This is not really a question but a result of thinking about various things I have read on here and my own experience.

Most people on here seems to think that playing with an accompanist is an important skill for musicians and that it is not the same as playing with a CD. Yet a lot of other posts also suggest that come exam time pupils go off and have a rehearsal with the accompanist without their usual teacher. Either that or their own teacher accompanies them which effectively means that the teacher can't show them how they should be playing.

When I was learning the violin my violin teacher used to accompany all my pieces in lessons and would have me playing with a piano accompaniment before I even knew the pieces properly. With hind-sight I think there was too much accompanying as it meant I was not used to playing without it and meant I heard my violin teacher playing the piano more often than the violin.

My oboe teacher usually accompanies a piece when he has decided I know it well and it has become a way of "saying goodbye" to a piece before moving on to another one. Occasionally I have had one rehearsal with an accompanist before playing in a concert with my teacher present but this has usually been only a run through of the piece. For the last four weeks my oboe teacher has arranged for the music school accompanist to come to my lesson and this has been a real eye opener as to how to go about playing with a pianist.

Obviously I am lucky that I am learning in a place which provides an accompanist free of charge (otherwise it would have been a very expensive four weeks).

Well, I accompany my singing students in lessons, but not for exams, etc. When they know a song better I put my accompanist hat on and follow rather than lead. For exam rehearsals though, I would not dream of not being there to make sure the ensemble is working well and that the piano is giving the right support.

My previous clarinet teacher played the piano for *all* the pieces it was possible to accompany to, all the time. In three-and-a-half years, I only ever ONCE heard him play the clarinet, but he played the piano at every lesson. At first I thought this was normal; after some time I thought it was odd; then in the end it made me really quite cross that he seemed to be obsessed with the ****** piano

My new teacher has a keyboard rather than a piano, and although she accompanied when I was practising my pieces for Dunster, in normal lessons she never touches it Instead she watches me intently, listens to me intently, demonstrates when useful and we discuss progress. There is no comparison between the usefulness of the two types of lesson.

When I was in an ensemble/group class at the same time as my individual lessons, the other members of the group who were all doing exams (G2/3) had an unknown accompanist and didn't get a rehearsal with the accompanist until the week before the exam. I *think* they only had one rehearsal before the day of the exam. At the time (it was when I'd only been learning about a year), I used to think how lucky I was that my teacher accompanied me. But at least one of the members of the group got a distinction, some got merits and all of them passed. It obviously didn't do them any harm not to have a teacher-accompanist. Perhaps a lot depends on the skill of the accompanist.

I teach piano so obviously accompanying in lessons is not an issue, but I also work as accompanist. Usually I find one rehearsal is fine!

Admittedly I don't often accompany above grade 5, but the only times I have needed extra rehearsals were with students who simply couldn't play in time. I have accompanied a few students who just didn't seem to know their pieces and effectively had to learn them with me, which is difficult at times as I obviously don't know anything about their respective instruments.

On the other hand I am doing two cellos on Friday (one grade 1 and the other is not a grade exam, but somewhere between grade 5 and 6 ish) and a decent rehearsal a few days ago and a run through on the day will be fine for them. Their teacher is very good and I think plays a bit of piano in lessons.

I have only had two rehearsals with teachers, one because it was a grade 7 exam and the music was very difficult ad the other because the teacher was the usual accompanist and simply wasn't free for the exam. She didn't want to "desert" her pupil!

Well, no, it doesn't actually - if it's a Bb clarinet it plays a Bb! I take your point though.

I think there are rarely problems with good accompanists, because they will follow the pupil. The only trouble with getting used to good accompanists is that it makes it harder when you get the usual variety!

Like you, Kerioboe, my son was lucky enough to be able to play regularly with a professional music centre accompanist. This worked really well, as you can feed off one another to create a really musical performance. But I think this is now working against him - at university you get student accompanists, who are learning how to accompany; he has become so used to listening to his accompanist and creating something together that he's forgotten how to play what he should without following the pianist.

I can quite see why the top players tend to work with just 2 or 3 regular accompanists when possible. The quality and style of the accompanist makes such a difference to the final performance at the higher levels.

My first recorder teacher accompanied me a lot of the time: this was great to get a sense of ensemble, and of making music with another, and he also knew my recorder playing so well that he could adapt his playing to mine - however, it did mean that I felt more ill-at-ease playing solo works to him, because there was nowhere to hide.
My current recorder teacher has taught me without access to a keyboard most of the time, so I've had to get used to exposing my playing to her keen ears without the support of an accompanist, but equally it has meant that I've had less input with regard to ensemble playing. We get round this by ruses such as organising a joint lesson with another recorder player, learning about playing duets, and in the run-up to my next exam I've taken my accompanist along with me, thus getting the best of both worlds - my teacher's appraisal of the ensemble, but with her also being free to listen to what I'm doing without having to think about playing a line of music herself at the same time. The last two lessons, with accompanist in tow, have been great fun and musically very rewarding - my teacher laughed about my accompanist's skill both in covering for my mistakes and augmenting what I was trying to achieve .
I do think I'm lucky to have such ready access to accompaniment in making music - my husband is a good keyboard player, so we can play together, my exam accompanist is a good friend and excellent musician, and in addition I've come across and been able to benefit from the input from other keyboard and recorder players too. Music is so much about sharing - learning to co-ordinate one's two hands and whatever else is needed for a particular instrument is one thing, but managing to do that and merge one's music with someone else's is even more rewarding, I think....

My cello teacher is an excellent accompanist, but judges when to accompany and when not - we usually run through a piece with accompaniment and then stop to work on different aspects of the piece. This has the advantage of showing up the weak areas where, if playing solo, you are more likely to stop/slow down/ go back to correct a mistake, so instilling the idea of continuity which is so important in performance. I find continuity on piano much harder than on cello, in spite of far more years' experience in piano playing, and this has a knock-on effect on confidence. She also sometimes accompanies scales with chords - again, this keeps you going and doesn't gives the opportunity for correction, and also stops speeding up beyond what you can comfortably manage at the moment. She does seem to have the gift of being very aware of what you are doing whilst playing the piano herself - possibly something to do with examiner skills!

It is true that provided you are properly prepared it doesn't take long to adjust to a good accompanist, who will help cover up any mistakes! However, starting together is a skill which needs to be learnt, and some accompaniments can have awkward starts or periods of rests that can cause problems. I must admit that I was totally bemused when doing exam stewarding by a woodwind teacher who accompanied her pupils herself in the warm-up room while the hired-in accompanist sat twiddling her fingers in the waiting room. The pupils did not appear to have met the accompanist before then.

That's interesting Suepea. I remember reading in Libretto once that some exam candidates did not even hear the accompaniment before the exam!
All my grades only get one rehearsal, but then, we always use the same accompanist (the ONLY one I would use for myself, so he's good! ), and they work with him several times a year for concerts and festivals, so he knows exactly what I expect of him, and how the student is likely to perform. Also, unless they are new (so unlikely to be taking higher grades), they have already built up a rapport with him.
Besides which - they have heard the accompaniment from the beginning - unless it's super difficult, when they will have heard about 50% of the notes !

I don't think anyone so far has mentioned what is, to my mind, the most important thing: that music written for an instrument (or voice) with piano accompaniment is incomplete unless played with the piano. Some pieces, in fact, are duos rather than solo-plus-accompaniment, and it is therefore difficult to make sense of them unless both parts are heard.

My first flute teacher accompanied me all the time, and I still have internalised many of the piano accompaniments for pieces I learned with her. This in itself makes solo practice more enjoyable, as I'm always hearing the complete texture and not just my part. It did have the downside, as others have mentioned, of hearing her play the flute only infrequently, but that has been true of other teachers I have had who do not accompany.

Woodwind and brass players have to play an unaccompanied piece in exams, so there is always chance to work on the issues presented by unaccompanied playing as well.

I try to provide as much accompaniment as I can during lessons, but we work both with an without the piano when learning an accompanied piece. When it comes to more difficult repertoire my pupils have to get used to sketches of the piano accompaniment until I have managed to find the time to create a Sibelius file. It's always the ones which are hardest to play that are hardest to input as well - the scanner only seems to like the few I can easily play myself.

If I am accompanying someone for an exam one of the first questions I ask is whether they have heard the accompaniment yet, or played with the accompaniment at all. The answer is usually no they haven't, so the first time we do it together there are often lots of mistakes, not because the candidate doesn't know the piece, but because they are thrown by what they can hear going on in the piano part. This is one of the reasons why I like to have more than one rehearsal. I think it's very unfair on a candidate if they've never heard the accompaniment before the exam.

I've only once had a teacher insist on coming to the rehearsals. It was a real squash in my tiny little music room. The teacher treated the rehearsal as though it was a lesson, with a bit of accompaniment added, and directed the whole session which made me cross.

If an instrumentalist has not played with a real live accompanist before coming to me for a rehearsal, then I find the first problem is starting the piece especially where the instrument and the piano start together and I usually have to show them how to indicate that they are starting the piece. With little ones and with the first grades I will count them in, but as they go up the grades they need to know how to indicate they are starting and I find even Grade 8 candidates sometimes don't know how to do this.

This is what I was getting at about it being interesting to have a lesson with a teacher and an accompanist. Having my teacher there and free to demonstrate (because he was not playing the piano) meant I could see how it stops being oboe music with a piano accompaniment and starts being a piece for oboe and piano (if that makes sense).

This is why I added in my initial post that I was in the lucky position of being in a music school which provides an accompanist free of charge.

That is exactly the role of a good accompanist - they should enhance the entire performance and make you look better than you may actually be!
(not that I am implying that that is the case for you anacrusis! )

I don't think it's examiner skills, I think it's "proper experienced accompanist" skills. I always have an extra line free in my brain to listen to the soloist. When someone comes to run something through with me, I am usually sight-reading their accompaniment whilst also telling them where they have gone wrong in their solo part - all part of the service (I do also promise them that if they make said mistake in the exam, I will cover it up for them so seamlessly the examiner may not even notice)

I find singers have the most trouble adapting to accompanists - often the piano part appears to be deliberately crafted to put the soloist off

I don't know about looking better, but my accompanist sure makes me sound better . I agree also with andante - I'm currently playing a piece which is really a trio sonata, so my poor accompanist actually gets the harder job, having two parts to play, one in each hand, whilst I provide the third, and it is impossible to pick out just one solo line aurally, it really is a co-ordinated effort between the two musicians.

I've heard some wonderful stories of accompanists managing to cover up lost bars, vamp their way through accidental recapitulations, and even "going round the block" with a few bars of improvisation to allow a soloist to re-find a missed cue, it's amazing what can be done.

Just a thought for those who struggle to find accompanists - if you have a local competition festival running on an annual basis, it might well be that they have lists of official accompanists? On the cost - I can understand that it will add to the price of music tuition, but I'd still say that a good accompanist would be worth their weight in gold, and a good investment given what they can do for a performance.

Hear, hear

Er, shouldn't we be focussing on the student all the time??

Its a difficult skill, being able to read the music, and concentrate on what you the accompanist are playing, aswel as as focusing on the soloist. Ive accompanied people in concerts, singers, and i find it difficult being in the situation, with nerves, being able to focus entirely on the singer(s)

There are all sorts of 'difficult skills' that instrumental teachers are expected to have in order to do our jobs properly. That's what we're paid for.

Hmm, I wonder...

Without meaning to be rude, I think it is rather presumptuous to compare yourself (not yet grade 3 piano)with Carol piano and other professional accompanists.

And also, the whole point of my post was about playing with professional accompanists who know what they are doing.

That's not what I want to hear with five exam accompaniments to do tomorrow.

Yes, it would be easier for me to pay a professional accompanist to do it. But some of my pupils would find it very daunting and would rather have me with all my failings. They are used to me playing alongside them in lessons, and I know where they are likely to go wrong, and I know the flute part inside out.

And I've spent a fortune on piano lessons and hours and hours of practice to be as bad as I am.

Andante I would not put you and Hello Cello in the same category.

You may not be a professional accompanist but you are still a better pianist than him and even more importantly have much greater musical knowledge and have years of professional experience as a flautist. Also, as you say, you know the flute line inside out and know exactly how things (both flute and piano) are supposed to sound.

Moving back on topic, I've never really had a lesson with an accompanist. When I learned to play the viola, my teacher didn't really play piano but my mum used to accompany me and we would play together fairly often. Now, on the oboe, I've never played with the piano (my oboe teacher can't play piano either).

Whilst I think playing together as a duo is a really important skill it's not one that you get to show off all that often. In exams you are not really being assessed as a pairing and probably don't get the opportunity to make the whole that much greater than the sum of its parts. And really there aren't all that many opportunities to play solo w/accompaniment which is why the whole forum concert thing is so good.

I don't do a big lot of accompanying - it's usually just for people that I know - but it amazes me how both soloist and accompanist can get by on one short practice. Because I know the soloists, we practise for as long as we want, and there is always something that can be further improved by spending time together - getting the balance right, knowing when to enhance and when to pipe down, knowing where blunders are a possibility, knowing where the soloist is likely to get carried away with the tempo when under pressure - all that sort of thing. I know it can be done - and is done - with one run-through before an exam, but I wouldn't fancy it myself!

I don't accompany my students very much at all. I tend to warm them up with a few scales and technical exercices, then they work acapella when learning a song and without vibrato - it's the only way we can be certain that they're actually in tune and not using the music as a crutch or the vibrato to mask off pitch notes. Once they know the song well, I may start to accompany them, but most of my students either bring their own accompanist (if they're pros in the classical world) or - if they're pros in the non classical world - professional backing tracks. I like this as it means I can keep an eye on what they're doing all the way throughout and listen completely, rather than giving any part of my concentration to the piano.

Mind you, I don't prepare people for music exams and work principally with professionals who need solutions to vocal problems quickly. If I were preparing for exams I would probably have to accompany more (and learn how to do it without losing my attention on the student - I find that really hard!)

Going back the many years since I was doing exams I'd like to throw my experience into the pot.

My teacher was a mediocre pianist - ok much better than me, but not up to putting in more than a skeleton of the accompaniment and then only on the simpler pieces. I had about 2 run throughs with the accompaniment before each exam, which for G4,5 and 6 was ok, for 8 left me desperately underprepared. This was before the accompaniment CDs were available (oh and before I had a CD player for that matter!). My teacher never came to these run throughs.

I re-took G8 and had a different accompanist. After seeing what I was playing she requested as much rehearsal time as we could fit in. It was a totally different experience, and gave me the opportunity to really work on the ensemble and musicality of the pieces. Again my teacher wasn't present.

When I did my A-level recital I had the same accompanist, but by this time had no clarinet teacher and had prepared the pieces on my own. Again we had a very useful session together, then one of the music teachers who was also a clarinet teacher came in to give me some guidance. That 1/2 hour session built on the work we'd done on the ensemble and pushed it to a new level.

In terms of both my exam preparation, but more importantly in my opinion my development as a musician, the experience I had for my 2nd G8 and A level was much more valuable.