The good news is that the ABRSM will be arranging exams at our school, saving people a very long drive and meaning the kids don't have to miss a day of school.

Piano music is no problem, but our eldest plays the trumpet and I'm having difficulty finding the graded music collections for the exams.

Can someone tell me where I can order these online?

Thanks a million.

Steve

Only violin and piano music is published as graded collections. Other instruments require you to buy the pieces individually, suggested publications are listed in the syllabus.

Wow! I didn't know that! Things have certainly changed. I still have all my old graded collections for guitar.

I looked at the Grade 1 trumpet exam. Three lists, A,B,C and you have to choose one from each list. A total of 20 pieces, and none that I could see, from the same book.

Does this mean the student has to find all these books in order to try each piece, or am I missing something glaringly obvious?

It wouldn't be the first time!

Steve

Yes, you usually have to buy 3 books, unless you're fortunate. If you want to try each and every piece then I guess it would mean buying all the books - or buying the ABRSM cd (if there is one...) and listening to narrow the choice down a bit. They aren't cheap but if it saves you buying piles of music books...

I didn't know the AB had ever published music beyond violin and piano in books... I know they sometimes print selections of former exam pieces though. Trinity publish exam piece books, and I think the guildhall initial grades at least for woodwind have several pieces from one book.

It's annoying in some ways but it does mean that instead of just buying exam pieces, you get several books of music to play

Thanks Sarah,

Actually, you're right. I think my old guitar books may have been Trinity. But isn't Trinity part of the ABRSM? I didn't realise there were other music exams.




I agree, but it would be a lot easier for families on a tight budget to buy one book for little 'junior' that had all the exam pieces in.
When I was young, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, it seemed to be only the rich kids that took music exams. I do hope things have changed.

Oh well, time to get the old credit card out and get onto Amazon!

Steve

Trinity, Guildhall and the ABRSM are all separate exam boards, although Trinity and GH are merging in terms of their exams.

The ABRSM is the Royals' exam board, the others are administered by TCL and the Guildhall respectively.

I agree that it would be nice to have the exam pieces in a book, sadly though it just doesn't work that way for any other instruments. I think in general most teachers don't buy books *just* for exams if they can help it, but rather books that will be useful to the pupil anyway and happen to have exam pieces in them, assuming that one does pieces besides the grade pieces of course! Presumably most pupils will be needing repertoire books in between the grade exams anyway, so if one can combine that with books that happen to have current syllabus exams in them, then you're set.

If you have a look at the syllabus for the next few grades up from where he is now, you should find that the same books can be used for quite few grades.

For example my daughter has a study book for sax that has had an exam piece in it for (I think) every exam she's done on the instrument - and she's taking grade 5 this time. I think over the last 3 years I haven't had to buy more than 3 books for her sax exams. Of course, this does limit the choice of pieces to the ones in the books she's got but she's been happy with the pieces so far and she's never been limited to only one piece in each group - she's always had a bit of choice. If she really didn't take to the pieces I'd buy some alternatives.

As Sarah said, he'll play the other pieces in the books as part of his ordinary repertoire anyway, so as long as you choose books with the type of music in that he enjoys, then your money won't be wasted.

It's also worth looking on Ebay - I've had a couple of exam books from there for various instruments.

Regards,

Jane