Hi,

I will be taking my DipABRSM in less than a month. It has fallen at the completly wrong time as I have conservatoire auditions the week before and the week after so I'm up to here with it. However, I have been working towards it for over a year.

My programme will be :

Oh Had I Jubal's Lyre - Handel
Sweeter than Roses - Purcell
Liebesbotschaft - Schubert
E'Amore un Ladroncello - Mozart
O Mio Babbino Caro - Puccini
The Water Mill - Vaughan Williams
Apres Un Reve - Faure

Still not sure of any particular order.. any help would be great? Am also struggling desperately with the quick study. It has always been a major problem of mine and have failed the sight-singing section from grade 2 all the way up to grade 8!! Have been at it everyday, but something just doesn't seem to click. Any advice or any websites I can go on would be great..

Hope to hear from some of you,

Sophie xxx

Are you asking for help in putting them in order? Maybe you could start with one which you feel most confident with to help put you at ease, and save another confident one till the then end. If you're confident with them all that doesn't help, so maybe you could start with the ones that are lowest in your register and work your way up, of course if they are all similar that wont help either, not sure why I'm replying at all
Good luck anyway.

Hi Sophie, welcome to the forums! Nice programme - I did Watermill too!
This is how I chose my programme order (I'm a bit of a nerd so bear with me)...
First I put them into a spreadsheet with relevant info (key, length, language, period and speed - slow, med, fast).
Then I played with orders checking out for key clashes, too many similar together etc.
Then I recorded all of them on my minidisk player and played them through in my chosen order to see what actually worked. Think especially about your start and end pieces - you want something that wll set you at ease at the beginning and leave them with a good impression at the end.

For the Quick Study I prepared by working my way through Schubertline's library http://www.schubertline.co.uk/home.htm) - just choosing stuff, looking at it for a few minutes without playing it through, then trying it out unaccompanied before playing it through to see how I did. Not what the site was designed for, but very effective!

Other tips for the QS: make sure you are quick at identifying keys...you have to do this yourself and play your own key chord and starting note (as a total non keyboard player this was my biggest challenge - I had to learn where the notes were on the piano )

Also make sure you read the words through - in my practice time I just hummed and then nearly got caught out by a couple of unexpected words when doing it for real.

Umm, that's it for the moment. I'll post again if I think of anything else.
And all the best for the exam - keep us posted on how it goes!

Hi guys,
thanks for replying...

Thouston that is a great idea.. I love doing things like that haha.

How did your quick study go? And am I right in saying that if you don't pass each section you don't pass at all? xx

Yes (but, of course, with your exam only a month away you knew that from having read the syllabus thoroughly ).

If you fail a particular section, you are allowed to retake just that section, and once you've passed all sections, the AB send you a shiny certificate.

Nice programme

Yes I did know that was just checking. My teacher has never taught the DipABRSM as she has never had a student want go further than grade 3. That is fantastic that you can retake it, as I feel very confident with recital and viva voce... but am not looking forward to quick study.

Thanks xxxx

Yes, well, QS is nasty except for those who are brilliant sight readers. It was my weakest part and I just scraped through with the minimum marks (6/15) . There are a few of us from this forum in the "6 point club", so it's no disgrace!

Other tips...
you are allowed to play only your key chord and starting note on the piano. But you are allowed to play them as often as you like. So I played them almost constantly during my 5 mins practice. That meant that I really had it clearly in my head for the actual sing-through. This really paid off for me; I made some mistakes and didn't follow all the dynamics, but on my mark sheet I had something like "some errors but maintained a strong sense of key" (ie at least I started and finished in the right place, and I may have sung some wrong notes but they were still in tune wrong notes...).

You are allowed to relocate your note from the piano if you get lost during the actual performance. I knew that if I did this I would definitely fail (it takes me several seconds to identify a given note on the piano ) so I stood well clear. This gamble paid off for me, but in your position you may prefer otherwise - with a G5 in piano at least it's not such a foreign object for you. But at least think through what you might do beforehand so that you don't get flustered by the prospect.

Look out for changes of time - mine was mostly in 4/4 but went into 3 for a couple of bars. Also I had one tricky patch with a lot of accidentals. I only realised afterwards that it was effectively a change of key from F to E flat for one phrase. If I had spotted that sooner it would have taken a lot less time to work out all the intervals.

Whatever happens, keep going. I sang a wrong note near the beginning, and had to correct myself, but then carried on regardless. 20 years of Am-Dram "the-show-must-go-on" attitude came to my rescue there! I'm sure that this counts towards the marks. What they are looking for is a performance.

As I mentioned before, one error I made was not to mouth the words while I was working out the tune during my preparation. So at one point in the exam I started singing a word, only to have to change my pronunciation part way through (I can't remember the actual word now, but it was like starting to sing qui... as in "quiet" and finding out as you go on to the next line that it is "quizzical").

Do sing, hum, whatever helps you, during your practice. The examiners will be in the room but they won't be marking you at that point. Don't be self conscious about it. You want to pass!

Hope this helps...it's made me feel nervous again just thinking about it!

Thouston gives brilliant advice about the QS.


There has, however, been one change in the rules since she did hers. The QS you are given has the sung line and an accompaniment. You may play any or all of the vocal line or the accompaniment on the piano during your five minutes preparation, although the actual performance of the QS must be unaccompanied.


Also, you are now given the choice of English or Italian words.


I'd say that if you are at all comfortable playing the piano, do take the opportunity to play through any awkward intervals or modulation patches and listen to them.


Best of luck.

Thankyou guys so much for replying to me, I am so grateful. Your advice is great Thouston!!! Katyjay are you definetly sure on this? Can I definetly play through the whole piece because if so I will be so happy!! xxxx

Yes. The rules changed for the December session last year - which is when I did my dip.

Do bear in mind, though, that this is not just sight-reading. They do mark the quality of your singing as well as the usual sightreading points of right notes in the right places etc.

wow, thankyou so much that is great. How come they dont make this clear in the sylabuss?

To be honest, I don't know, I haven't looked at the syllabus for almost a year now. But it was in a letter they sent me not long before the exam appointment letter.

I just looked through the sylabuss on the website and realised i had been reading the 2005 sylabus, and checked out the 2007 sylabus and realised that 'minor changes' had been made to the quick study for singers. Thankyou so much for telling me as we are so in the dark over here, as I live in Spain. You have no idea how much of a wieight I feel as lifted off my shoulders. Thankyou guys... xxxx

I would say that's a very significant change. 5 mins with a grade 6 piece and accompaniment and I think I would have it at a pretty good standard, as opposed to just being allowed key chord and starting note.
As a result do you think they are marking it more stringently?

Wow, that's a big change..I had no idea they'd sneaked that in. Thanks for correcting me, katyjay!
Sorry I gave you out of date advice Sophie

For me that would make life a lot easier; if I can hear an interval just once I can sing it. What takes the time is thinking it in my head. Hmmm...*sneaks a look at LRSM syllabus, which was previously out of the question, mostly because of the QS*

On the other hand now I would also say it would seem to favour pianists more...certainly with my current non-existent keyboard skills (after a bit of thought I can find middle C) I would be at a significant disadvantage compared with somebody who could at least whizz through the tune without counting out every note.

So ironically If I wanted to take LRSM it seems the first thing I'll have to do is have a few piano/keyboard lessons.

Interesting!

Trouble is, I took the exam after the change, so don't know how stringent they were before it. But they certainly commented on things like vocal quality, breath control and communication as well as the accuracy of notes, rhythms and dynamics. They were definitely looking for a reasonably polished delivery rather than just a sight-read......