Any Unusual Exam Experiences?, Here's Mine Options

[Czerny]

Not a music exam, but a hairy ballet exam.

Images of gorillas in tutus... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ph34r.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

[lottie]

Not an exam but my audition for the Royal Academy in Glasgow. I had finished with my principle instrument and was attempting a rather difficult Bach fugue on the piano that I did not know by heart.

It was a hot and windy day... and the window behind me was open... and the music took off in the breeze and flapped all the way across the room!!! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ohmy.gif)

Unfortunately I had to retrieve it to carry on and the audition panel commented that I SHOULD have been able to carry on without stopping and as if nothing had happened (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ph34r.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/blush.gif)

I thought I'd ruined the audition.. and spent a few weeks feeling very sad... but I was offered a place in the end (IMG:style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)


Another audition was when I took the train from Edinburgh to Manchester for the RNCM. I woke up that morning 5 minutes before my train left due to sleeping through my alarm clock!!! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ohmy.gif) I managed to catch the next train but had to change trains in Preston. I was so stressed I fainted in the toilet at Preston and nearly missed the connection. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ohmy.gif) I also had a sore head where I hit it on the floor! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ohmy.gif) By the time I arrived in Manchester I was a gibbering wreck and my audition was awful - the aural examiner actually sat on the piano keyboard and asked me how many notes he was playing - and I already had a migraine!!!! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ohmy.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif) . Needless to say I wasn't offered a place there.

[lou24]

The candidate before me (Grade 1 piano) was running late so I went in early for my Grade 8 piano. The rep said he would tell the examiner of the change. I went in sat down and the examiner asked me to play A minor, I thought I was on to a good thing as scales are not my thing, then he asked for D major and I was laughing to myself. Then he said I hadn't needed to play hands together, 4 octaves. i said but what was I supposed to do at Grade 8 and he said OH I thought you were the Grade 1 candidate, it seems that the rep had forgotten to tell him. We had a laugh about it then he asked me some hideous minor and by run of good luck came to an end.
Thankfully I still passed!

[SaxLad]

I know of a guy who greased his clarinet up before his grade 5 and as he was going in the bottom half of his clarinet fell onto the stone floor of benslow and then did the same thing in the exam room. Needless to say he said the tuning was horrible and he couldn't get half the notes out, but still passed.

[jod]

The candidate before me (Grade 1 piano) was running late so I went in early for my Grade 8 piano. The rep said he would tell the examiner of the change. I went in sat down and the examiner asked me to play A minor, I thought I was on to a good thing as scales are not my thing, then he asked for D major and I was laughing to myself. Then he said I hadn't needed to play hands together, 4 octaves. i said but what was I supposed to do at Grade 8 and he said OH I thought you were the Grade 1 candidate, it seems that the rep had forgotten to tell him. We had a laugh about it then he asked me some hideous minor and by run of good luck came to an end.
Thankfully I still passed!

That would be my luck on Friday! However the other day I'd just been practising the "hideous things in minor keys" and thought 'oh good, at last' tried to practise C major 4 octaves hands together staccato and ended up a note out at the bottom so all is not as easy as it first appears!

I had a heavily pregnant candidate confuse a major and minor scale, the examiner was feeling kind and made allowance for her condition. She was a rather wonderful pupil and did very well despite a serious case of pregnancy brain on the day of the exam.

[Clari_notts]

I had quite a bizarre grade 7 exam experience about 25 yrs ago. We had gone to a new exam centre and the room wasn't brilliant , everything looked a little old and rickety - piano included, which wobbled!

The examiner sat on a squeaky chair and fidgetted for most of the exam, then to top it all about half way through my second piece (think it was a Spohr concerto slow movement) the music stand slid slowly and gracefully to the floor as the as the screw gave way and the legs collapsed. The examiner saw this happening, sniggered quietly, then stood up and carefully put the stand back up while i carried on playing trying not to collapse in fits of giggles.

I got 29 /30 for that piece and a merit overall - needless to say we never used that centre agin but it was a surreal experience!

[aesir22]

Examiner forget to ask me to sing for the aural exam. I probably should have kept my mouth shut (she said if she hadn't asked me she would have to judge me by the aural tests I was asked to do) but I told her and we did the singing anyway. Got 18/18 for aurals, but I seriously think its more through her embarrassment than any talent on my part LOL!

[andante_in_c]

Examiner forget to ask me to sing for the aural exam. I probably should have kept my mouth shut (she said if she hadn't asked me she would have to judge me by the aural tests I was asked to do) but I told her and we did the singing anyway. Got 18/18 for aurals, but I seriously think its more through her embarrassment than any talent on my part LOL!

I had a similar experience during the aural for my Grade 8 singing exam last year. The examiner asked me to sing back the bass line and then went straight to the sight singing. I said, 'I hate to say this, but you haven't asked me for the cadential progression'. He made a comment along the lines of my bass line singing being so accurate it had put him off his stroke. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ohmy.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[jod]

Examiner forget to ask me to sing for the aural exam. I probably should have kept my mouth shut (she said if she hadn't asked me she would have to judge me by the aural tests I was asked to do) but I told her and we did the singing anyway. Got 18/18 for aurals, but I seriously think its more through her embarrassment than any talent on my part LOL!

I had a similar experience during the aural for my Grade 8 singing exam last year. The examiner asked me to sing back the bass line and then went straight to the sight singing. I said, 'I hate to say this, but you haven't asked me for the cadential progression'. He made a comment along the lines of my bass line singing being so accurate it had put him off his stroke. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ohmy.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

On those lines the examiner did double check I wanted my sight singing in the treble clef! Excuse me I am a soprano I can do the Octave transposition in my head but it is normal to give a sight singing test to a woman in the treble clef. Even then the bass-line and sight reading test were more suitable for a contralto very low in my rang. (Pianists have to read bass clef!)

What was worse on Friday was the interruption from another piano in the middle of my scales and constantly referring to F# Major when on the Piano I know that one as Gb! + the Stool I didn't have time to adjust properly and insufficient time to get used to the piano and get the stool right in accordance with guidelines set out in 'these music exams'.

Not very impressed candidate!

[sbhoa]

Examiner forget to ask me to sing for the aural exam. I probably should have kept my mouth shut (she said if she hadn't asked me she would have to judge me by the aural tests I was asked to do) but I told her and we did the singing anyway. Got 18/18 for aurals, but I seriously think its more through her embarrassment than any talent on my part LOL!

I had a similar experience during the aural for my Grade 8 singing exam last year. The examiner asked me to sing back the bass line and then went straight to the sight singing. I said, 'I hate to say this, but you haven't asked me for the cadential progression'. He made a comment along the lines of my bass line singing being so accurate it had put him off his stroke. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ohmy.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

On those lines the examiner did double check I wanted my sight singing in the treble clef! Excuse me I am a soprano I can do the Octave transposition in my head but it is normal to give a sight singing test to a woman in the treble clef. Even then the bass-line and sight reading test were more suitable for a contralto very low in my rang. (Pianists have to read bass clef!)

What was worse on Friday was the interruption from another piano in the middle of my scales and constantly referring to F# Major when on the Piano I know that one as Gb! + the Stool I didn't have time to adjust properly and insufficient time to get used to the piano and get the stool right in accordance with guidelines set out in 'these music exams'.

Not very impressed candidate!

I felt rushed at times when I did my grade 8 but I remembered to take the 'when you are ready' instruction at face value and not make a hasty start on anything.
I wouldn't ask for time to adjust the stool and try the piano. I'd just do it. They can't ask you to play if you are still fiddling with the stool height or position. I instruct my own candidates to take their own time and to say if a non adjusting stool is wrong (I had to do that in one exam).
It can be difficult if an examiner is crowding you though and it can take confidence and experience to do what you need. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sad.gif)
I'd want to know from my candidates if there were any problems like this so that I could notify the board in advance of results being issued.

[saxophile]

A few (both mine and my teacher's):

- in Grade 2 piano, as a 10-year old, I had a real battle-axe of an examiner who insisted that I had to beat time in the aural tests (back in the days when you had to conduct rather than clap the beat) using my right hand "because conductors always use their right hand". Being strongly left-handed, and never having practised conducting with the left hand (and being rather nervous), I couldn't do it. Threw me completely for the rest of the exam: I was just glad it was almost the last part. My then teacher was livid...

- in my Grade 1 jazz, the examiner asked me to play the A minor pentatonic scale as "straight eights, swung". My response: "err - sorry??". The examiner patiently repeated it slowly, then as it registered with him what he had just requested, he put his head in his hands and said "And it's only 10.30 in the morning!". (IMG:style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

- in one of my teacher's clarinet exams, the examiner couldn't find the clarinet sight-reading book anywhere, and eventually realised that a previous candidate must have walked off with it. So my teacher ended up with a Bb trumpet sight-reading test instead - an absolute gift, given the more limited range the trumpet candidates for that grade would have been expected to have!

[andante]

My son inadvertantly came home with the sightreading book from an exam. The examiner left it on the music stand while they did the rest of the exam and at the end son (no doubt trying to escape quickly) just grabbed all the music off the stand and fled. It was only when we got home we realised what he had done.

[janexxx]

When I did my Grade 1 piano I had come down with shingles and was feeling quite poorly. However, I was determined to give it my best shot so off I went regardless, dosed up and covered in calamine lotion, and trying not to scratch.

I walked in to the exam room only to be greeted by a startled examiner who did a double take and said - Oh I was expecting a little girl (I assume because it was Grade 1!! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rolleyes.gif) )

Anyway all went relatively OK bearing in mind how I felt, and I even felt rather chuffed at my sight reading expertise that had seemed to go extremely well, until the nice examiner pointed out the key sig - and I realised I had played it quite fluently in D major, instead of D minor. I blame the painkillers!!