Just wondering...

Has anyone had Michael Bailey or Barry Clark as examiner?

I did a quick search on Google, but couldn't find any information about them.

We never get told the names of the examiners so wouldn't know. I wonder sometimes if being left in ignorance is best. Wonder if the AB like their examiners being discussed!!!

Michael Bailey managed Charlton in the early '80s, I suspect it's not the same person though!

I found a tenor singer called Barry Clark via Google, with picture, I wonder if this is the same person.

It's all in what you type into google go for "Barry Clark" ABRSM, and you'll get two pages with people commenting on him. Not much about his background, just the opinion of one person on each page (as one would expect the opinions are opposing ). One result from this forum too, although it was only someone saying their friend had him as an examiner, so probably not much help. Can't find anything about the other chap with a quick search, if you can guess their instrument and stick that after their name, might allow you to find them: I'm guessing at least one of them is an organist or at least a pianist....

The examiners' bios are posted at the exam center. The thing is, I may not have time to go over there to read the bios before my exam date.

Given this isn't generally the case in most exam centres it may be an initiative taken by your local rep to help put candidates at ease. If this is the case then they'll no doubt be collating the information before the day, so you could perhaps get in contact with them and ask if they can forward you a copy as soon as they've done it (I presume your interest is mainly to predict viva questions?). It may be a service they only provide for the grade exams, however, as diplomas have different examiners and they may not feel so inclined to do it for the few diploma takers that are around (and if your diploma is in a different centre to your usual one the rep there may not do it). Having just noticed the er spelling of centre, however, maybe you're in the US and it is commonplace to have this information overseas?

As far as my knowledge of the law goes, it depends on whether or not the person is well known to the general public, ie if they are well known in the press and they have done something that can be deemed to be in the public interest.

As long as the comments are positive and no personal information given, then there is no problem.

Anything more than this, best to find a very good lawyer!

Steve

I believe it says on the appointment sheet who the examiner is. I don't THINK it says on the mark sheet though.

There's just an examiner's reference code there, in the style 'N201', for example.

Yes, the examiner's name appears on the appointment sheet.

Thought so, I couldn't recall

edit: maggie, glad I'm not talking total tosh

Sarah - do you ever do that ?

Yes!

But thanks for the vote of confidence in my non-tosh-ness

We never get the official appointment sheet because of entering through the Music Service and most of the exams are special visits.

The piece of paper I see is an official Board publication so I think it is the Board who does the research, probably with the examiner's consent. My local rep (who isn't local but lives a long way off) sends me the "examiner's profile" if I ask for it. This may be a procedure for those of us outside the UK.

I think it is helpful to know a little about the person one is playing for.

The name is on the appointment letter. Does their teacher not give them a copy?

No! They had one once for Piano but I didn't take much notice of what info was on it, or maybe I was just shown it and didn't get it to keep. The first official letter I've ever had arrived on Friday with the date of their Theory exams. I suspect that the Music Service gets one letter with everyone's name on(usually special visit) it but I don't really know. I think they may be the only ones taking a Theory exam this time and that's why I've got one letter with both names on.

The letter we normally get comes form the Music Service and has the times of Aural classes, their rehersal time and the time of the exam on it. We've never been told the examiners name, nor have they any info on the wall.

To be honest, knowing who your examiner is doesn't make a lot of difference IMO - nice to know but not essential or even that important.

I've entered myself for all my exams so far for the sake of flexibility due to my occupation - easier to change the date if I need to by ringing up myself. I've known who is to examine me but the names mean nothing - and even an internet search makes me none the wiser.

Best to go in as you are and not work yourself up by knowing maybe that the examiner is a tough old nut!

*No offence intended *

I'm not entirely sure i'd agree. The exam i enjoyed doing the most was Grade 6 when i knew from my teacher that the examiner was a professional flautist from the London area. It can also make the comments a bit more meaningful.

Yep - I googled the examiner for the last session here and found a quote by him saying how much he values the quietest part of a performance. Hence everyone was instructed to play the "p"s as "pp"s and accompanist used the soft pedal more than she might have.

Interesting, possibly, to know the background, but comments from someone who knows what they are talking about will be useful afterwards whether you know beforehand the person is a specialist or not. Useful comments aren't confined to specialists, and some specialists don't give comments that are that helpful anyway! (it would be possible to falsely get one's hopes up...)

I would say that whilst interesting, it's still not that important. And some people will be more nervous knowing they face a specialist - in which case it would certainly be better for them not to know!

That's one of the reasons why my opinion would be the total opposite: to base how one plays for someone on something (which could have been a throwaway comment anyway!) seems rather risky. Also I don't think (though others are welcome to disagree) that the point of exams is so much giving the examiner exactly what you think they want to hear - otherwise we might all as well just try and produce carbon copies of the sample CDs. Personally, I'd rather play a piece how I think it should be played, and get feedback on my playing, my musicianship, my interpretation - not feedback on me trying to be someone else.

Sure, everyone wants to do as well as possible in exams... but I want to do well by honing my playing and musicianship so that my playing is convincing, not tailoring it to what someone else has expressed as a preference.

Hence I stand by what I said - nice to know, sure, and possible on occasion - but not that important & certainly far from essential.

It must be incredibly difficult for examiners to remain objective - after all, we all have pre-conceived ideas as to how a piece should be played. Better to go with your own interpretation (within boundaries ) and feel comfortable with it, rather than a forced, uncomfortable interpretation based on what is expected, which might lose you marks.

- and far better expressed than I managed!!

I disagree - your point always comes across well in your posts!

And they're usually more considered than my posts - I am guilty of skim-reading (and occasional skim-posting )

well let's not argue about whose post is the best together I think they sum it up pretty well!

(I think yours is more neat and concise than mine, but then I guess we often covet the opposite to what we have - in my case, and ability to use 15 words where 3 would do )

As far as I am aware, there is no requirement in a UK Centre to post the biog of the examiner. In the Centre where I'm based we do usually have a sign up saying, on the day, the name of the examiner but that's all. Sometimes individual examiners have left small sheets around the place about themselves but never an official notice. Is that, perhaps, an overseas thing?

I like to know the name of the examiner so I can tell my pupils who it will be but, other than that, I don't fuss on it. (Sometimes, of course, there can be a late change of examiner and then all your best plans go out the window anyway! )

I trust the ABRSM to have trained all its examiners properly. Each one is different but, hopefully, competent. I don't think knowing masses about them affects how I prepare my candidates.

Well surely what is important depends on the person taking the exam? For certain people it could be very important.
I think there is quite a significant difference if the person is a specialist or not. If it is a purely musical comment then i'm sure any examiner's view would be fairly valid e.g.overdoing the vibrato or need to make more of a tonal contrast. However a specialist does appreciate the specific difficulties involved for that instrument and, whether it says to do so in the marking scheme or not, in all likelihood takes that into account. If an examiner were commenting specifically on a technical aspect, such as posture, hand position etc then i would not take that as being particularly valid unless it reflected my teachers comments or they were a specialist in the instrument. Although it may be more cost effective for the board to send out general examiners there are some advantages in having one who understands the instrument and knowing in advance can be important e.g. in the lower grades if a trill is particularly difficult a teacher could expect some allowances from a player of the instrument, so instead of wasting a disproportionate amount of time on 1 beat they can focus on improving the students playing as a whole. Its not the be all and end all but from my perspective it is important to know a bit about the examiner, even if it is just their name and how many letters they have after it.

I really don't think an examiner would be making a throwaway comment on something such as that, and i think musically its probably generally accepted that the quietest bits are often the most important. Its certainly not going to do any harm taking them more into account than you would otherwise given that they are already so important.

I think you might be approaching this from the wrong perspective, as a teacher and fairly advanced student its to be expected that you have your own way of playing things and that's reflected in the way you do exams etc. However for younger students how much of it is really their own interpretation anyway. A lot of the time they do a dim because that's what their teachers written in, or in certain pieces that's what their teacher's teacher wrote in when they were learning it. Even at the top end you find people who copy as precisely as possible the slurring patterns of whichever famous player they most admire.

So although from your perspective its somewhere between nice to know and irrelevant for others it can be quite important. That's even without looking at the psychological effect on the student, of whatever age, going in knowing they've tailored certain parts of the performance to suit the examiners tastes which really isn't that different to professionals programming a piece or what volume/tempo they play it to the venue or occasion.

At the end of the day, AB decide on a block of pieces (ypu make your selection from those), most of these have some sort of perfomance directions for the candidate to follow, so interpretations can only be within that small framework.

The person taking the exam should just be themselves, produce the music to the best of their abilty and use the comment sheets to improve. The exam is the test to gain the qualification not the research in to a person that you are likely to encounter for 15 mins once in your life.

I don't think anyone would contend that you should do intensive research into who they are, where they live what school they went to. But generally a quick websearch can tell you what instrument they play or give you some idea of what school of thought they belong to. If you prepared multiple pieces it could also be useful e.g. if they're an expert on Bach you might not want to go with that option if your rendition is a more modern take etc.

It makes no difference to those comments whether you know beforehand or not, which was my point - a specialist will still give more specialised comments even if you have no idea what instrument they play. It's NICE to know what they play - and I don't see a huge problem with knowing it. I don't think it's essential.

I would hope that a teacher wouldn't "waste a disporportionate amount of time on one beat" such that they neglected the student's playing as a whole regardless of whether the piece was for an exam or not, let alone whether the examiner was a specialist. All teachers have to make value judgements all the time about things like that - getting ornaments in vs keeping the shape of the music, and similar things.

If something is important, then one should be taking it into account already - I would not want to be telling my students "no, you must change this or that" late in the game to suit the whim of one examiner. Of course the quiet bits in a piece are important - but not just because some examiner says he likes them!

And by throwaway comment: I mean that I think it's unlikely (though I could be wrong and AO can correct me if so) that an examiner would have a quote up on the net in effect saying "I like people to be able to play quietly, and mark accordingly when I examine". And as presumably the comment was "I appreciate the quiet parts of any performance" or similar, I think it's risky to then go away and decide that, this session, all your candidates should play things extra quietly.

(Given how, on many instruments, it's possible that students will play more tentatively in an exam situation anyway, and that again, on many instruments, playing quietly when nervous can already go horrible wrong... especially for less experienced players, on flute for example it can be awfully flat, on violin it can cause problems with bowing - in many cases, I'd rather a student played in tune and a bit too loud, given that nerves may cause them to play a little more quietly in the exam room. How this affects someone will depend on the person and the instrument, but still, I would consider it a risky strategy for the sake of gaining an extra mark or two)

For my grade 3 flute student's flute exam back in the spring, I was very insistent that I wanted to know how SHE thought things sounded best, and what extra bits of dynamic variation etc she would like to put in. She came up with many very imaginative ideas and played much better, IMO, than she was playing in pieces which she had been told how to play and had little insight. At any rate, I would not want to be changing the way she played things a few weeks before the exam.

... because they have heard those things and think "oh, that sounds good, I'll try that" - and even then, most people will end up playing in their own way, with their own strengths and weaknesses and foibles.

I would rather have students who were creative enough to form their own opinions and their own interpretations - with guidance of course, but not someone saying "thou shalt play it this way" - and go into the exam confident because they know the piece well and are playing it in a way they I and they feel is effective.

At the end of the day I consider I'm trying to teach any student a good musician and a good flautist, best I can manage - passing exams is a side effect, but I'm not teaching with that as my main aim. Making a student play in a certain way for a certain examiner would, for me, detract from that.

Ahh but it is different, because the volumes and tempi will often depend on things like acoustics, the response of the audience, etc - and will vary naturally.

Imagine if one had carefully prepped one's candidates to one examiner and this happened!

I'm afraid we may have to agree to disagree on this snhs. Knowing a little about one's examiner is fine, and I don't have a problem with it at all, but I don't think it's a big deal unless one makes a big deal out of it. I certainly wouldn't try and make myself or my students play in a certain way because of what I had found out about an examiner. If others work that way, then fine, that's their look out, but I won't.

I've taken a lot of exams over the years and known friends go through them and put a couple of people in for them, and I've rarely if ever known more than the name on the sheet (if that!). The most important thing I EVER want to know about an examiner - whether it's me taking the exam or someone else - is the comment from the steward before I go in - "Don't worry, s/he seems really nice". Beyond that I think oboist sums it up perfectly:

"I trust the ABRSM to have trained all its examiners properly. Each one is different but, hopefully, competent. I don't think knowing masses about them affects how I prepare my candidates."




Well said.


If you have a more modern take then it should probably be very effective and very convincing to use it for any examiner. Even a non-specialist will know what the "usual" way of playing Bach will be. And someone who is a specialist could well have more knowledge and a wider frame of "what I think is acceptable" than someone whose knowledge is narrow and thinks just "tempo guisto, narrow dynamic range" or something like that. (I think it would, again, be risky to be making those assumptions about an examiner based on one piece of information)

Obviously if one has a special visit then sometimes has a longer time frame, though not always by much, but given that appointment slips sometimes come 2 weeks or even less prior to the exam, and that 2/3 pieces for a lot of people and in many cases 3/3 are accompanied, by that stage one is pushing it to change one's programme. I wouldn't want to put candidate or accompanist under that pressure that late in the game.

How many people actually prepare multiple pieces for an exam? I understand that at the outset that someone might work on several pieces but I would think that by the time you know who the examiner is then you would be polishing up the 3 pieces for the exam. I would have thought that such a late stage that you may risk performing another piece less adequately than the original.

Surely the AB expects examiners to be objective and they understand that duty when they step into the exam room. I would be very angry if someone judged my daughters on what they thought the performance should be rather than following the guidance from the board who are their employers.

I have been known to decide pretty late which pieces I'll do - BUT - not to the point where I'd still be deciding when the exam slip came purely for practical reasons of accompaniments etc. Possibly different on piano. And that said, I'm deciding pretty late for my jazz exam just through sheer disorganisation coupled with illness. But yup, generally speaking, by the time the exam slip comes I'd usually expect to have a pretty clear idea of which pieces I was doing, unless the exam slip came really early or unless the piece was unaccompanied (and even then I'd rather not be unsure at that stage!!!)

It can make a difference to how you approach the exam though and thereby the comments you get in the exam. If you don't know its a specialist they may be fairly critical on certain aspects of technique whereas if you were aware before hand you would be more careful to do, at least the bits you could, as well as possible. So as i've said it can be/is important but its not crucial as i've said.

I never actually suggested changing anything. In the example AO gave it wouldn't be a matter of changing anything just making more of the contrasts which is the kind of thing that you should be doing towards the end of the exam anyway.

As i've said it wouldn't be a matter of playing it all extra quietly just a matter of making sure the contrasts were apparent which you would probably do anyway. It would just be a matter of putting an additional emphasis on it in lessons.

The key word there was "I". What you expect and what the examiner expects can be very different. Examiners, particularly specialists, would know that it is difficult at the lower grades to keep in tune and play things very quietly etc. As such they probably take account of that in grading and equally students who attempt to make bigger contrasts, even if not always perfectly in tune, probably get credit for trying. Maybe for an extra mark or two but when you get an extra mark or two on all three pieces it can easily be the difference between pass/fail, distinction/merit etc.

Yes, and that can work with older students but by no means does it work with all students. In addition if someone is particularly shy they may be put off the instrument entirely by being faced with that kind of question. (I'm not saying thats the case with you and your students just that in extremes that is what can happen.)

I'd argue that it should be changing in the lead up to the exam in that it should be getting better. If that means more dynamic contrast or even adding in some additional articulation then i don't see anything wrong with it.

Yes, but in many cases that just means copying it, albeit informed by multiple recordings and preferences. At the end of the day most musical preference probably originates from what we are taught, whether by listening/recordings of music or a teacher.

Vary naturally perhaps but in other cases as i highlighted they are varied purely for the audience/occasion. I think there was a thread in the organ forum which suggested a piece for a funeral, but only playing it at a slower than normal tempo. Equally a string quartet intended as background music would play quieter on the whole than they would in concert setting. A band for a musical may also be asked to play quieter than marked to suit the conductor or an orchestra put a greater emphasis on dim./cres. There's no real difference between such things and playing in an exam.

Then the fall back of all the examiners going off the same mark sheet comes into play. Even if you've tailored it slightly to one examiner, and may miss out on any 'preference marks' you will still get the same mark if not a higher one than you would otherwise have received.

As with so may other things . I've never said its a big deal my contention is that for certain people it can be important even if it is not to you.

Possibly, all depends on how you approach it.

How many people actually prepare multiple pieces for an exam? I understand that at the outset that someone might work on several pieces but I would think that by the time you know who the examiner is then you would be polishing up the 3 pieces for the exam.

I like to prepare more than the three required where possible - although yes, usually by the time the appointment comes we have at least a good idea which ones are likely.

I did have one candidate who chose on the day though .

MM: I've also prepared multiple pieces but if one needs an accompanist it becomes more difficult to choose at the last minute - unless one has a particularly good accompanist "on tap". And sometimes even if you do I guess that's one way pianists have a bit more flexibility choosing at the ast minute, though it could be a bit nervewracking!!

snhs: It's practically impossible to see what bit is trying to answer what part here as it's all in one huge block, so I'm just going to pick out a couple of sections...


I don't sit them in a spotlight and say "what do you think is best???!" - and of course I will give guidance where necessary. But what I am interested in is producing a musician not a parrot. So by whatever means, I get the student's ideas out of them as much as possible. There are lots of ways of doing this - i.e. picking out a bit you think is nice and saying, "oh, I like that bit, you play it well, can you play it for me again" right to "How do YOU think this should go" - depending on the student. But I think that a teacher should be trying to stimulate a student's imagination, however it works for that student. I wouldn't put a student on the spot unless I was utterly sure they could take it, precisely because I am quite shy and would hate that.

Some students will need more guidance and won't have a lot of input, but one can still try. And some students (sometimes even the shyest ones) can be surprisingly imaginative and creative given the chance. I haven't had masses of students but I've had a few and varying degrees of creativity, and actually by far the most creative one is also really shy and took a long time to trust me with her playing. But these days she will tell me these amazing ideas of what she thinks a pieces is about and what she is trying to express, and when she plays with her own thoughts and ideas in mind occasionally the hairs on the back of my neck stand up - even if sometimes when she tells me things part of me goes "what??!" because her view of the piece is very different from mine.


Getting better for the sake of getting better - of course! Why would a teacher not want their student to be improving their playing right up to the examination??? I still wouldn't be basing how they should improve and how they should play on what I might assume a certain examiner is wanting/expecting to hear - I'd be basing it on what sounded better and what the student felt sounded better/was the most effective way of expressing themselves. Again, I'd be giving guidance, of course - but not for a certain examiner.

Yes, of course students will be aiming for contrasts etc - and who said they weren't - but there is a difference between achieving contrast, and trying to aim for something that is beyond one's reach at a particular stage in one's playing. I wouldn't at all like the message that was would seem to be sending to my students.


Well I'll have to agree to disagree with you there... and a string quartet playing quietly as background music, or someone playing a piece more slowly for a funeral, is all about atmosphere and the response of the audience. I have done both more than once and though one might consider certain aspects in advance, the fact is those kind of tempo changes etc will fall into place on the day in my experience with what feels right, which one can't predict beforehand.


Not if the trying too hard results in poor playing. A student who achieves some contrast say on flute and also achieves good tone and intonation will receive higher marks than a student who plays very loud and very soft - but is horribly sharp in the loud bits and loses tone and is flat in the soft bits. Similarly I'd expect in a violin exam to be penalised if my desperate attempts to play quietly or loudly made me sound like I was strangling a cat, or my "with expression" playing was high on vibrato and rubato - but out of tune.

A student who was achieving NO contrast might get worse marks, but I don't believe that playing which through trying too hard ends up simply poor will get better marks than playing which is not quite as dramatic but is still felt/interesting and is basically good playing. The ABRSM says that it uses non-specialist examiners because it assesses the musical result, so it sounds like that's what they're after too. Good playing, to the best level the student can manage. There are times when one can take risks - slightly faster or slower tempi - but they don't excuse BAD playing (as opposed to small errors or blemishes which don't detract too much from the music).

Anyway I ain't going to argue over it any more, I think we'll have to agree to disagree, I've said what I think, & starting to feel like I'm repeating myself, which I can't be doing with. Going over it again would be flogging a dead horse - even more so than we have already. Each to their own and I'm sure some will disagree with things I've said, and if people want to approach things in different ways it's their prerogative.

I also do this from quite early on.
As I teach piano it might start with asking them where on the piano a particular piece sounds best or whether they think it sounds better louder/quieter or faster/slower.

The loosing tone in the quiet bits definately happened to my Daughter in G5 Flute, one of the reasons I responded to this thread in the first instance. In her case it wasn't done to please an examiner more the result of trying too hard.

I think this may be one of those things that can change dependant upon instrument.

Yes, easy for that to happen - I had a couple of instances of "trying too hard" in my last exam - I wasn't penalised too much because fortunately it didn't affect the overall performance too much, but it easily can.


Definitely.

This is my last word on the subject I promise, but I had a few thoughts tumbling round my head as I tried to sleep last night...

When I say I don't like the message I think it would send to students - I don't mean that teachers would intentionally send a bad message, but I think it could anyway... making things better is great, but tailoring things to an examiner would seem to me to be shades of "your interpretation and instinct is not as valuable as theirs", and/or "exam marks are more important than your long term musical development". And while I can't imagine a teacher deliberately trying to give that impression, I can imagine that being the message the student gets.

I can see instances where exam marks might be important enough to justify doing it - high grade exams for uni entry or something for example, if one really needed a particular mark in an exam (though I think one would ideally want at that stage for a student's musical instincts to be good enough to have basically sound ideas that were effective in their playing, so hmmm, still not entirely convinced) - but in general although exams are useful and can be important, I think long term letting students have ultimate say over their exact nuances and thus learning what they like and what does or does not work in performance is more important in their musical development, so I wouldn't be willing to risk that... an exam is an opportunity to have one's playing and musicianship analysed, one's weaknesses and strengths pointed out, rather than an exercise in play-acting what one thinks the examiner might want to hear... IMO that is how one will get the most valuable feedback. And in the long run that feedback will lead to good results anyway, I think; the exam and the feedback give something to work on and valuable tips for what things did or didn't work in a performing situation. And that is something to really learn from.

And taking musical risks also needs to be in balance - risks need to be taken sometimes to produce a compelling performance, but say regarding speed in a fast piece, a light and sparkling performance at a slightly lower speed where one or too notes are missed but overall the impression is good is better than a person taking the music at a speed where they miss half the notes, just as hitting all the notes but playing at a funereal pace would sound bad... there's a balance between artistry and technical accuracy etc to achieve an effective performance... and I think that applies in any performance.

Anyway I think this dead horse is well and truly flogged to bits so that's me done... still not sure I have explained what I mean but never mind!