The importance of a distinction Options

[FullofWind]

Should you only sit grade 8 when you know there is a very high chance that a distinction will be achieved? There will be musicians for whom this would be a mammoth task but if a child was capable of getting a comfortable pass, would it be better to wait up to two years until they were beyond distinction level? How are resits viewed by conservatoires if a child wishes to gain a distinction at a later date?

[FullofWind]

Why should the student not see the grade? I get very cross when this happens in ther areas of testing. We've paid and it's information pertaining to myself or my child so I have the right to know this information.

[VH2]

Why should the student not see the grade? I get very cross when this happens in ther areas of testing. We've paid and it's information pertaining to myself or my child so I have the right to know this information.

If an exam were PASS/FAIL then there would be no grade to see. What you would still have is the examiners written appraisal, which is far more use than a mere number.

But this is all hypothetical, so you have nothing to worry about. The Grade system is not going to change any time soon. It will continue to award marks out of 100 or 150 (according to exam board), with a mish-mash of random or ;pointless elements alongside the performance itself, and four classes of result: Fail, Pass, Merit and Distinction.

[FullofWind]

Why should the student not see the grade? I get very cross when this happens in ther areas of testing. We've paid and it's information pertaining to myself or my child so I have the right to know this information.

If an exam were PASS/FAIL then there would be no grade to see. What you would still have is the examiners written appraisal, which is far more use than a mere number.

But this is all hypothetical, so you have nothing to worry about. The Grade system is not going to change any time soon. It will continue to award marks out of 100 or 150 (according to exam board), with a mish-mash of random or ;pointless elements alongside the performance itself, and four classes of result: Fail, Pass, Merit and Distinction.

I don't think any of the elements are pointless. Sight-reading is an essential skill if one wants to join ensembles, scales teach perseverance (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) and aural.. well I'll let someone else answer that!

[VH2]

I don't think any of the elements are pointless. Sight-reading is an essential skill if one wants to join ensembles, scales teach perseverance (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) and aural.. well I'll let someone else answer that!

No. You are right they are not pointless in themselves. They are an important part of musical education. But it is pointless to have them in the instrumental exams. They cannot be properly assessed in the tiny part of an exam that is given over to them, and they are not essential to the main skill - performing pieces to the required level.

Also, the sight reading is of a kind that is rarely useful in real life, there is little logic to the order in which scales are required at each grade, and the aural tests are too elementary and too limited in scope to properly assess the student's aural skills, and in the case of the piano do not even test the sorts of aural skill that are most useful to a pianist.

Yes scales and arpeggios are what a lot of music is built from, and yes they can be a useful way to learn about tonal music and learn co-ordination. There are top class pianists that swear by them, but there are others that claim never to have done much of them, but to have made exercises of the scale passages and arpeggios that occur in real music.

And why those three things? scales, aural (recognition of intervals, cadences, pulse, rhythm), sight reading (aiming at an accurate and musical performance after hardly any study)

Like I said it is a random mish-mash and not a well thought out and coherent set of skills.

Why not include some of these instead (or as well):

aural (dictation, recognising a modulation, hearing different degrees of legato/staccato, etc.)

improvisation (a melody given a chord sequence)

practical harmony (adding harmony to a melody, realising a figured bass)

play by ear - play back a short, simple piece after hearing it two or three times

a different kind of sight reading (missing out non-essentials in order to give a musical performance - like real-life accompanying at sight)

knowledge of different conventions and style in different periods of musical history

historical knowledge (musical eras, history of your instrument, lives of the composers)

etc. etc. None of these is assessed in an instrumental Grade.


I would still prefer to see the instrumental grades consisting of performance of a variety of pieces, and nothing else. To play well you need some sight-reading ability and aural skills, and you may have found it helpful to learn a stack of scales, but that extra stuff is implicit in the performance - which is ultimately what really matters, however you arrived at it. No-one is going to pay to hear a concert where you play scales, sight read, or recognize intervals and cadences.


And as another thread has been talking about pass/merit/distinction, it strikes me as ridiculous that someone could play the pieces very well, ace the scales, aural, and sight reading, and get a Distinction, while someone else could play the pieces magnificently, but be a slow sight-reader, not confident in aural, and never have practiced scales, and score a bare pass. Yet it is the second player that that can best entertain friends and family or could even have a performing career.