Hi, Just wondering what everybody thought of their venues? My one is not very nice..the whole centre has a fishy smell and a tiny cramped waiting room. The piano is nice but it doesn't feel good when you enter the venue feeling nervous and are greeted with a horrible fish smell.

mine is ok, the waiting room is a bit small but i dont really take much notice coz im too nervous!

mine is in a New Christian Life centre and its very nice, both the venue and the piano, and the examiners! i have the same examiner next week as i did 2 years ago!

I've never been to this exam centre, its a church! As they had to change from the old one cos the people who lived near the centre (its a house so it didnt have its own car park) were complaining about all the cars!

My exam centre has always been a church hall, and it's quite nice really. The piano is only an upright and the room is quite small but it has a really good acoustic. I've been going to it for so many years now I've got used to it! The only problem is, I'm doing my diploma in a different centre, which is a proper concert hall with a grand piano, though apparently the acoustic is quite dry. I'm really worried about it now!

The worst place I've been to was an old house (I think someone did actually live there) but instead of being allowed to wait in the living room we had to wait outside... in the shed! Which of course was great in the cold with no piano to warm up with (we all had singing exams) and there were creepy-crawlies everywhere. The actual exam room was alright though because it was quite spacious but the wallpaper was hideous!!!

Mines's OK, but either freezing col or boiling hot. Also the exam room is often a very different temperature to the waiting room and so you go in and your tuning just goes completely out of the window! The piano is OK but a bit on the bright side, and there will never be a piano stool of the right height there for a piano exam nor one that you can agjust the height on, so you always have to ask if you can change it with another, which can be embarassing!

i normally have my music exam in my school... and in the room that i usually practise in...that's quite good... at least i'm familiar with the environment

I used to have my exams in this massive house really nearby. They had a piano in the waiting room which was a bit small, if you had more than 5 people in there, but you had to wlak like miles to get to the examination room, and I always got lost!!

Now I have to go a bit further away, to this terraced house up the road from my dad's office. The problem is, I alweays have to walk up - and it's a very steep hill, so I'm out of breath when I get there (which is just perfect when you're doing a flute exam. The waiting room is again too small and has no piano, *sigh* so if you want a run through they send you up stairs, and you have to play on a tiny little landing, its only just comfortable to play the flute in, so I don't know how anyone playing a big instrument (bassoon, baritone sax etc, fits in!

The worst thing though, is that the exam room is right next to the waiting room, so you can hear people doing their exams as you wait, which is really awful if they are doing the same grade on the same instrument as you, you start comparing things, which is just great for your nerves!!

Still I supose there could be worse places. I have a friend who had to sit her G1 +2 piano exams in a caravan!

i used to have to walk up 64 steps (i counted) to my exam and the waiting rm was a shed lol