Hi, I have been having some difficulty with a pupil of mine. She is 13 years old and up to now have had no real problems with her. She is studying for her grade 1 guitar and the pieces and scales etc are fine. We are having difficulty with her aural training, particularly test C – where she has to tell the rhythmic difference between two short passages of music.

She couldn’t do this, so I decided to help her imagine how the music would look if written down, and we started to do some even simpler passages. We started by writing down how many beats were in the bar and then tried to imagine how the melody falls in relation to each beat, then writing the rhythm down.

She isn’t really getting anywhere and I am at a loss for what to do next. It is like she cannot hear the difference between the beat and the melody rhythm even though I have tapped the beat on one knee and the rhythm on the other. I have asked her to keep the beat and I do the melody, but she soon drifts into the melody rhythm (but she couldn’t write it down but she could read and play it!).

Can anyone help us and suggest anything else?

I can't do this either. I am considering taking Trinity exams where you can choose not to do aural tests.

I do think this is one of the grade one tests that pupils find hardest. Even those that can hear the difference often have difficulty describing it, and it's a matter of finding and practising the vocabularly that will help them over this (not always music vocabulary). Often quite general descriptions are acceptable.

Can your pupil hear and tap the pulse of other things? (eg test A at the same grade). If she can do that fairly easily she is hearing the pulse rather than the rhythm and is partway to doing what you describe in the 2nd part of your post. However it may not necessarily help her in Test C if she is not hearing it in that way.

If her exam is imminent (like this session) I would not at this stage worry too much about this one test. It's only a very small percentage of the marks. You might after all find that the work you have done with analysing bars / rhythms will start to bear fruit. Get her to tap the pulse of pieces she knows while you play them. Make small changes and see if she can spot them.

When my pupils find this difficult I start with examples which are much simpler than the ones in the practice book, and build up from there. It doesn't always work! but sometimes will help confidence if they find a few easy ones they get right. ( "The first one had quavers in and the second one didn't").
Perhaps don't worry about referring to specific beats in the bar - there's not time in the exam to be too analytical anyway.

If a pupil has some difficulty with this test I often show them the actual example written down. Then I do several examples of this type of test (eg straight rhythm changes to dotted rhythm, or whatever). Sometimes if he/she finds it hard to describe the change I get them to put their hand up when they hear the difference, because then they can concentrate on hearing the difference rather than worrying how they are going to describe it.

With me it's a memory problem. I simply can't remember the first one by the time I've heard the second.

Aurals are my weakest point in exams I'm the same as sneekymum, and find it hard to absorb all the information I should to be, well, good! What my piano teacher used to do with me was just sort of help me along when I was answering (I was quite young when I did Grade 1). Maybe prompting her would help, or different exercises to improve this particular skill would be helpful.

Can she identify whether there was a longer or shorter note somewhere then pin it down to near the beginning or end?
That's a good starting point and is not too bad as a response in the exam.

Whilst not wishing to try to get round the issue (it needs resolving) I'd agree not to stress on same at this time. A slip in Test C of the aural, if everything else is ok, isn't going to make a significant difference to the overall aural result (though, of course, I guess it won't be full marks). Check out the criteria in "These Music Exams" to see what I mean.

I think this is a very hard test at Grade 1. I think it gets easier almost at Grades 2 and 3 where they've got to spot melody or rhythmic change. Much easier to give a very basic answer and be right than in Grade 1 which may take a bit of explaining.

I suggest to my pupils that if they can't give a really clear explanation they raise their hand when they think they've heard something different. I think you can ask to have the test played twice if you're a bit uncertain what you've heard.

Developing aural skills is all part of musicianship and it's good you are working so hard with your pupil on this. However, I'd not stress on this particular test - I've had pupils mess it up and still get Distinction results.

Good luck to your pupil in her exam.

Of all the aural tests, this is not only the most difficult for young ones because they find it difficult to remember, they also have difficulty finding the right words or understanding what is needed of them - I really think the AB needs to look at this one again; it is hard for teachers to explain what the pupil is to do, and hard to get across even if you do spot the differences readily. I also think, though, that one part of a small section of the exam is not worth agonising over - and perhaps if enough candidates demonstrate that the test is not a great one, the board can reconsider. I think it would be much better placed as a test in later exams.

I use the 'spot the deliberate mistake' approach which makes the whole thing seem a lot less daunting. Also, try not to overcomplicate things - start with just getting your pupil to spot whether the 'mistake' occurred at the beginning/middle/end and only get them to try to describe the difference when the're comfortable with this first stage.

Have you tried any of your pupils with Hofnote? This is a web-based aural practice site which goes down well with my pupils and gives them plenty of opportunity to practice and become more confident between lessons.

I enrolled at Hofnote today and it looks very useful. But - the time I've spent on "spot-the-difference" has produced no progress whatsoever. Out of six choices I can only guess - I simply can't remember the four bars of music and then compare then to the next four bars I hear. I guess I could do it if I listened many times - but that's not an exam option.

Have you thought of it as "spot the mistake"? Rather than spot the difference? I know it shouldn't make any difference but sometimes thinking about something in a different way can help a surprising amount.

OK - I'll try - and I'll be systematic in my efforts and tabulate my results and report back here in a week or so. If I can make progress at this then anyone can.

Anything's worth a try... give it time & keep practising because progress isn't always noticeable except in retrospect. & it's not *that* bad an idea to listen as many times as you need - you can't do that in an exam but it's part of learning to remember & see the changes. You need to learn how before you can practise, if you see what I mean.

my youngest also finds some aspects of the aural test difficult, for her it's the pitch test. allI can say is that with practice she has managed to improve a great deal. What others have been saying is right at the early grades she generally lost 2 marks for incorrect pitch so it's possibly going to be similar in this element.

try getting the pupil to close their eyes while they listen to the test. Switching off eyes can help to switch on the ears more....

jo

How is it going?

erm, well, incredible progress. And I have a really, really (clinically) poor memory. And the progress is not just on Hofnotes I did stunningly well for real today too. At the very least I can say that in an exam I'll be confident that there's really nothing moreI can do to prepare.

I've done the C3 test 120 times now.

Here's a tedius cut and paste of my scores. You can see I went from scores such as 20% and 0% at the bottom to 80% and 90% more recently. And that's three days progress. I think there's a good chance I'll be taking Grade 5 next session now.


SESSION BREAKDOWN FOR EXERCISE
3-C3 : Spot the Difference - Identifying rhythmic changes

DATE, SCORED, NUMBER OF QUESTIONS ATTEMPTED, NUMBER ANSWERED CORRECTLY

25/02/2007 Yes 10 9 ( 90% )

25/02/2007 Yes 10 8 ( 80% )

24/02/2007 Yes 2 2 ( 100% )

24/02/2007 Yes 7 6 ( 85% )

24/02/2007 Yes 10 6 ( 60% )

24/02/2007 Yes 10 7 ( 70% )

24/02/2007 Yes 5 4 ( 80% )

24/02/2007 Yes 5 3 ( 60% )

24/02/2007 Yes 1 0

24/02/2007 Yes 10 5 ( 50% )

23/02/2007 Yes 13 3 ( 23% )

23/02/2007 Yes 10 2 ( 20% )

23/02/2007 Yes 5 3 ( 60% )

23/02/2007 Yes 5 0

23/02/2007 Yes 5 4 ( 80% )

22/02/2007 Yes 10 2 ( 20% )

22/02/2007 Yes 2 1 ( 50% )

Wooo - kudos to hofnote, and kudos to you - you've obviously worked hard! glad it is helping

I have exactly the same problem as you in that particular test, sneekymum. I'm doing grade 3 cello on 20 March and I'd given up hope of being able to remember the original four bars, let alone spot the difference, so I think I'll try Hofnote too. I think it's illogical in grade 3 that the singing back a phrase is only two bars long, but the spot the difference (a harder test) is four bars long.

I guess different people may find different parts of the test easier or more difficult.

I like hofnotes too. (this is an objective opinion) My pupils who used it last year all scored highly, I hope they bring out a TG version soon!