Beth is doing her Grade 5 Flute exam in 4 weeks and aural is still a problem.
Since her Grade 4, where her marks were reasonable actually, I have organised singing lessons and invested in Hofnotes.
Her singing has certainly improved.
But her singing a phrase back is still bad.
Tonight I used Hofnotes which has a spot the difference exercise. Instead of just getting Beth to pick out the correct score, a trivial exercise for her, I got her to hear the phrase once and then sing it back while looking at the screen.
Bingo. She can do that pretty accurately.
So if she can see the score she can sing it back, even some pretty complicated stuff, more complicated than the echo test.
I know this isn't what she has to do in 4 weeks time but I am very relieved to find out what she can do. Plus her singing teacher has been wondering whether she can't do it or won't do it. Since she is enthusiastic about singing back when she has the score I'm sure she can't do it without the score.
So how do I get from what she can do to what she has to do.
My current thought is that I should get a 4 bar phrase and give her 3 bars of it to look at. Play it to her twice and then get her to sing it back hoping that she can fill in the missing bar.
If she can then try removing 2 bars and so on.
Hoping that she can learn the skill of mentally writing the musical score in her head as we go along.
This is quite a lot of work per exercise.
I just wondered if anyone had any other ideas.
Thanks
Dora

I've no idea how to help but I can empathise wiht your situation. I've taken similar steps with emsoboe, she enrolled herself on singing lessons at school. We've also got hofnotes but the part she finds most difficult is singing back the phrase.

Maybe someone will help us both

This test is not easy as it's purely a test of memory. A lot of people can remember the beginning bit not the end, and vice versa. I know the Board recommend splitting it up until candidates can remember longer phrases.
I used to have to do this with my eyes shut. I imagined a black sky, and when the notes were played, I saw them as lights coming on like stars at different heights according to pitch, and wider apart if the preceeding note was a long one. As long as I "saw" the shape of the phrase I could, if necessary make up the notes, and invariably I was right, if not entirely confident.
I wish you both luck - but don't beat yourselves up about it - it's a small part of the exam, and more points can be gained from polishing the pieces than spending a disproportionate amount of time on this test.

Putting my psychologist's hat on, rather than my music teacher hat, I can attempt to explain why this test is tricky, and to suggest a strategy.

The fundamental problem is that there are too many notes in the test to store in our short term memories. Most adults can store between 5 and 9 items; children probably a little less. The only way to increase the amount stored is to 'chunk' the information. Eg if you were asked to memorise the following string of letters: GNWNXDVRZKLH most people would struggle. But if the string contained the letters BBCITVABRSMOK it would be much easier, as it splits into four chunks: BBC, ITV, ABRSM and OK.

You can see that the chunks only work if they are already familiar, and so to remember the four-bar phrase by chunks a pupil must have an idea of musical chunks or patterns. The most obvious of these are scale or arpeggio patterns.

See if Beth can recognise these, first from a printed score, and then from just the aural stimulus. Then encourage her to recall the music in chunks, rather than as a string of unconnected notes.

Good luck with this part of the aural.

Thank you. I knew all this but hadn't been able to put it together in such a way as to explain it to Beth. I'd tried talking to her but she was unconvinced. I also hadn't thought about getting her to recognise the pattern from the score first which is an excellent idea since she is obviously more comfortable with the score.
As part of her studies on Saturdays she is begining to learn dictation so that should help her too.
Thank you so much.
Dora




Thank you. Your way of doing it is pretty much the way I tackle it, without much success but I'm not a musician so that is okay. I've tried talking about the shape of the phrase with Beth but not made any progress.
You are right that it isn't so important for the exams. Her mark was not significan't worse on the aural than on the playing for the Grade 4 and I've had a look at the requirments for Grade 8 and there is so much to do that the singing back just can't carry many marks.
Dora

It might help to be aware that aural is marked as a whole and not as separate sections so it's overall performance in thsi section rather than so many marks for each individual test.

I can't help with advice, merely with the consolation that of all the skills tested in the ABRSM exams, this is the one that I have found least useful in 60+ years of music-making. I was relieved to discover that my BA Part I musicianship exam did not require anything like it. I suppose short term memory for a musical phrase is useful if you are playing jazz, but I can think of no other musical context that requires it in the form that the ABRSM tests.

Very useful when visiting other churches where they sometimes use a tune you don't know.

And even more so in the case of psalm chants.

I didn't know that. That is very reassuring because the rest of her aural is okay to good.
Thank you everyone else for your reassuring replies. It does help.
Dora

Son Viohazard will certainly need this skill for entrance exams to tertiary music courses - he's working hard at it right now.

Worth learning if Beth wants to go on with higher grades, especially if you can get help from the singing teacher, but not worth feeling like a "bad musician" over - Beth is not alone in finding this tough, and as others said, the impact on exam marks is limited...

The good news is that teaching and practice help, the bad news is that it can take time...I would say it's taken the best part of this year for Viohazard to make progress (he started with his old piano teacher in spring, in the lead-up to a grade 8 practical. Just switched to a piano teacher whose main subject is voice - his way of teaching this sing-back stuff is apparently much easier, so here's hoping that Beth finds her singing lessons helpful with aural too).

Two more reasons why you won't find me in a congregation. I didn't mind being in a choir in the days when I still sang a bit; though I do remember a very musical chorus in which I was singing having great difficulty with psalms on an occasion when they substituted in an Anglican service, much to the annoyance of our conductor, who was confident in both plain musical and ecclesiastical circumstances.

Not a very drastic strategy, but the examiner will play it through twice, so the first time I will just listen and the second time I will hum along with the piano.

I think it's also worth telling her not to worry about the exact pitch of every note, but rather the shape of the melody, the rhythms and as mentioned before she should try and remember the passage in sections.