any other musicans against music exams for primary age kids?

[lingle]

I've decided that the whole Grade 1/Grade 2/Grade 3 etc,etc, thing is bad bad bad.

Anyone with me?

Reasons so far:

1. the kids end up learning 3 pieces a year, none of which they chose.
2. it's the ultimate in "teaching to the test"
3. the exam pieces are not chosen for the power to "reach" or communicate with the children's peers
4. being forced to follow an exam piece exactly as written discourages improvisation and creativity and excludes those who learn by ear not eye.
5. there seems to be a pandemic of children at our primary school who play 3 pieces correctly, yet are completely unable to play along with another child or "jam"
6. the first question kids seem to ask each other about their music lessons is "what grade are you on?" not - "what can we play together?"
7. In the case of the violin, I can personally testify that you can reach grade8 with whilst holding the bow completely incorrectly and making a harsh unattractive noise. So passing exams is not the same as having good technique.
8. music should be fun.

10. a child can't do serious work on pieces that attract or inspire them because, if they are "ready" for the next test, such focus on things they actually enjoyed would be delaying their competitive progress. 11. it must be bloody boring for music teachers.

I could go on....

not sure where I gave the impression of thinking you don't need to practice scales.... especially as I said that the girls I mentor now spend their time practising scales........ I just call them bells and they think they are fun.

technique matters because you can't communicate the things you want to without it. exams are not technique.

I like the sound of teacherwith2kids' system

Bramshott, sounds like a nice balance.

I wouldn't make any judgment about grade 5 plus.

"I adored the feeling of sitting "in" the music, preferably counting and please god no solos".
I like that quote, I know what you mean by sitting in the music . I will try to remember that.

I think one of my big problems with these exams for little ones is that it takes no account of different learning styles. I play in a string quartet and the four of us have radically different musical "brains" - indeed, we have a theory that if we could be merged, you might get one decent musician out of us. But the exam system radically privileges the visual learners (the ones who do better with sheet music in front of them) and actually punishes those with the gift Mozart had of being able to play around with a pre-existing piece.

confidence, by the way, I would like to suggest that improvising can be combined with reading. My son has created a very natural "cadenza" to a piano piece he learnt the standard way. It's an exam piece - grade2 - I think you'd probably be with me in feeling that it's lucky he doesn't sit that exam and get marked down for having figured out how to make the piece more interesting (even though the cadenza would probably make the examiner's day)

very interesting posts!
i have a question.....ds is 11, has been playing the guitar for 3 years and is actually very good and loves it. No grades as his music teacher doesn't believe in doing grades whilst at primary school, which is great.

I'm sure he'll eventually do music GCSE....does that mean he shouldn't do any of the grade exams or should he do them aswell as GCSE music?

lingle... I pointed out that ABRSM exams help kids to learn scales with a goal to focus on, and I said that scales are the building blocks of all playing including jamming etc. you replied;

'As to jamming, you can jam using just open strings very successfully, I'm baffled as to why people think you wouldn't be able to. You just have to start by playing the bassline, or failing that a descant, while someone else plays the tune, then increase the complexity of the accompaniment, moving towards a full melody as your ability to use your left hand increases.'

I assumed you meant that learning scales was not necessary to jam. Sorry if this was not what you meant!

I'm really talking about string playing here. Being professional orchestral player and teacher for 15 years I've found the structured learning with goals that the ABRSM exams provide very useful in training young string players.

I teach Suzuki style for the little ones though, which is the system where you learn to play by ear before you learn to read music using recordings and group learning. The theory is that you learn to speak before you learn to read. It's a great system and helps to develop aural and memory skills and a solid technique. :)

atthecarwash, ABRSM exams are worth UCAS points when applying to uni so it's worth doing them. You don't need to do grade 5 before you do GCSE music but you need to be about that standard for the performance aspect of the GCSE.

"I assumed you meant that learning scales was not necessary to jam. Sorry if this was not what you meant!"
no, I'm a scale fanatic too! - my scales just come in disguise IYSWIM

"I teach Suzuki style for the little ones though, which is the system where you learn to play by ear before you learn to read music using recordings and group learning. The theory is that you learn to speak before you learn to read. It's a great system and helps to develop aural and memory skills and a solid technique. "
yes, apparently what I'm groping towards with my girls is something like Suzuki.... at what age (or between what range of ages) would you tend to switch your pupils on to the "traditional" non-Suzuki syllabus? are there exams for your young Suzuki students or does Suzuki have other types of progress marker?

on the jamming thing, by the way, I meant that a stage 1 student would be limited to a I V IV I-type bassline starting on a middle string (but that gives me thousands of tunes to choose from so it's ok). Then stage 2 would be some very slow tune in some key that keeps the 2nd finger in the higher position..... meanwhile the new stage 1 students can come in and be astonished that plucking the open strings "works" under the stage 2 students' tune.

we haven't got to stage 3 yet!!!!! but if we ever do, I'll let you know how it goes.....

thanks framey....

One thing I've never understood is the whole idea that "scales are boring, and they need the goal of an exam to make them put up with the boredom".

I've had plenty of students who have loved playing scales. In many ways they're more instantly gratifying for young kids than pieces. They're quicker to learn, they have a very obvious structure and they unfold all kind of patterns about how music "works". If you get a kid with a head for maths or other kinds of patterns and teach them the right way, they can inspire many levels of fascination.

In fact I disagree with the idea that exams are good for making kids practice scales - mainly because the way the scale progression is structured (at least for ABRSM piano) is completely barmy. It has only limited connection with the underlying logic of the cycle of fifths and major-minor relationships (it starts with C major of course because that's the easiest to understand, but from about grade 3 seems to introduce things willy nilly based more on fingerings or some arbitrary hidden criterion I can't make sense of, rather than on tonal logic and connection). It doesn't include the natural minor before going on to the altered versions of minor, so completely scuppers any chance of the child actually understanding how major-minor relationships or minor key signatures work. It doesn't do block chords before going straight into broken chords and arpeggios.

The Trinity and Guildhall syllabus has a more logical progression, but only requires candidates to know a tiny number of scales for each grade, and they are not cumulative. (ABRSM at least requires you to know them all for grade 5, so you can't just learn them once and then let them go.)

In short, "learning" scales for exams favours rote learning of unconnected "islands" of finger pattern rather than methodical, joined-up understanding of musical logic, which is what scales are really most useful for. It's not really learning at all - it's showing that you can imitate the surface appearance of a thoughtless attachment to 19th century traditions divorced from understanding.

What I tend to do is have my students a couple of years ahead on scales of the actual exam they're doing. Then I just tell them that they only have to prepare a subset of the scales they know for them exam - and the fact that that subset is completely arbitrary doesn't have to compromise their understanding of the logic of the whole set.

But it would be nice if the exam syllabus actually went along with and contributed to their developing sense of musical logic, rather than being an inconvenience that has to be accommodated along the way.

A big fat YES to what confidence just said, not that I could have said it so well myself.

Confidence, you must have amazing students! Mine all just want to play the tunes they recognise...

I do think learning scales for string players is a totally different beast to the piano though. It's so much more about pitch and aural skills rather than learning patterns. You have to be able to hear the shape of the scale before you play it, and it has to become instinctive.

Lingle, teaching Suzuki style is great, I'm not a purist but I was raised with Suzuki so I like to incorporate it.
The last piece in Suzuki book one is on the current grade 3 syllabus so that gives you an idea of the standard. But obviously you need to kearn to sight read and play in keys other than D major to do grade 3!
Basically the theory is that you learn to play beautifully, with a lovely sound and good technique before you worry about learning to read music or play in other keys.
Regarding when to introduce reading and exams I think it depends on the individual student. I had one student who learned to play at about grade 6 standard without being able to read music. He then went on to learn to read music very quickly and did the grade 6 exam. That's a bit of an extreme case though!
Usually they will do about half of Suzuki book 1 and go on to do grade 1 or 2 and get a good mark because they make a fab sound :)

"Basically the theory is that you learn to play beautifully, with a lovely sound and good technique before you worry about learning to read music or play in other keys."

ooh that's great. We have 26 little violins mouldering in a cupboard at school and the head wants to bring them to life as she has two violinists (me and my friend) willing to supplement the peripatetic work, as well as as specialist music teacher who is a cellist The headmistress is going to spend a whole day being "taught" to play the violin by me in June whilst the class teachers keep an eagle eye out for kids who "light up". Those kids will then either be told to ask their parents for violin lessons with the peripatetic or, where the teachers know there is very little chance of that happening (the poor families, the chaotic families, etc,etc) then they are going to sign those kids up for a "violin club" that my friend and I will teach.

My friend is highly trained classically, and very much a visual learner rather than an aural/memory learner and she has found my approach this year a bit bewildering - though we have agreed in taking technique seriously and we are incredibly proud that our girls are using their right hand little fingers properly and making a good sound.

So, having read your post, I think I am going to suggest to her that we could follow a formal Suzuki syllabus, because it sounds like an ideal way to "meet in the middle".

Interestingly, I have also been teaching keyboard to a boy from a vulnerable background at school this year (again, zero chance of "proper" lessons.) His learning style is interesting: he wants to play rock and roll music ("Peggy Sue") - BUT floundered until I introduced notation - now he follows the notation faithfully - he can't yet "hear" the syncopations that come so naturally to me - so he needs "classical" training techniques in order to access his rock and roll music - which he has "unswung" just as instinctively as another child would be desperate to "swing" a classical piece.

Classroom teachers nowadays know so much about learning styles, and in music I think that "the culture" isn't sensitive enough to this - some people learn classical music best using aural techniques, and conversely some people learn rock and roll using "classical teaching" techniques (notation and a focus on notes first rather than rhythm first).

In fact, this is making me think further thoughts that i need to give the classroom teachers more of a sense of "ownership" of teaching music... so they feel a bit more confident and able to introduce it. I think very few people are truly not musical - it's just that some can't memorise, some can't syncopate, and some can't follow notation - they should all be able to find their own learning style.

My DH is musician (guitar) who never took a music exam in his life and my DS is at a Rock School for drums and keyboards who do not believe in exams but more in performance. DS (10) has asked to take grades and they are now helping him with this but not making a big deal and he is still performing with the rest in the big jam at the end. My DS is just a competitive child who had a friend who passed a grade so wanted to keep up. I think is depends on the child. I do like the performance and jamming angle at the Rock School though because it appears to be more related to normal musicianship but then DH in indie band and not a classical musician which may be different.

It's not true that exams inhibit musicianship. All sorts of things can do that, but taking an exam doesn't in itself.

And it's not true that you spend a year learning 3 pieces. My pupils do exams, but they learn lots of extra pieces, and all do duets as well. And they all play musically.

I like the structure of the exams, and I think children respond to the familiarity of the requirements - they actually like having the scale books, because there are clear boundaries as to what they have to learn, and dates to learn them by!