I've been playing since 1487 but have just decided to take some exams. In the exam room should I play scales, arpeggios and broken chords up and down just once (as printed in ABRSM books), or repeatedly until the examiner tells me to stop?

1487???

You do as many octaves as the syllabus tells you for the grade.

Say for C major 2 octaves, you play up 2 octaves and back down again and stop.

Gosh, playing for 518 years. Either you're a very slow learner, or you seriously don't need to worry about the exams.

However, you play the scales ascending and descending once, for the prescribed number of octaves. If in doubt, if you play the highest note more than once, you've made a boo-boo.

Edward

I'd be surprised if he'd lived of 518 yrs!!!

Ah yes, but the miracles of modern science mean we are all living longer

If you say so!!

518 years that's impressive.!!!!!!!! After that amount of time you would have thought that somebody would at least be good enough to play Fantasie Impromptu as well as all the scales. Only 513 years to go, sigh, I'd better get practising.