, it may be an idea to do one classical and one in the musical theatre genre to play to her strengths.

Elf I totally get where you are coming from but please don't let your bad experience put you off more a more traditional musical education for your daughter. There are some great teachers out there, you just had a duff one by the sound of it. No music lesson need ever be "miserable" - that's appalling!

There are several other exam boards to ABRSM that do not require theory. My DD does LAMDA musical theatre exams as this is the career she intends to pursue.
My DD also has a visual processing disorder, however, quite a lot of her music theory was learnt by being in a choir which learns by call and response, however, the choir leader talks about the theory. Then when she was 12 she studied music theory at school, by then her ear was sufficiently developed that she understood the musicality and was just learning the correct terms and scoring.
At 15 she now reads music is now looking at professional musical theatre training post 16.

You've had great advice, but as far as judging what standard she is at jn terms of pieces goes, just bung 'title of piece she's learning or has learnt grade' into YouTube or Google. Or similarly search 'grade x singing'.
ABRSM have an example g3 singing exam video to watch on their website (and lots of other exams, under On Your Marks). They also have the syllabus online which you could have a look at. Trinity similarly have some example videos on YouTube, and obviously they also have the syllabus on their website. You could get a good idea of her level by looking at all these.

I wouldn't recommend finding someone's playing /singing standard by which piece they are doing or have done...

A piece listed for grade 4, for instance, doesn't mean it's a grade 4 standard piece, but the exam board set up 'ticking boxes' to pass the grade for the chosen piece. Obviously a very short piece won't be listed for grade 8 and a 4 pages long piece won't be for grade 1 so there are some guidelines to set a grade but the same piece can be listed for a different grade by changing the passing criteria. People can claim they are on grade 7, 8, or 8+, but the quality varies hugely.

Also there are many DCs who can play / sing advanced pieces without much knowledge of other supporting areas set by exam boards, especially those who mainly learn by ear (Suzuki, etc). They cannot say they are grade 5 just because they can sing a piece that is listed for grade 5. It's not so simple to find what grade standard set by a particular exam board as there are so many things to be considered.

The best way to find out her grade standard would be, as advised above, go through the syllabus with her teacher and see what she can and can't.

Don't forget she doesn't need to get a full mark to pass a grade . Plenty DCs, even those who passed grade 8, have weakness yet can pass comfortably. Some can even manage distinction with a failed section! So she doesn't need to be brilliant in sight reading if it's too new to her. She can work on the areas she finds hard and try to achieve a reasonable level then her other strong areas will cover the weakness to get a good passing mark or to say she is X grade standard.

Obviously aiming at full mark / near full mark for each section is ideal but just wanted to say it's manageable to 'pass' having a couple of weakness so you may not need to tick a box so rigidly to claim her singing standard.

I had a fab sight singing teacher at uni who taught me to recognise intervals based on well known tunes e.g. nursery rhymes, happy birthday etc. I know it's not a fail safe but if she's asked to sight sing and given the first note it might be a good easy to learn trick to get her through without panicking?

Thanks for all the tips and ideas.

We're not planning on taking any singing exams - and none of the schools we are talking to want her to do them (they have all said it would be a good idea that she does grades for piano as that is being taken as a supporting instrument and to give her the grounding in music theory etc - she is studying piano in a much more conventional way), it's more as a guide to where she might be.

I've been very honest with them about where we are, and I imagine that they will just use their own tests and work out where she is. But, I would like to start filling in some of the gaps where we can and while we currently have a bit of breathing space in the schedule.

Finding out where a song is levelled doesn't appear to be that simple - I tried an easy to find one that I thought might come up... 'Walking In The Air', and it was listed both as G1 and G6. I suppose chunks of it would definitely be suitable for G1, but it would surprise me if the whole song sung as it was originally would be G1. Certainly the pieces I massacred for G1 violin were a lot simpler than Walking In The Air.

I had a chat with her teacher last night and we are going to get the sight reading books recommended above and do some of those, plus he is going to start introducing more theory with the vocal exercises so that she understands what she is doing rather than just doing it.

If she goes to the school we have in mind, then she will get phenomenal classical/choral training and they will know how to prep for the next school. It would be very helpful if she could win their scholarship but not the end of the world if she didn't.

Hi OP - my dd is 17 and training for musical theatre. In primary she did various amateur & professional/semi professional stuff (not west end though)

To give you a rough idea she went to vocational school in year 7 and most of the singers were doing Grade 4/5 LCM exams by the end of year 7.

I would recommend learning to sight sing though. Even for MT it’s such a useful skill.