is it me or do u get down when you only scrape a pass.

i hav just taken my grade 5 theory exam and i passed but i only just scraped it.

the past fedw exams i hav scraped it and it is reli gettin me down i don't reli know what to do

i just wondered if any of you feel the same????

First of all be happy with your success, you have passed these exams and, more importantly, learnt a lot in doing so .

Secondly look forward to the future. The range of your marks is determined mostly by the time at which you choose to take the exam. Imagine if you took grade 1 now: I'm sure that you'd be confident of doing very well: probably getting a merit or even a distinction . Clearly this is taking things to extremes thinking right back to grade 1 but it's worth a thought experiment. If you were doing grade 1 now you'd probably get less nervous in the exam (because you're confident that you can do it) and would play very well because you're used to much harder things. From this we can learn that we have, to a reasonable degree, a choice about how well we do in exams: of course, unfortunately, the factor of nerves on the day can cause problems for even the best-prepared of candidates , but the better prepared you are the more likely that you will get better marks despite nerves.

In reality it's likely that those getting distinctions in a certain grade are doing the grade at a time that they could get a pass in a higher grade had they chosen to do that, but are doing the earlier grade instead. I therefore believe the short answer to your question is if you want to get higher marks then you have to have more playing experience before you take the exam. If you were to take two years developing your playing to standard of the grade above your next one but then still take the next grade (i.e. say that you're grade 5, work towards a just about passing at grade 7 level and then take grade 6 later than you would have) then your marks will be higher. You can take this anywhere on the spectrum: if you're grade 6 1/2 when you do the grade 6 exam you'll do better than if you're grade 6 1/4.

The other way to look at it is that playing develops in two different directions: in one direction there's being able to play harder pieces (going up the grades) and in another way there's how well you can actually play the pieces that you play (going up the marks). Obviously the two are interlinked to a reasonable extent: the more difficult the piece the harder it is to play nicely. Different people, however, develop the two skills in different proportions: one person might like to focus on being able to play harder pieces but less so on how well they play them (this person would reach a high grade quickly); and another person might not wish to move onto harder pieces as quickly, instead preferring to concentrate on learning to play easier pieces to a very high standard (this person would get higher marks but not get through the grades so quickly). That's another choice to make: if one shifts one's focus I'm sure that one could see a difference in results, but would have to settle for a lower rate of grade progress.

So if what makes you happy is high marks then go through the grades a little slower; if you'd prefer to keep your current rate of progress then do that, it's entierly up to you .

If you're continually scraping exams, then perhaps it's a good idea to look at the calibre of your teacher, and your practice strategies. Does your teacher give you a mock exam before the exam? If so, does the result match the actual exam? If it does, then I would say you're taking exams too early and need to be able to score at least a comfortable merit in a mock before going in for the exam.

If the results are different (you do better in the mock) then either the teacher is marking too leniently, or nervousness is affecting your performance on the day of the exam, in which case you need to practise playing in front of a critical audience until you're more used to playing under pressure before going in for any more exams if you don;t want this to keep happening.

If your teacher doesn't like doing mocks, you should insist on it as they're very helpful with seeing where you are, as long as the teacher knows how to do them!

As for practice strategies, make sure you aren't just practising until you can play something right, but until you can't play it wrong! You need to play it right more times than you've ever played it wrong to reinforce the right way of playing it. If you play it 9 times wrong and only once right, then you keep reinforcing the wrong way, and this is what you're learning.

Also try mental practice - going over it in your head with all the correct fingering, expression etc. This can work wonders.

Re the teacher, could you do a bit of research as to your teacher's success stories? Are scraped passes common with him/her? If so, time to look around for a new teacher, perhaps.

Good luck.

Violinia

In addition to the helpful comments above, remember that at the end of the day, grades are a means to an end - yes, it's nice to do well in them, and it's a good means to measure progress, but it's not what music is all about. So don't look at scraped exam grades and think it's the end of the world - it's only a very small part of learning music