Hi,
I wondered if anyone could offer any advice?
I have just had the results from grade 3 and grade 4 clarinet exams.
The grade 3 candidate played the Demnitz study from 80 Graded studies. This is in 6/8 time and has some tricky rhythms with quite a few notes tied across to the second beat. We worked long and hard to get these right. She was given 19 marks for this piece with the comment that it lacked the two in a bar feel ( maybe fair comment ) and that it was frequently miscounted. Is it possible that the examiner was unfamiliar with the piece and mistook the syncopation for miscounting? I am completely bemused by this - the other pieces were given 29 and 24 marks and a similar mark for the study would have given her a merit. Have I just misinterpreted how the piece should be played?!

The second query is on the grade 4 where the candidate played Tumbledown Blues by James Rae. This has mp marked for the first half of the piece and mf for the second. Previous candidates have played this as written and had good marks ( 27 and 28 if I remember rightly ). A comment on this piece was not to be afraid to use (hairpin markings written) to give added interest. There are none in the music. Has the goalpost moved since I last entered a grade 4 candidate ( only last year with the same piece ) and extra interpretation is now required?

Any comments would be much appreciated as I anticipate entering two grade 3 candidates in the summer and 2 for grade 4 at Christmas.
Louise

HAve you considered appealing?

This is always an option if you think you have been marked down where there is no reason.

But also remember, just because no dynamics are marked. It does not necessarily mean the piece should contain none.

Did you use the same edition as recommended by the Associated Board in the syllabus? Sometimes different editions have different dynamic and expression marks....just a thought......

Yes, the correct editions of the music were used so I'm not sure what was going on with that one!

As far as the grade 3 goes, I did think about appealing to start with but ( having had a cooling off period! ) I think that we will focus on the positives and move on. This candidate is only 11 and, when all's said and done will go up to secondary school in September with a very respectable grade 3 pass under her belt. I think we'll focus on the examiner's congratulations for a "splendid" list A piece and work at improving the two in a bar feel of 6/8 pieces as and when the opportunity arises ( although I'm still not convinced that this was bad enough to fail the piece on! )

I do keep hearing about erratic marking with the AB.
Makes me pause for thought when it comes to entering my pupils.

I wonder if your candidate might have cut the tied notes slightly short some of the time - that's the sort of thing which can quite easily happen if/when one is nervous, and it would of course affect the pulse badly.

As regards dynamics, I think one is expected to add extra dynamics as appropriate, in order to make pieces come alive more when there are only sparse dynamics in the printed music!

Tumbledown blues has a lot of ascending-descending arpeggio like patterns. I have always considered this a case of following the shape of the music with dynamics; crescendo on the ascending, dim on the descending, not exaggerated, but put them in for effect. (I use the 'Universal' edition) There is no hard and fast rule on this but this piece seems to lend itself to that. On this count it sounds fairly reasonable comment.

I don't have the Demnitz within reach just now, sorry. Still good marks for the other pieces so well done.

That was my gut feeling too. Continually clipping notes could then cause the piece to become unsteady, as Jo has said, and/or rushed, and it's just possible that if the tempo became uncontrolled, other errors may have crept in.

Sounds like your pupils did well overall though Louise, so well done!

And welcome to the forums!

Can anyone tell me if they have ever had success appealing to ABRSM. One of my pupils failed their grade 8 trumpet by 5 marks and i listened to the whole exam which they should have passed, not well butstill passed it her List C piece was played almost perfectly and was failed on lack of dynamics.

I have appealed a couple of times but no joy. Unless you have a lot of clout I dont think there is much chance of appealing. As I accompany instrumentalists, I can be pretty sure that just occassionally the comments ( and hence marking) are just wrong. I had a flautist marked down for playing an octave higher than the piano when it was written that way a year or two back. But on the whole they are not too bad and exams mark the student's progress which many like.

One of my piano students came to me mildly upset as she had just scraped a pass at grade four. Her teacher thinks she deserved at least 118-120 and when she showed me the comments from the examiner, I have to agree. One such comment was something like: 'Well played with good dynamic contrast. Really captured the mood of this piece' and received just 21 marks. Scales were given the bare pass mark, yet the comment was along the lines of 'well known, quick and accurate response. Small slip in minor scale'

Strange. I've had pupils receive less positive comments and come out with a much higher mark...

I have had a couple of similar ones in the past year. A grade 1 candidate failed the sight-reading "RH accurate but LH had slips"


In fact I had two candidates on two separate occasions with almost identical remarks for sight-reading:

The RH was correct, but there was some error in LH section.

One scored 13 (at grade one) , the other scored 17 (at grade two)

Make of it what you will ...

A tip for anyone considering appealing (I've never done it myself...) I recall Clara Taylor saying somewhere that a recording of the pupil helps a lot in this process. If one is just saying the marks are lower than one expected one hasn't got much of a leg to stand on: it's the word of a stranger against one of their 'highly skilled and trained examiners'. Whilst you may well be right, they're more likely to believe the examiner. A recording of the candidate's playing can help the people dealing with the appeal to judge for themselves: okay so they won't adjust the mark based on it, or award an exam pass, because it's not under exam conditions and there's no proof that it actually was them, but still it will help them to make a more informed decision about whether the appeal should be successful. Appeals on comments not matching the marks are, apparently, more easily upheld.

To be honest, to me, the whole process of appealing seems to be made worthless by the outcome of a successful appeal: in granting an appeal the AB are admitting that you paid for a service that they didn't give you (not to mention all the work you had to put in to get to the standard required) and now they'll just offer a free retake: basically a fair exam is what should have been given in the first place. This leaves the candidate and teacher with the decision to waste a few months keeping pieces warm; or move on with no real compensation for what's happened . I accept that if one buys something from a shop that is faulty and a replacement is given that's fine because it doesn't involve months of hard work too.....

I would say that to me, this marking does seem erratic. After 3 years of entering candidates and 12 years doing the exams myself, I have never seen a mark of anything under 20, and certainly not one as high as 29. In terms of appealing, I think you have to be absolutely convinced that your student did things as they were supposed to on the day.

David

I've had some candidates get 21/21 for scales and sightreading as well as 3 who got 30/30 for one of their pieces.

One of these was COMPLETELY undeserved - it was a rhythmic nightmare of a piece played by a student with the most wobbly sense of pulse and the performance was.......eccentric on the day.

Still, swings and roundabouts in the end I guess.