Well tonight for my music lesson we started working on a past exam paper. I really enjoyed it, we looked at the chords, figured bass and composition. For my homework I am to tackle the composition for a bassoon.

I have to say that I really enjoyed myself, we played the chords that I had chosen and my teacher said that they were an excellent choice.

We worked on SATB with figured bass and I really enjoyed this too.

For the last few weeks I have been concentrating on my piano whilst I just carried on working through the Harmony in Practise at home.

I hope that when I come to do it by myself I remember what I learnt tonight.

ET

It's good to hear you're enjoying Grade 6 theory. Once you've got the hang of figured bass it's really quite easy - composition was my weak point (still is, really). I enjoyed Grade 7 more - found it easier. I got to a point where I was struggling with it, then one day it just clicked and got easy. At the 'struggling' stage with Grade 8 now, have entered myself to do it in June. Am just hoping it'll all click in the same way.

Good luck with it all.

Thanks for the luck!

Its good to know that I will get the hang of figured bass. What is different in Grade 7 that you found it easier? Good Luck with Grade 8 in June, I intend to go up to Grade 8 myself, but not sure when I will get to that stage.

I've done some grade 7 past papers and sat 6 in feb and doing grade 8 theory in june. Grade 7 you rewrite a passage adding in suspensions/melodic decoration which is easy. add figured bass which is even easier to a given melody and basso continuo and compose a melody given the opening and an accompaniment.

In grade 7 you're given the bass and the top part and you just need to fill in the figured bass, which I found really easy to understand. A lot of the time the chord used is obvious, if you've got a sequence you can often use the same figures, and knowing a few standard progressions will help as you can see if any of them will fit. For the chorale question you have a skeleton guide so you know the chords, and studying the bits they give you helps you to continue in the same style. I think I found it easy because the bits you are given in the questions help you so much to sortout the rest.

I too found the format of the first 3 questions easier to do at grade 7 than at grade 6.
For my composition question (that is the one where you continue over a given accompaniment isn't it?) I didn't use notes shorter that a crotchet as this was the style of the opening.... I just worked out the chords and fitted in to that getting about 17/20 for the question.