I have taught both piano and brass for many years.

My brass pupils seem to reach the required standard to play their Grade 1 pieces, and therefore take their exam within 6 to 12 months of starting (on average).

However my piano pupils seem to take a much longer time to attain the Grade 1 standard (up to 2 years on average)

It seem to me that all a Grade 1 brass player has to be able to do is encompass a range of 1 octave, play 2 scales, and 3 pieces which fall within that octave range.

The unfortunate pianist on the other hand has to play using both hands, covering all the treble and bass clef and some ledger lines, and has to learn many more scales, arpegios and broken chords.

I do appreciate there are different techniques to be learnt.(The brass player has to learn to pitch his notes at the right harmonic, whereas the pianist's notes are all there ready to be played) (Iknow this is a simplistic way of looking at it but.....)

My comments are twofold.

1.Has the ABRSM set the piano Grade 1 too hard?
2.What do other piano teachers find is an average length of time to get a piano pupil from scratch up to Grade 1 level?

I would appreciate any comments.

Hi there,
I have been teaching piano for 13 years and my experience is the same as yours. I find someone starting on the piano from scratch without having played another instrument/read music before, can take anything up to 2 years to reach Grade 1 standard.
I don't think that it is at all uncommon.

Best wishes,
Bigsymusic.

-sorry - I dont know what happend there - must have hit the quote button by mistake...
Yes - I have found that its a common problem with the piaon pupils taking sooooo long to do their grade 1 in comparison with the wind pupils. Does my memory serve me right or did wind only start at grade 3 when I was young (back in the dark ages). Then, it was said that grade 3 wind took the same time to reach as grade 1 piano and for us kids were thought of as the same difficulty - though by grade 5 thay were thought as equal.
I also find that, on average, my piano pupils are younger, have had less experience of other instruments (woodwind pupils have often dabbled with the recorder - so can read treble clef, tongue, slur, breathe etc) . Often I skip out grade 1 with the woodwinds and just do 2 & 4, while the majority of the pianists are still plodding on.... although I did have 1 girl who took grade 5 piano after a year, but that's a different story!!!

Hi, I agree with all the posts on this. Of course it varies a lot between students, but, yes, 18 months to 2 years to reach grade 1 on piano is average for a student starting age7/ 8 or above -I think it is mainly due to having to simultaneously read 2 staves and a much wider variety of notes-also to the fact that the piano is often the first instrument studied, whereas a student taking up a wind or string instrument may have some piano experience. I remember when I was learning that it only took me a couple of years to get to pass my grade 5 viola, which was my 2nd study.

Can any one learn Trumpet on his own , if so please let me know in detail, Thanks

Yes, in my experience it can take anywhere between 4 months and 3 years to rech grade 1. However there are several alternatives. The prep test of course (AB) but also the two introductory guildhall exams and Trinity's initial exam are all excellent for the right pupils and provide very useful stepping stones for a pupil who wants to take an exam. London college of music also has some easy pre-grade 1 exams so there is loads of choice out there.

Yes, I would agree ..... The time taken to get to a comfortable grade one level is around two years on average.

It's not a beginner's exam and the skills required are fairly complex ones.

Do other teachers find that most pupils are ready for grade 2 a year after doing grade one ? I wondered, because I find this varies enormously too. It seems to me that if a degree of independent learning kicks in around or just after grade one level, the pupil can take off. If this doesn't happen, the student tends to struggle to get to the next stage. What do others think?

Maggie

Maybe grade 1 brass shold be a bit harder! I don't play any brass instruments but pianists and string players need to know more than that to pass grade 1.

I certainly agree that Grade 1 piano demands many more skills than wind and brass. Older siblings can sometimes feel somewhat demoralised that their younger sister is taking Grade 1 flute or whatever, while they themselves are still some way off being ready for their first piano exam. Also, I feel it's important not to rush this important foundation stage, and tend to err on the side of their being over- ready, if anything. From that, however, many of them play Grade 3 material without undue stress within 4 terms or so. Generally, I tend to miss out Grade 2 , while preparing the scales, reading and aural at that level.

I also tell them that in many ways Grade 1 is actually the hardest exam , as coming from a place of no 'knowledge' to the skills needed for Grade 1 is far greater than the gap between any other 2 grades (if that makes any sense?) . Like the difference between not being able to swim at all to getting across a width of a pool unaided.

Yes Jacky (sorry I don't know how to use the quote things!) - I seem to remember the wind exams only starting at grade 3 too. And my pupils tend to take between 2-3 years to reach grade 1. Late starters can take a year, but the younger ones take longer. Although having said that, the school I teach at sometimes allows children to do the Scottish equivalent of GCSE from no previous musical experience so I'm expected to get them to grade 3 in 18 months!!! It's been impossible in every case!!

The skills required for wind instruments are somewhat different from the piano, however. It can take several weeks for a beginner flautist to produce any sort of sound on the headjoint alone.

The emphasis in the early grades for wind instruments should be on producing a good supported tone rather than on the compass of notes learned. Unfortunately the early flute grades require students to play pieces which often test their fingers rather than their sound.

The Prep test contains tone exercises (good) to be played from memory(bad - not because memorising is bad, but because the effort goes into remembering rather than listening). Grade 1 reverts to the familiar 3 pieces, scales, sightreading and aural pattern shared by all instruments. Perhaps it is time for the exam system to reflect the different technical skills needed to play piano, wind, strings etc., and to make the early grades more instrument-specific in their content.

I also have an average of 18 months to 2 years for taking grade 1. In fact I have 1 pupil who is now 10, has been learning for 3 years and is only now taking Step 2 with London College. It really depends a lot on the pupil as well. Others can be really quick, I have a pupil who has been learning 2 years and is now taking grade 5 but practises very hard, is talented and loves to play. I agree it does seem unfair that getting to grade 1 piano takes a lot more work than say a wind instrument (I also teach treble recorder). I find the London College Step 1 and Step 2 keep pupils motivated and achieving though.

It's the same with violin students too. I generally put students in for Gr1 in their third year playing, occassionally some in their second year. The Gr1 pieces seem to have got harder over the years with the students expected to play low 2's and lots of complicated slurs too! Wind and Brass players always seem to be ready for an exam a lot quicker and usually don't bother with Gr1.

But don't all instruments have a certain point between exams where the jump seems bigger than at any other point?

I never took grades 1 and 2 for flute, I went in for grade 3 having been playing for about 2 years. I found the biggest jump was between grades 5 and 6 where all of her sudden the number of scales to be learn doubles!

Perhaps pianists are lucky that their gap comes nice and early on!

I always think that Grade 1 for each instrument is the same standard of music for the AUDIENCE TO HEAR, not the player to play. This is why I believe the ABRSM have done it this way, ignoring (up to a point) that piano has two hands to play together, horn is difficult. This is also why flute used to start at grade 3, but flute tone difficulties etc. are demanding later. I use the Guildhall Introductory and Preliminary exams with some piano pupils to cover the first 1-3 years.

When I was first learning piano, it took me more than two years to get to grade one, but then I did two and three quickly after that. Then they changed the aurels and I took a while to do grade four...but that's another story! I also learnt French horn, and within a term I sat grade one. Of course it helped that I could already read treble clef notes at that stage.
It does seem that the early grades have less requirements on wind instruments - many of my students also learn wind instruments and are 'catching up' on their piano grades despite learning for less time.

I think DomRUK's point is probably the reason behind it: the AB's argument for having non-specialist examiners is that the examiners mark what they hear; not how it is achieved so they don't need to know about how to play the instruments. I suspect this discrepancy could indicate a similar idea as he suggests.

Another point (from another thread) probably doesn't have to be as good at grade 1 (or at least there's not as much to learn) as for other insturments so although piano is harder to get to the pass standard of it's proably equally difficult to achieve very good marks.

Tell me about it!! I absolutely HATE breaking the news to newly-passed Grade 4 students than in Grade 5 they will have to learn ALL the major and minor scales under the sun and in Grade 6 BOTH melodic and harmonic as well.

But thank god the piano pieces for these two Grades the past 5 years have been nice. As for violin slurs... yes I found them complicated alright in the beginning. It's like one wrong bow, then the whole lot is done wrong and you end on an up
bow! Even now I'm in Grade 4 some pieces are still complicated with those slurs over several notes.

I actually found grade 5 piano quite a light grade for scales (well am finding it, I've not done it yet!). There are very few new ones that haven't been covered in at least one of the previous grades; whereas for the previous grades they like to pull out almost all new ones.

Does anyone find that their students who have taken Grade 4 piano and are starting work on Grade 5 suddenly find playing a scale of C major hands together in similar motion a problem? I know mine do, having learnt all the more complicated scales for Grade 4 I often find they have to re-learn C major which, of course, is not covered hands together in similar motion until Grade 5.

Interested to know your thoughts.

Bigsymusic

I think that the thing to do is to sometimes ask for scales from previous grades which may have been pushed aside.
Not being on the exam list doesn't mean that they should be consigned to the recycle bin.

C major is for life.. not just for grade 1...

Oh absolutely....in an ideal world!

I have to say the most frustrating thing sometimes is having to explain to parents that grade 1 is not, indeed, a beginner's exam but actually represents a lot of knowledge. You occasionally get the 'but he's been learning for 2 years, surely he's ready for grade 1' comment- I totally agree that the biggest learning curve is from beginner to grade 1 standard, and have to explain to parents that it won't necessarily then take another 2 years to pass each grade!

I agree with andante that having the same exam format for all the instruments is rather unhelpful... playing the piano has a totally difficult set of difficulties to playing the flute or the violin.

Although I'm not a "natural pianist" I actually took grade 1 piano and passed fairly healthily as I recall in the spring session having started the previous September. Violin, however, I did "preliminary" after 9 months and grade 1 after another year.

As has been pointed out elsewhere, the technical difficulties of the piano and flute are so different it's hard to compare them... - the piano's difficulty lies largely in coordination and dexterity... the flautist has to cope with this too of course, but the real hard part about learning the flute is acquiring a good tone, and sustaining it throughout the range of the instrument. Yes, a piano will sound better or worse, and the way dynamics achieved is I suppose vaguely comparable... but where the flautist never has to worry about reading and playing two lines of music simultaneously, the pianist never has to worry about sustaining tone whilst playing pp in the top octave. When you consider the difficulty that some starters have even getting a sound out of the thing, let alone a recognisable note, then the pianist whose notes are laid out before him has definite advantages!