Music GCSE - Guitar

[BroadBeanie]

My son in year 7 wants to do a music GCSE. He is a keen guitarist (self taught). He’s been told to take the GCSE he would need to be a grade 3 by the end of year 9. How doable would it be to get to this level in 2 years? He has taught himself to read guitar tab and learns to play by a mixture of learning by ear and YouTube tutorials. He can’t read music yet though and doesn’t know much music theory.

Time to get him a guitar teacher! Getting to grade 3 in two years is totally doable. Students skip grades all the time - good luck

They can't skip the learning for those grades though, just the exam.

But two years seems a decent time to get through 3 grades with study!

I think this should be very feasible. I started clarinet aged much younger and did my grade 3 in 2 years. An older and motivated student shouldn't struggle with this at all with a good teacher. Is there a beginner guitar group locally he could play with? That can be very useful.

I think you should double check the advice you've had. I don't think there's any requirement to be at any specific grade level (unless the school impose one).

For the exam board my kids' school do in the performance element the max difficulty is grade 4. So to get top marks in that you have to have performed a grade 4 level piece extremely well. That doesn't mean having an external qualification at that level (apart from anything else that would make GCSE music inaccessible to students without the ability to pay for external exams!). Even if they just mean standard, expecting grade 3 by year 9 when they only need (max) grade 4 level by year 11 seems overkill.

My daughter was considering music GCSE and studies an instrument but doesn't do exams in it. The school weren't at all concerned.

Very do-able. If you can possibly afford lessons get a tutor who will also cover some music theory.

My son hadn't even begin an instrument at that age. He ended up with a Grade 8 in GCSE music, Triple Distinction star at Btec and is now at conservatoire and playing professionally.

The maximum level for two of the exam boards is Grade 5 so to get the best marks playing around Grade 3 level by the end of year 9 is a pretty reasonable expectation.

He has just started having lessons (once a week for an hour) with a tutor and is constantly playing it at home anyway. I am going to ask him to start practicing at least 15 minutes per night on the songs he is learning lessons. He seems to flit between just playing the choruses of all the songs he likes rather than playing a full song properly.

But I am about as musical as a brick so don’t know the best approach to take with him.
He also likes to mess around with his keyboard and can play seemingly quite complicated songs by ear very well. He would like piano lessons as well but I don’t know if this would confuse him? His first love is the guitar.

If he wants to do GCSE music then he needs to meet the criteria for that, and a minimum Grade 3 level performance is required. That’s very achievable if he works on what he needs to work on. He would also be well advised to get his theory understanding up to Grade 5 before starting GCSE.

No problem mixing piano and guitar lessons.

Just to say though that what he is doing now is very musical, and learning to play by ear is a really valuable skill (I suck at it and I’m somehow still making a living as a musician!!) Don’t let GCSEs or even grade exams suck his enjoyment from the instrument!

When I say “Grade” I mean the musical grade (e.g. ABRSM/Trinity/LCM) not GCSE levels. :)

Keyboard skills are always very useful for any instrumentalist.

Thanks @IsItAllRubbish. He wants to the do the Rock School grading because it’s all the music that he likes (in guitar). Is that an acceptable one or would Trinity etc be better?

Music teacher here.
He should work with a guitar teacher.
Rock School or Trinity are fine. He doesn’t have to actually DO Grade 3 for GCSE but he needs to be able to play pieces to at least that standard for a decent Performing grade for the GCSE.
If he fancies doing the guitar exams for the pride of achievement then go for it. If he works hard with a decent teacher then there is no reason why he can’t achieve well beyond Grade 3 for his own personal satisfaction.

Either RSL or Trinity would be fine & are well thought of. They are just different.

Rockschool put more emphasis on scales and technical exercises, Trinity Rock & Pop put more emphasis on the pieces.

For keyboard Rockschool had you playing the melody of a piece whereas for Trinity you played to a track with the vocal line or you can sing the vocal line of you prefer. My son felt this was more realistic of an actual piece. I don't know if that is the same for guitar though.

I do know several young people who have passed Rockschool exams without seeming to be able to read music at all.

Structuring his practice time will help him make progress more quickly. Check with his teacher but a typical practice for DD is as follows:

• warm up with scales
• technical exercise or a short bit of sight-reading
• run through the current performance piece
• practice tricky bits of that piece slowed down/ in detail
• goofing around time.

The last bit is important to make it fun and creative but the other bits are important too

Also a music teacher, and agree with what you’ve said. Rock School is very reputable. Some of my students do exams (I tend to stick with ABRSM due to exam venue locations), but some don’t. They still progress and achieve their own goals. The important thing is that they do the work!

Good luck to him! Not to be cringe but, I hope it brings him lifelong joy!

I really appreciate all of the advice from such knowledgable people, thank you. DS loves music so much and it’s not something I really understand but I want to do my best to support him. Somehow he seems to have natural talent in the subject. His teacher says he can play the grade 3 pieces to a high enough standard already. (Thank you YouTube). So I suppose it is now teaching him the music theory/ technical exercises etc. This is the bit he isn’t as interested in - he just wants to pick up his guitar and play! Any ideas on how I can make the above more interesting for him? I don’t want to lose his interest/ passion.

Direct him towards some cool youtubers such as Adam Neely (my son pretty much learn music theory from Adam Neely

@Comefromaway I will thank you! He watches endless YouTube already but it is mostly just songs slowed down until he can work out how to play the song. Then he speeds it up until he can play it at 100%. So looking at actual people trying to teach music might give him a bit more structure/ things to work on. And it’s still YouTube so hopefully will stop him getting bored

He might start to appreciate the technical exercises and theory more once he starts to see how they help him @BroadBeanie
My younger DS is a self taught guitarist but once he started having lessons he discovered there were things he was doing "wrong" that once corrected enabled him to tackle songs he'd previously found difficulty and so on. My elder son plays the piano and he moaned a lot when he had to start having separate theory lessons to progress but after a while he confessed he was actually enjoying it because it was so much easier to learn new pieces once he had a better understanding of them. And his sight reading which has always been his Achilles' heel improved massively.
Both my sons have "a good ear" and have always been able to pick things up quite easily after hearing them but they found that learning theory and practising technical exercises really improved their playing and allowed them to become better musicians which is ultimately more enjoyable. It's exercising your musical muscles like a ballet dancer spends hours at the barre or a sports person repeats the same training exercises over and over again. Those things might not be particularly exciting in their own right but they pay dividends.