I'm doing Grade 8 soon, and last night at my lesson my teacher went through the requirements for the aural part of the test. What a nightmare

First there's singing a bass part. The examiner plays a short piece of music (two hands) and you're supposed to be able to pick out the bass part. How, pray?

Secondly, you have to identify the four closing chords, and the cadence. Well, I can do the cadence, but am struggling with the four chords. Guess I need more practice.

Then there's discussing a piece - texture, structure etc. etc.

Are there any useful learning materials for this part of the exam? Or should I just "know" it by some sort of magic osmotic process?

Edward

Some theory might help with this one if you have time. For example if it's a perfect cadence at the end and you have no idea of the preceding chord IIb is a good guess, or IV. Then one would only expect to hear a subset of chords preceding these chords. The way to do it if you at all can (although judging by your dislike of singing back the bass part you may not find this too helpful) is to listen to the bass line and work out what that's doing; couple that with listening to whether each chord is major or minor and you can narrow down the choices quite nicely. If it's all too late to learn any of this (I don't know when your exam is) then learn some standard chord progressions finishing with each type of cadence and then recognise the cadence and just guess that it was the other chords in your progression, that will make a slightly more educated 'guess' on the day.

As for useful learning materials have you tried Aural Training in Practice, or if you don't have a friendly pianist handy to help you then the Aural Training CDs have the questions from that book on them. For the last question experience from previous grades should help a lot .

Good luck .

Can I suggest writing out short 2-part inventions, just 4 or five notes at first, then learn to sing each part while you play the other. Practice until you can play it a couple of times then sing the bass.
Try to sing the bass line with simple pop or classic music. The older pop stuff is better because it usually conforms to some kind of harmonic profile, like I - vi - ii - V7 etc.

Hi Edward,
It's no magic,
just practice...and a shame that your teacher has introduced this so late. Why do teachers do this? (I rhetorically ask myself). Just that by grade 8 a certain musicianship is expected beyond performing pieces.
Recognising chords and their positions only comes with practice....grade 8 doesn't have anything too difficult. If you have access to a traditional hymn book, music written in 4 part harmony, analyse and play a few cadences, get used to the sound of sequences like iib-v7-I // iib-Ic-Va-Ia.

Good luck with your practice.

There are quite a few aural books around that you could get to help...alternatively..just go into the exam and guess I do

I need loads of help with Grade 8 aural too! Its my weakest bit...eeekkk I think that this time round my teacher has realised this and started me on aurals last week, i.e. about 4 months before the exam..lol whereas for my last exam we started about 3 weeks before.. I'm trying to leran how to sing in tune (seriously... ). Got the Appleby book yesterday and am trying to work on that. For the bass bit I'm considering playing it back, i'm trying both and keeping options open at this stage though.

It always interests me that pianists seem to complain about the chordal tests just as much as other instrumentalists, even though you'd think playing the piano would give an advantage compared to people who can't play chords on their instruments.

Grade 8 aurals sound evil...

Hi,

I am getting geared up for my grade 8 piano also and I was hoping to not have lessons and have a crack at it myself. I have more or less learn't the scales and I will start the pieces next year. The sight-reading is straight-forward but when I had a look at the aural tests I felt a bit overwhelmed. The various grade 8 aural books give the impression that they are only a accompanyment to being taught and they are not sufficient in themselves.

I've said this before, but I will say it again. I believe someone could make alot of money producing an aural book that really teaches you everything you need to know for the exam.

Shelton

It's probably to do with the fact that although pianists play these chords most people don't (and often can't) analyse their pieces in this way. For example, a shape on the page might map to a certain hand-shape but most people don't actually play the piano and analyse the harmonic progressions in the music as they're going along ask a lot of pianists what chord that is, or where chord IIb appears in the piece and many of them won't be able to tell you. Thus when it comes to listening to these things pianists don't have much of an advantage anyway as they've not been listening to themselves play and thinking about what they're doing. Similarly other instrumentalists, to a lesser extent, could see the harmonic progressions in their pieces (just as one can in contrapuntal piano music) although if they have never heard (or seen) the accompaniment there would be multiple possibilties.

I think your point is very interesting, pianists should have an advantage; but very few people actually listen to, and analyse, their own playing (pianists and other instrumentalists) so people don't seem to learn this way, which is a shame.

My piano teacher tries to do that...he asks me questions when i'm playing my exam pieces like 'what cadence is this' and 'how is this modulating' etc and then despairs when i have no idea.