Help! Grade 3 piano in 10 days

[Gardenmouse]

Dd will be doing her exam soon, how can I boost her aural skills quickly?

One way to help her in the exam is to tell her not to start playing straight away but take a few seconds to think about each piece before she starts playing. As for aural skills, practice.

Grade 3 is ok, it’s not much different to the previous grades.

There are aural trainer apps you can use

So first bit is tapping time to the music. Put classic fm on and get her to beat along. She has to start quite quickly the pieces are short. You then have to identify 2/3 or 4 time. You have 2 feet if you can march it will be 2. Can you waltz? Try waltzing around the living room to feel the 3. 4, you vcoild march but it doesn’t have a string beat on the 3. You do get compound time at g3 but if she’s worried about the section prob best not to stress about that.

the singing back is easy just sing a little phrase to her and get her to sing it back.

then it’s spotting the difference in pitch or rhythm.

the final section is quite easy just spotting smooth detached loud quiet playing watch out for little slow downs in the middle of the piece.

search for practice videos on YouTube - the ones we’ve used helpfully tell you the correct answer after giving you an opportunity to answer, so you can tell if you’re masking progress