Have you tried playing the 3 octave scales in triplets? It can help, though apologies if this is a stupid question

Hadn't tried that - will give it a go. (Btw, I like some of your hints for scale practice on flute etc. that I've read on other threads before now - some great ideas there.)

I think I tend to forget just because I do so little piano practice compared to organ practice, and scales in particular I tend to think "well, I've practiced them all on organ today already" and skip them on the piano (or at least, skip the ones that I've done on organ). Same patterns, same fingerings, etc - just different number of octaves. I'm so used to doing them over 2 octaves (on organ), that it's hard to remember to do them 3 octaves when I'm at the piano.

In a typical week I spend around 10-20 times as long playing the organ as I spend playing the piano.
Definitely need to ramp up the piano practice for the next 3 weeks, but I have an organ exam and an organ festival class in the next few weeks too, so I'm not going to be reducing the time I spend on that and it'll still overshadow the piano by quite some way.

T.

Hope the triplets thing helps... it just seems to help with the counting, as if you play in 3s and then only play two octaves you end mid triplet!

Scales tips born from experience of having to learn scales after too long being self taught and then suddenly realising that I needed to learn them PDQ!


*nods*

Hope all goes well.

Aaaaaaargh!

I can't play the piano. :-(

Had a lesson on Friday that went badly (it was postponed from Tuesday as I was ill, but being ill also meant I hadn't practiced). Was out most of the time between then and my lesson yesterday (organ practice, Ensemble Day, play rehearsals, etc.), but had done some fairly intensive practice on at least some of the stuff. But that practice hadn't gone well, because things had gone badly in that lesson.

So at yesterday's lesson, things were even more badly, because I went into it already convinced that I couldn't play anything. And there really is a problem with my playing, I'm not just feeling bad about it. I can't get through my pieces without pauses and stumbles. One of them I can't play at all. It's not a question of polishing them and working on interpretation - I need to learn the notes. They're significantly worse than they were at the start of term.

On Friday, my teacher used the f word. (As in "It would be a pity to do well on scales, sight-reading and aural, but fail because you can't play the pieces", which was surprising as I'd messed up scales and sight-reading in that lesson and aural in the lesson before.)
The exam is 12 days away, and I don't know how to get out of this downward spiral of poor playing feeding negative thoughts, which produce worse playing, which induces even more negative thoughts...

T.

Since your teacher agreed to enter you for the exam the that suggests that at some point you were more or less well prepared.
It's not uncommon for things to start to fall apart a bit once you realise that this is actually going to happen.
Try slowing everything down for a few days to get back on track and remind yourself that you are prepared for this and can do it.

Ok, so I've just had that lesson where everything falls apart.
My teacher pretty well quoted to me what I wrote here.
She also reminded me that I do know what I'm doing and there is no reason why I shouldn't do well.

I think I've just proved beyond doubt that my inability to play the piano is entirely psychological. I took my g5 music with me when I went to do organ practice today. OK, the pieces are still riddled with mistakes, but I /can/ play them on the organ. And the bits that look scary in the Despic when I'm at the piano, look tackleable at the organ. And even F# minor contrary motion makes some sort of sense when played on the organ (it also sounds a lot nicer!)

My keyboard facility is approaching g6 piano standard (organ grades normally make demands equal to the piano two grades higher). I'm doing grade 4 organ a week after grade 5 piano, and the one piece that I'm doing for that which is manuals only is /far/ harder than my piano exam pieces. (My piano teacher looked at it a while back and agreed about that.)

I think I can't play the piano, therefore I can't play the piano.
Aaaaargh!

T.

If you believe that, then you must also believe the opposite!
Perhaps a bit more self belief would help?

I'm sure that the bits I have difficulty with are because I think I have difficulty with them - sight reading in particular. Sometimes it helps just taking a second to say to myself - 'I can do this' - before starting.
It doesn't always work, but when it does then go well, it feels good!

A

I have one pupil doing Grade 5 at the moment.

She's doing the Scarlatti for A, "Gigue" for B and "Jackson Street Blues" for C. I have to say I absolutely love "Jackson...", I've been thinking about buying the Grade 5 book just to learn it myself.

Best of luck to you all ( the scales aren't as bad as they seem!)

All done! :-)

I think I've scraped a pass.
Did OK on my scales apart from contrary motion and apart from doing one of the others two octaves by mistake (they're two octaves on organ and I practice that a lot more than I do piano). Sight-reading not completely disasterous, though I did play a G major chord at the end (it was in G minor), made some other mistakes and largely ignored the dynamics. Aural was fine.
Pieces - all had more mistakes than I expected, but I kept going and I think I gave a decent sense of the style of each one.

The piano was weird, but I got sort-of used to it by doing scales first.

Now the wait for results....

T.

Bit late to wish you good luck now, but how did it go??

*Really needs to do some work on piano* Sadly I've been roped into accompanying people in the Christmas Concert....

Sounds good!

Ste - Jackson street Blues is also in Jazz Rags and Blues book 4 in case you're interested - along with 8 other pieces by Martha Mier.

Teigr and David - glad to hear it went well

YaY!!! just got my result for grade 5 i waited fo about almost 2 months after exam so long time!, it's really different from UK..

i got 139!!! (but haven't got the result paper yet, still in my teacher, my teacher just sent me a message about the result)



really happy and excited this time!!!

139 is brilliant!!!
Well done you!


A

MBR> That's a brilliant result! Well done! :-)

David> If you don't mind me asking, what prompted you to go back and take grade 5?

Aileen, Surfergal, et al.> Havn't heard anything from you guys lately. Did anyone else take it this term? Or still to take it this term? Or, if taking it another time, how the prep going?

Everyone who's done it this term> What are you going to do next and what are you playing at the moment?

T.

Hi! I've chosen the following pieces for G5:

Scarlatti's Sonata in A
Reinecke's Romance
Martha Mier's Jackson Street Blues

I've been practising Scarlatti for the past 1 month (still just managing 66 crotchet beats per minute.. and it's an ALLEGRO piece!).

My teacher just started me on Reinecke's Romance. My 'job' now is just to focus on "getting' the melody right.

I choose Jackson Street Blues for C because it's a piece I'm already familiar with (learnt it last year from
Mier's Jazz, Rags & Blues Book 4) and it's a piece I really, really love (the music is the type you fall in love with at first listen). It's also very relaxing and nice to play. But I think my teacher's tired from listening to this piece. I've heard other students in the music school practising the same piece for their Grade 5 exam this year (must be a popular choice), and I think my teacher wants me to pick another piece. She seems to like Burlesque (a cute, quirky piece but a fast piece). I hope to convince my teacher to let me do the jazz piece. She said the C piece will be a toss between Jackson and Burlesque and to be decided later. I think since the jazz piece is an easy listening number, I can practise it a lot at home and it won't "hurt" other people's ears so much!

I've a question on Reinecke's Romance: in 3 of the bars, the "dot" in the dotted crotchet note is contained in a bracket. I find it strange that the other bars with dotted crotchet notes don't require brackets, just these 3. I just treat the note as a dotted crotchet, ignoring any significance of the bracket. is this correct? I keep forgetting to ask my teacher this!

Hi! Welcome to the thread. :-)



Don't panic - you'll probably find your pieces get a lot faster nearer the exam, once you're really sure of how they go. Mine sped up a lot in the final week.



*grin* Not the type I fall in love with! It was the one thing that was never a possibility for me for list C. I can't play jazz/blues convincingly on /anything/, even sax. I'm glad there's a range of styles on offer on the syllabus, so we can all find pieces that work for us. Jackson Street Blues seems to be the most popular choice for list C, but I couldn't have played it well.



I subjected my family and friends to the Despic Fanfare regularly for over a week. Even I didn't much enjoy listening to it, but it was definitely the right choice for me as it was the piece I could play most convincingly. I havn't come across anyone else yet who did it for their list C choice though - it's definitely unpopular.



If I remember rightly, the square brackets are to show editorial stuff. So that dot was probably not there in the original, but the editors figured there was supposed to be one (looking at what was needed to make a complete bar, what was done elsewhere in the piece, etc.).
I think it was square brackets that were used in the Burgmuller (which was my list B choice) to show some editorial dynamic markings. I'll dig my book out later and check if you like.

T.

My exam is this Thursday.... HELP!!!! I suppose I'm lucky in a way as it could've been mid November, but even so it's too soon!

Does anyone have any helpful tips for sight-reading? It's my main concern as my sight-reading is very poor. Scales aren't so much of a problem, as a lot of people who have taken Grade 5 say they were asked mostly easy scales (it's almost as though they want to catch you out, seeing as you probably worked more on the harder scales!! )

Any last-minute advice would be very much appreciated (maybe I should've told you all sooner ).

Thank you

Debi x

Best way to improve your sight-reading is practice. Lots of it.
Ideally you should do some as part of every practice session and you should try to get comfortable with sightreading harder stuff than required for the exam.

That takes time though, which you don't have (but you can try it next time).
So, try to focus on the most important things.

Don't stop.

Keep the rhythm going - don't pause to correct mistakes.

Try to show that you've got some idea of what key it's in.

Anything else (getting all the notes right, dynamics, articulation, etc.) is a bonus.


Good luck with the exam.
T.

Oh, that makes so much sense! I get it now. Thanks very much, Teigr!

I've tried to play the Fanfare a few times, but it's really not for me. The fingerings/cross-hands are a real killer! Burlesque is cute (but the tempo changes frequently). When I played it, I imagined a chase scene from a Tom & Jerry cartoon show!
I think Fanfare's music is nice, I remember the beginning sounds like bells chiming. Burlesque is comparatively 'noisier' to practice. When I was in Grade 4 earlier, I subjected my (poor) family and neigbours to months of a loud and weird-sounding piece, "Alarm". Even my teacher said she was glad when my exam's over and I can finally put this piece to rest for good.

Reinecke's Romance is relaxing and dream-like, but it has its tricky bits, like having to determine which notes form the melody, and to use the pedal correctly.

For the exam, did you arpegiatte the first 2 chords of the Scarlatti piece? And did you do any ritard in the last bars?
How nice your exam's over!


Debi, good luck for the exam Thursday! My teacher gives me a sight-reading test during every lesson (from the ABRSM Sight Reading Practice Book). I usually do better in the andante/lento pieces, and suck in the fast pieces .

You're welcome!



Fanfare has some fairly atonal bits in it, which are an acquired taste. Main challenge of it for me was getting the rhythms all right (or as close to right as I ever managed them), and remembering to do something with my foot. Didn't even try to use the pedal until a few days before the exam. My approach to piano playing doesn't involve pedals. ;-)


I didn't even try that one - a quick glance at it was enough for me to know that it wasn't going to be for me. I picked my pices for minimum pedalling (2 had none at all).


Nope, just played them as regular chords. Possibly did a little tiny bit, but was trying not to do much.
That was the piece I liked most. It played to my strengths - ornamentation, articulation, terraced dynamics and a good sense of the style - while avoiding my weakest areas (anything piano-specific).
I am /not/ a pianist, so I do better with that kind of piece than I do with ones which are actually written for piano.



Still waiting for the results though. :-(
I'm not expecting to do very well, but I just want to know.

T.

And I picked 2 pieces requiring pedalling! I'm not good at changing pedals and am a little worried about that... practising too much with the pedal also makes my foot ache. I have a feeling if my teacher wants me to do the Burlesque piece (which doesn't need pedalling), I may just agree...

I'm sure you'll do well, Teigr. You wrote that you're not a pianist but you know so much about the instrument (I was wow-ed by the terms you used... "atonal", "terraced dynamics" which I don't even know the meaning of!) and you're already on your way to Grade 6. I guess you mean piano's not your main instrument (is it organ?), but it's really admirable that you can play different instruments! I'm only a student of the piano (a below-average student, I must add). What piano do you have at home? Mine's an old Kawai (but I love it). I also have an electronic Yamaha (to play in the dead of night when everyone else's asleep...). For my last lesson, my teacher allowed me to get "up close and personal" with a brandnew Young Chang grand piano (part of it still wrapped in plastic) in my music school (on loan for a competition). I don't know how many feet long it is, but it's bigger than the school's resident grand. And it was a real beauty! I only got to use it for half an hour though because mid-way through my lesson, we had to vacate the room and use another room/piano (one of the participants wanted to practice on the Young Chang before the competition the following day).

I still have some problems with the Scarlatti piece. On a good day, I can play reasonably ok. But somedays, I couldn't do the trills properly and the timing's out (the trills are in demisemiquavers and followed immediately with semiquaver notes). I find it NOT easy to squeeze 4 notes forming the trill into a quaver beat in a fast piece!

I also have to learn to control my nerves especially during exam. I get nervous and distracted very easily. For the Grade 4 I sat in August, I screwed up the last few bars of the Bach Prelude due to nerves. How? Well, when my left hand was going down the keyboard, the tail of my eye suddenly "registered" the examiner sitting behind me (at around 7 o'clock position) and I got so scared my mind went blank! I had to replay the last part again and it cost me some marks.

Changing pedals? What? Why? How??
I gave up piano lessons before I could really reach the pedals, so I've never had the slightest clue how to use them properly. About the best I can manage is "press it down where it says 'Ped' and lift it up where the bracket finishes", and most of the time I don't manage even that.



I know very little about the piano. I understand how the thing works, but I don't have good piano technique and I know little about its repertoire.
Those terms aren't piano-specific. They're general music terms that I know from playing other things.
Atonal is when you get stuff that sounds like you played a wrong note, but it's actually supposed to be like that. It really means stuff that's not in an actual key at all.
Terraced dynamics means having a couple or a few fixed volume levels that you move between, rather than making gradual changes (crescendos and diminuendos). It's something you'll come across in music originally written for harpsichord, like the Scarlatti.
Knowing a little bit about how to interpret baroque music doesn't mean I can actually /play/ it, especially on the piano!

(Harpsichords have fixed volume - you can't play a note louder by striking the key harder. Some have two manuals (at different volumes) or have stops you can change which allow for some control (of volume or pitch - 4' ones sound an octave about 8' ones, just like on organs), so you can get dynamic contrast by jumping back and forth between manuals and/or making stop changes. When playing that sort of music on piano, you imitate the effect by playing one section at a consistent volume, then making an abrupt change to a contrasting volume for the next section.
Organ you can't change volume by how you press the keys either - you have to change manuals, make stop changes or use an expression pedal (think of it as a volume control operated by your foot).
The whole business of controlling the volume by how you press the keys, allowing you to control the volume of each note individually, independently of what else is going on, is a Piano Thing.)

I'm not on my way to grade 6 at all. I've stopped piano lessons again (just had a few with my flute teacher to help me prep for grade 5) and I'm not going to take 6. I'm going to keep messing around with piano a little bit, and will learn some grade 6 standard pieces and try to make a bit of progress, but I really can't be bothered to take it seriously enough to go through the exam. I'll probably do a little tiny bit of piano stuff every now and then with my flute teacher, just to check I'm not getting into any really bad habits, but that's about it.


Organ's my first study instrument now. It's the one that I take really seriously and put loads of time and effort into and want to get good at eventually. I'm still pretty new to it though, so it's not my best instrument (yet! give me a few years and hopefully that will change).
My second study is flute, which was my main instrument before I took up organ.
I dabble in other things, but there's nothing I'm really good at.
Playing different instruments is fun, but dividing time and effort between them makes it difficult to get good at any of them. The people who get right to the top tend to be rather more specialised.



I've got the piano that my folks bought when I was 5 years old. It was used for teaching for many years, and it's seen better days, but I'm kinda fond of it as I've known it most of my life and I'm used to the way it feels and sounds. It's a small upright and it badly needs tuning and the A and B just below middle C tend to stick, so I need to get something done about that.

It's good to get experience of trying different pianos. I hardly ever play any other than mine and my teacher's, and sometimes the one in the songroom at one of my churches. The exam was in the choir room at a different church and the piano there felt way different from any I'm used to - it was a tad disconcerting. So, it's great that you got to try out the big grand.


I don't really know what to suggest, because the trills were the least troublesome bit for me. I try to get the ornamentation in right from when I first start learning a piece, that way I get the sound of it in my head and my fingers get used to what's required and it becomes automatic. Everything else might fall apart spectacularly, but the twiddly bits will survive.
I don't count much when I play, instead I just feel the underlying pulse and know what the rhythm sounds like and it just sort of works OK. I don't think I could count semiquavers even if I tried to.
I'm learning a piece on the organ at the moment that has hemi-demi-semiquavers (is that right? things with 4 beams anyway) in places and I'm not even contemplating trying to count anything - it would make my brain melt.



I don't like people sitting behind me - the examiner was at about 3 o'clock in both my keyboard exams which wasn't too bad and about 9 o'clock in my recorder one (there was a mirror right in front of me, which I didn't like at all), but I prefer it when the examiner is more or less straight ahead (for non keyboards at least - obviously not practical for those!)

I think most people get nervous in exams. I was actually less nervous in my piano exam than normal - I think it was because I knew I wasn't going to do very well anyway and just wanted to get it over and done with and didn't really care about how I actually did. With instruments I'm better at, I care very much about how well I do and get very nervous in exams.

I'm sure you're already a better pianist than I am, because you actually care about the piano. And you'll keep working at it until you get really good at it. I'll never be really good at it, because that would take effort that I'm never going to put in, because I simply don't care enough.
I'm getting by just on the basis of general musicianship developed by playing other instruments and keyboard facility developed on the organ. Which is enough to let me bluff my way to grade 5ish, but not much further.

T.

I don't like people sitting behind me - the examiner was at about 3 o'clock in both my keyboard exams which wasn't too bad and about 9 o'clock in my recorder one (there was a mirror right in front of me, which I didn't like at all), but I prefer it when the examiner is more or less straight ahead (for non keyboards at least - obviously not practical for those!)

I remember reading a while back (probably on here, so apologies that I can't remember who posted it) about an exam where a piano student was playing a very very shiny black piano. The examiner was sitting behind.

Half way through one piece the candidate actually made eye-contact with the examiner in the surface of the piano - offputting or what ? !

Tell me about it! That happened to me.

I scored 27 on my first piece (Jackson Street Blues - what a great piece), then spotted the examiner half-way through on my second piece (23) and was completely thrown by last piece (20) as I couldn't stop myself from looking into the piano. My teacher said that I should have complained at the time but as I was re-taking grade 5 to get a merit/distinction (why I hear you all say? I wish I hadn't been persuaded to......) I lost the plot and basically gave up at that stage. Managed to get 116 - which does make me wonder *sigh* but more importantly I passed the sight-reading!

Why????
What were your marks the first time? Couldn't you just have aimed to get a merit at grade 6 instead?

I'm not sure that I could face re-taking it even if I fail!

T.

Exactly. Not something I'm going to repeat personally - although I know some people do it. Teacher felt that I should have something to aim for and there's no doubt that it helped me to focus on the areas that I was weak in - but my heart wasn't really in it - which is probably why I was distracted so easily. Glad though that my efforts to improve my sight-reading worked.

Grade 6 would've been something to aim for!
Or maybe G5 TG. Or a festival. Or just learning some new stuff.

My heart wouldn't have been in it either! *sympathizes*

Maybe I'm just edgy about being pushed into exams by teachers because my piano teacher when I was little had me doing pretty much nothing but exams, even when I wasn't really ready for them. Now I like to be very much in control of what I take and when (with guidance, but not arm-twisting, from teachers) and I'm the one who decides what the target result is. (Piano, I'll be happy enough with just a pass. Sure, I could probably do better if I really worked at it, but I'd rather put the effort into something else. My teacher knows full well I could get a merit for it if I put in a lot more work, but she also knows that that really isn't going to happen.)

If a teacher had put me in for an exam and then wanted me to do the same one again even though I'd passed it, I'd be rather unhappy. If they thought I could (realistically) have been better prepared for it, why had they put me in for it the first time around?

Well done on the sight-reading. What did you do to improve it? How much difference did it make?

T.

The way theory that was sold to me, I thought I would need six months to prepare for grade 5 (theory). I didn't expect to hit the standard in three months so grade 6 (practical) never featured as an option. I can sort of see her reasoning - I read somewhere that achieving a high merit or distinction is equivalent to reaching pass standard for the grade above. And despite my performance (I will never look into the piano in future!) my pieces are definitely a higher standard than they were when I first took the exam. As I said earlier though my heart wasn't really in it - otherwise I might have said something to the examiner...

As for sight-reading - I played a lot of simple pieces (grade 3 standard) to get comfortable with chords/intervals (I think theory also helped here) and paid closer attention to rhythms/rests. My mark wasn't great - 15 - but an improvement on 11. Still working on it!

I didn't mean grade 6 the term immediately after grade 5, but just starting to work towards 6 rather than resitting 5.
Do you do an exam every term? I couldn't do that on piano. I'd run out of motivation and enthusiasm too quickly. I seem to need a break that lasts for /years/ after a piano exam, in which to muster enough interest to have a half-hearted attempt at the next one. ;-)

T.

Only between grades 3 and 4 (spring/summer) so far. I relaxed for a year between grades 4 and 5 - needed to. The jump between grades 5 and 6 this time around is not as great - that's why I inferred what I did from your post. Given the amazing number of intruments that you play, having a prolonged break is not such a bad thing.

I'm finding it difficult to concentrate on more than one instrument at one time now that I've hit intermediate level on violin - hence the reason why I've started on clarinet! Come to think of it, I took up violin after I passed grade 4 piano.....I think I see a pattern here......

I'm still working on grade I. I hae Sarabanda.

One term between grades is incredibly fast on piano! How much practice were you doing?
I did grade 4 two terms after grade 3 and it was horrible. I scraped through (don't know how) and promptly gave up the piano. At that point I could quite cheerfully have never touched a piano again, let alone taken another piano exam.
Between taking grades 4 and 5, I passed (among other things) my entrance exam for secondary school and my driving test! *grin* I think "prolonged break" doesn't quite cover it!

I do dabble in quite a few instruments, but the only ones I really do properly are organ and flute. Piano is just a sideline of organ, and recorder is a sort of sideline of flute.



Sounds familiar. ;-)
Only for me the trigger isn't "pass grade 4", it's usually "play a few simple tunes". I don't have the attention span to make it as far as grade 4 on most things. I think I managed it on piano only because I didn't play anything else apart from recorder back then and had a horrible and pushy teacher.
And the only reason I made it from there to taking g5 piano is because learning organ has improved my keyboard facility. I wouldn't have put in the necessary work if I'd been doing piano for its own sake, but my piano playing has improved all by itself as a side-effect of organ practice.

I wish other things worked that way. *drifts off into optimistic daydreams about how nice it would be if flute playing improved as a side-effect of playing boardgames, or organ playing improved as a side-effect of drinking chocolate milk, or recorder playing improved as a side-effect of flying kites*

T.

I presume you mean hate? I do as well. I usually like minors but this piece is rather dull. Daughter played Allegro - she liked it but it is rather ditty.....


1-2 hours a night! Completely unsustainable in the long run. Much more chilled about things now - probably too chilled......


What I'm currently doing with clarinet!


Would be good, wouldn't it?! *sigh*

That's a lot of piano practice! I do maybe 1-2 hours a /week/ at the piano in a typical week (did more in the run-up to grade 5) and most of that is spent playing organ stuff rather than piano stuff.

This is part of why I'm not going to try for grade 6 next. I'd either not do enough work and struggle with it, or I'd put the work in and resent it for taking too much of my time away from other instruments.

I have something akin to a love-hate relationship with the piano, only the 'love' side of it ranges from grudging tolerance to casual enjoyment. ;-)

Any idea what a normal amount of practice would be for piano at this level? I'd guess somewhere in between what you were doing and what I do, but I'd be interested in knowing how much it "should" be.




Time to take up something new then. *evil grin*
You don't play brass yet, do you? Trombone might be good if you fancy a lower pitched instrument - I don't play but I've had a go on one and it was really good fun, plus it doesn't have the conflict with your clarinet embouchure that you might find with small-bore brass.
I remember you had your eye on the flute - would heartily recommend that (it's my second study instrument and I thought it was "my" instrument until I got into organ).
Sax would be fun, but you want to wait til your clarinet embouchure is quite secure before you try it, as it needs a different embouchure and you don't want to be mixing them up.
Or how about 'cello? You already play violin, so that should give you a bit of a headstart. I adore the sound of the 'cello, but I'm being super-good and not even /trying/ to get my paws on one.

T.

I've always wanted to play the harp - and to get back on topic - grade 5 piano should come in highly useful!

I'm waiting for an appropriate time to break it gently to Mr LT........

A lot of harpists learn piano first - apparently it helps then find their way around.
One of my organist friends had never played the harp before but was able to play mine much better than I could when he had a go on it, and I'd been dabbling with it for about 3 months by then.
I'm going to console myself by believing that because he's Welsh that gives him some sort of hereditary ability and innate affinity with the harp. ;-)

You thinking of getting a big one or a little one? Mine's 3 octaves with semitone levers.

Anyway, trying to be a little less easily distracted, of this term's crop of grade 5 people, what is everyone planning to do next? Anyone moving on to grade 6? Anyone giving up piano forever? I could imagine getting through grade 5 could either boost people's enthusiasm or turn them right off it.
For me it's neither. I'm going back to what I was doing before I decided to try grade 5, which is not having lessons or working for exams, but messing around with it a bit just by myself - learning new pieces from time to time, trying to improve a little, but not making it a high priority.

T.

Hi, Teigr. Sorry I don't know how to copy/quote certain parts of your reply to my earlier post!

Thanks for explaining the musical terms! It's really interesting what you wrote about the harpsichord too (thanks for sharing the info). I read in one of your posts that you also play the violin (wow!). This means you play the organ, piano, flute, violin (and sax)? Again, wow!

Do you have a musical aim like to achieve a certain grade/standard with your favourite instrument(s)? Me, I just want to be able to someday play some of the classical music I love (I have tons of sheet music at home, all purchased on impulse with the hope that maybe someday I can play these tough pieces. That "someday" is still a long way off, judging by my current standard). I think hard work (i.e. practice) is important, but talent appears to count for much more (and I don't have that). In truth, I've only started LEARNING to play PROPERLY in the past 1-1/2 years under my current teacher. The 4 years prior to that can be considered wasted because my previous 2 teachers didn't teach me what I was supposed to know as a beginner (no fundamentals of playing correctly, no differentiation between harmony and melody parts of the music, no scales practice, mistakes are ignored - "on to the next piece!" - You get the picture). Under my current teacher (who's a heaven-sent) and music school, I'm slowly learning the correct way of playing. But I know I'll never be good. If I practice really hard at a piece and spend months on it (with plenty of guidance all the way, of course), MAYBE I'll be able to play it presentably enough. But give me another piece of similar standard, and I'm back to square one. I really admire my teacher's patience in teaching me and I feel sorry sometimes for being slow. My teacher tells me it's her job to teach me until I'm good, and I do appreciate her very much.

I read an article in the newspaper today, about a music school that's currently "recruiting" talented young pupils for a scholarship to study at a famous conservatory abroad. The principal interviewed said that 2 of her young students' reached Grade 8 standard after just 2 years of study. I remembered thinking, "This is what talent is about, and oh, how wonderful to be born with the gift of music". I mean, seeing all these little kids playing the most difficult Chopin/Listz pieces (memorized!)? There're children like that in my music school. They have so much poise, confidence and talent and are just incredible to watch!

Teigr, I hope you don't dislike the piano too much Is there a piano music you particularly love to play or listen to?

P/s: If I'm required to execute a "hemi-demi semiquaver", I'll faint for sure.

*Wonders whether there is an instrument that Teigr doesn't play *

In answer to your question - a big one! - if I ever manage to convince Mr LT that it'll look great in the front room......... The harp shop in town has a hire scheme and also offers tuition on site - I made some 'discrete' enquiries a few months ago.

I'm actually feeling energised about my piano playing at the moment. Even though I lost the plot later on in the exam, getting 27 for my first piece and passing the sight-reading has given me a real boost. So onward and upward I guess.

You're welcome. Knowing stuff like that is really useful when it comes to deciding how to play stuff on the piano. If I was good enough at the piano to have had rather fewer wrong notes in my exam, it's that sense of style that might've earned me a distinction. As it is, I'm hoping that getting things like articulation and dynamics right might compensate for all the wrong notes and enable me to scrape a pass.
Once you've started to get a feel for things like baroque style, you'll find it comes fairly naturally. Playing baroque music as if it were romantic music just feels wrong. I've just started learning a new Bach thing on the organ and, though the notes are still in a horrible muddle, I play it with a vaguely appropriate articulation without really thinking about it.
As you listen to more music, you get the characteristic features of each style in your head. That also makes the bit of the aural tests where you have to answer questions about a piece of music much easier. You don't have to guess if it's baroque, classical or romantic. You usually don't even have to reason it out. You just /know/, because it /sounds/ baroque (or whatever).
And as that sense of style gradually becomes almost instinctive, you'll find it reflected in your playing. You won't need your teacher to tell you a lot of the stylistic points - you'll just do them because you know how you want it to sound.



For some definition of "play".
Violin and sax are instruments that I can pick up and play a recognisable tune on, as long as it's an easy one, in a key I like (sharps rather than flats, and not too many of them) and, for violin, doesn't move out of first position.
That's not the same as being able to play an instrument properly.

If you want me to play you a tune on the violin I can deliver the Skye Boat Song (though you'd probably wish I hadn't). If you want the Paganini Caprice, you need to find yourself a violinist. I'm not one.

The only "wow" I'm likely to get for my violin playing is "Wow! That sounds like you're strangling a cat."
My sax playing is a little better because clarinet used to be my first study instrument and they're cousins. So the wow potential extends with that all the way to "Wow! That was actually in tune!"

Like I said before, people who get /really/ good at music tend to focus their attention on one or two main instruments.
I've got a friend who got grade 8 organ and piano in his early teens and has since got everything worth having on organ. He's a truly brilliant organist. But he spent his time concentrating on the organ, not goofing around with dozens of different instruments.
I can't play /any/ instrument even a tenth as well as he plays the organ.



Yes.
My first study instrument is organ. I don't know how good I'll get at it, because I don't know when I'll get to a point where I'm insufficiently musical/dexterous/intelligent to get any further. But I want to get as good as I possibly can and I'd like to be a competent church organist one day.
In terms of grades, in the short term I'm aiming to get to grade 6 within the next year.
Long term, I'm hoping I'll be able to get at least as far as grade 8 and CertRCO eventually, maybe even beyond.

Second study is flute. I'm working for grade 7 at the moment and, if I can improve my tone quality and breath control enough, I'd like to get 8 in another couple of years.

That's it for serious aims on instruments.
I want to try to get grade 8 theory next summer. And if my voice settles a bit, I'll try for RSCM Bishop's Chorister. These both tie-in with my organ aims though. Developing my theory, keyboard skills (that's stuff like sight-transposition and keyboard harmony), general musicianship, and understanding of music history etc. will all help make me a better organist (just like how knowing about harpsichords and terraced dynamics will help you to play baroque pieces more convincingly on the piano). And as organists often either accompany or conduct/train choirs, a good understanding of church music from the choir stalls is a good thing to have. A lot of organists are ex-choristers and my initial interest in the organ came as a result of my being a chorister.

Piano, I just want to be able to get through choir practice on the songroom piano and be able to play worship songs in church if necessary. Think of it as 'piano for organists'. ;-)



That's the best reason you can have to play the piano. :-)
I play it just because it's useful. And that puts a ceiling on how much progress I can make with it. You actually love the music that you'll be able to play on it one day, which means that you have great motivation for keeping on with it until you /can/ play that music.



I would disagree. Someone can have incredible talent, but if they don't put the work in they're not going to get really good. To become brilliant at an instrument you need talent and dedication. But to get competent, you stand a better chance if you work hard with limited talent than if you have loads of talent but don't work.



One and a half years is hardly anything. For you to be doing grade 5 after that is really good! :-)
I know a boy of 13 who's working for grade 8 organ at the moment and is an extremely talented young musician. But he's been playing since he was 4, so it's taken him 9 years to get to where he is now.
If you're grade 5 after about 18 months, imagine how good you're going to be 7 and a half years from now!
The only difference is that you didn't start when you were 4. That doesn't necessarily mean you're any less musical or talented.



Very impressive, but don't forget you're not getting the whole story. You don't know how much they've been spoonfed or taught by rote. You don't know how well they can sight-read (if at all) or whether they make their own decisions about interpretation. Maybe their teacher tells them exactly how to phrase everything, what articulations to use, what dynamics to use, etc. - like programming little robots.
And even if their all-round musicianship has been properly developed, there's questions like how much they practice (probably several hours a day - think how much faster you'd progress if you did 4 hours practice every day and had hour-long lessons twice a week) and how much else they have time for (sports, hobbies, chilling out, hanging out with friends, being in Cubs, watching TV, etc. - maybe very little).
Grade 8 in 2 years is an achievement for sure, but it may have come at the cost of missing out on a lot of other things.
And if you do a search on the forums you'll find threads about what it really means to be at a particular grade standard. If one person spends a year struggling to master their exam pieces and scales, then passes the exam while another spends a year playing a wide variety of repertory approaching that standard, then learns the pieces fairly easily a few weeks before the exam, are they really both at the same standard, even if they both pass the exam with the same mark? Sure, they both have certificates that say they're Grade x, but one of them can play nothing but the 3 exam pieces while the other can play loads of pieces and is well equipped to learn even more.



I loathe it at times - like a couple of weeks before my exam when I couldn't play /anything/ right.
But most of the time I'm either fairly indifferent to it or, loath though I'd be to admit it, I actually manage to have some fun playing the thing. ;-)

I don't listen to piano music. It just doesn't do much for me. I prefer the sounds of other instruments - I'd choose pretty much any of them over piano.
I listen to orchestral and chamber music, organ stuff, flute/clarinet/classical guitar/cello/French horn stuff, cathedral choir and treble solo stuff and to some non-classical music (mostly rock) and some folk/world music. Don't listen to very much solo violin stuff, heavy metal, jazz or stuff with female singers. Don't listen to opera, piano stuff, dance/rap/hip-hop stuff or most pop at all.

There's not a lot that I love to play on the piano that I couldn't play on the organ and I'd far rather play that. So the piano suffers a bit from being a poor substitute for the instrument I love most.
It's also the instrument that I played from age 5 and was pushed through exams on by a horrible teacher. By the time I did grade 4 (age 9), I was thoroughly sick of it and begged to be allowed to give up. My folks let me, and they made sure I wasn't pushed that way on clarinet (which I started at 10), so I made rather leisurely progress with that through secondary school, but had more fun because I got to play a lot of stuff that wasn't for exams and got to play in orchestra, jazz band and church music groups. So that meant I didn't get completely turned off music for life.

Piano's less horrible now that I'm not being pushed into doing it. And when I do exams on any instrument now it's because I want to. Makes a huge difference. ;-)



Don't panic.
It all depends on how fast everything's going. I'm working on a couple of Bach pieces that chug along in semi-quavers most of the time. But they're slow semiquavers - about equivalent to a crotchet in some pieces I've played. So the demi-semiquavers that crop up regularly in one of them are like having quavers in something else. And the hdsqs are therefore a bit like you might expect semiquavers to be.
It just /looks/ really daunting on the page because there's so many beams!
If you take the semiquavers at a speed you might think appropriate for semibreves, hdsqs will go at the speed of crotchets. It's all relative.

T.

*mumbes something about pots, kettles and dark colours* ;-)

Generally speaking, I can pick something up, spend a few minutes experimenting with how to get notes out of it, then play something vaguely identifyable (a scale or a very simple tune).
This is NOT the same as really being able to play it.

A lot of it is because I'm fascinated by the different sounds of different instruments and I like being able to make them. If I'd gotten into the organ earlier, I probably wouldn't play nearly as many as I do, because the organ can do a passable imitation of most things (not piano, but that's one of the few timbres I don't care for anyway).

I've never tried (scrounged a "go" on) oboe, cor anglais or bassoon (but bombarde was enough to tell me I don't like the feel of double-reeds), tuba, celesta, harmonium or orchestral harp (lack of opportunity) or most early/ethnic instruments (ditto). Also havn't tried things like piccolo trumpet, flugelhorn, alto/bass flute, Eb/alto/bass clarinet, recorders bigger than bass, etc. Never even /seen/ things like ondes martenot or theramin.
Least intuitive thing I have had a go on is, I think, the hammered dulcimer.



*grin* Nice!
Big harps sound really nice, but they're horrifically expensive and I dread to imagine what it would be like to try to get one places or to try to tune one, so I had to go for a little clarsach.



Where "onwards and upwards" equals what? Grade 6? Just exploring more repertory? Attaching a piano to an airship? Taking the casework and mechanism off your piano to MacGyver a harp? ;-)

T.

Yup - can relate to that! Planning to pay another visit to 'pawn shop' soon!



Would definitely create more space for more instruments, wouldn't it?

I'll probably take grade 6 sometime next year (now that I've passed grade 5 theory ) but not in any rush. I'd like my sight-reading to be miles better than it is currently. I'm not sure how much I'll be able to rely on memorisation (which I do pretty effortlessly - hence the reason why sight-reading is lousy) in the higher grades so being more confident in sight-reading will be a huge bonus. When I said simple grade 3 pieces, I meant the ones without more than 2 sharps or flats so I still have that to tackle!

Good luck with your own targets, Teigr!

Well, memorisation definitely won't get you through the sight-reading test, even if you can use it for the pieces and scales. *grin*
I think sight-reading gets easier the more you do. Mine's less bad than it used to be (I wouldn't say it was good, but it is improving). I sight-read almost every practice session and it tends to be fairly random stuff, so sometimes I'm trying to sight-read (extremely slowly) something that's several grades above my actual playing level and other times I hit on something I can breeze through - usually it's somewhere in between. I use a mix of pieces, hymns and chants for sight-reading fodder and sometimes also do some sight-transposition (of hymns if I'm at an organ, or Dozen a Day exercises if I'm at the piano) and some score-reading (organ only), which makes normal sight-reading seem a little less intimidating in comparison. I still dread the sight-reading and aural parts of exams just because they're the big unknowns. I usually do well at aural and OK at sight-reading, but I'm always worried that they might ask something completely impossible.

Do you normally memorise your exam pieces completely?



Thanks.
As long as I pass grade 5, the pressure is right off as far as piano goes. I don't want to do another piano exam (at least not anytime soon), so I get to just goof around and play whatever piques my interest - doesn't matter if it's grade 1 standard or grade 8, doesn't matter whether I can get it to exam standard or not, and best of all I get to wave bye-bye to contrary motion minor scales (still doing some major ones for organ, but I never minded the majors much anyway).

T.

Yes I do - it happens with every piece I'm working on if I play it through often enough. I suspect I look up now and again though rather than staring at my fingers the whole time - which is why I caught the examiner's reflection....

Like you, my aural is very strong - and is the key to memorisation for me.

I was thinking of getting a hymn book to practice sight-reading - all those chords! - what would you recommend?


They were fun - not! Another area I could improve on.......

My aural isn't exactly strong, but it's never anywhere near as bad in exams as expect it to be. It's been my highest percentage mark in most of my recent exams, and I've had 18 for it a couple of times, but I stuff it up completely in lessons with such consistency that my teacher and I are both surprised on the rare occasions when I don't.



Whatever will stay open on the music rest.
Seriously.

My piano doesn't have those nice little lever things to keep books open. It's got two tiny little hemispherical bumps which pages catch against during page turns but which do /nothing/ to hold music open. I have two loops of elastic tethered to the music rest which I can tuck books into to sort-of keep them open, but then there's the problem of the elastic getting in the way of reading bits of the music.

If you're involved with a church and think you might play there occasionally, get whatever book they normally use.

I'm not convinced that hymns are ideal for preparing for piano exams, because piano sight-reading never seems to be hymn-style, but they'll definitely give you practice at reading chords.

Reimenschneider (sp?) might be worth a look too. You'll probably want a copy eventually if you decided to go further with theory at some point, because the usual way to practice chorale harmony is to copy out the treble line of a Bach chorale and then write your own version of the other 3 parts.



I could improve, but I really don't want to! ;-)
If I ever do another piano exam (maybe in 10 years or so, once I recover from this one!), I might just skip to 8 as it doesn't have them. It has other things which are probably almost as bad but I refuse to believe that anything could be quite as horrible as contrary minors.

T.

I just found out I passed my exam with merit!!!
Well done to everyone else!!
Surfergal!

Well done!

It's been confirmed that I'll be taking my exam in February/March.

Car Expert