I'm just wondering if anybody know whether abrsm plan to change their aural tests. The scales have been revised and so has the sight reading. The aural tests unlike Trinity and London are great for a singer but I much rather do London or Trinity whereby you are given the extract and then answer questions about it. Also the other two boards scale requirements aren't as broad as abrsm - quality not quantity - as a result I intend to change Boards to reflect these strengths.

I'm afraid it's long since been chewed over and argued about - the answer would appear to be they won't, and you'll soon find there are factions which are for and against, and not afraid to state their cases on it .

*admits to being in the not-liking-singing-camp and bolts hurriedly*

I think the answer is "when h*ll freezes over" - though there may of course be a more official line...

I am interested that you use the phrase "great for a singer", because I have gradually come to the conclusion that certain sorts of test relate more to the needs of some sorts of musician than to others. For instance, hearing a long phrase for the first time and singing or playing it back from memory is something most jazz musicans need to do from time to time, but is not an essential skill in some other varieties of music; and the ability to sing a phrase at sight is far more useful to a horn player than to a pianist.

I like one component of the T/G aural test particularly: looking at notation and detecting where a heard phrase differs from it, the required aspects increasing in number with grade. This is an essential skill for a teacher, a conductor or the director of a chamber ensemble, and a desirable one for a piano-accompanist. A fairly elaborate version of this was part of one of my Part I exams, but ABRSM grade exams have nothing like it.

What part of T/G aural don't you like?

I think think the h**l freezes over contribution probably sums things up here.

My piano candidates do TG because:

• Scale demands do not increase exponentially with the higher grades.
• Aural tests are discrimination based, not voice and memory based - more pertinent to my lot.
• There is extra flexibility in the syllabus - the opportunity for pre grade 8 candidates to offer Music Knowledge in place of Sight Reading.

There is even the option to replace aural tests with something else, although I cannot remember what as none of my lot have ever expressed any interest.

They even enjoy TG aural tests, something that happened but rarely when I was an AB customer.

I am not so sure the aural test advantage applies to bass clef instrument players, as the early grades present them with treble clef melodies. That is not my problem and I do the best I can for the kids I teach.

G1-5 it's pick any two of: Sight reading, Aural, Musical knowledge, Improvisation.
G6-8 it's: Sight reading, plus one of Aural or Improvisation.

When I was at school, I did Trinity exams, and we always did sight reading and musical knowledge. I didn't know there were other options (there may not have been, at that time; I do know that at that time, there were no 'alternate pieces' outside the grade album for some of the exams I took!) In retrospect, if aural had been an option, I think it would have been harder for me to be taught it if only because there is not much you can do in a 15 minutes lesson. The theory books, which provided most of the background for the musical knowledge stuff, I used to work on those at home and race through them with great enjoyment!
I used to love the musical knowledge bit. It was just a bit of a chat with the nice person who'd listed to your performance. I memorably managed to mess it up once with naming the pitch of a not but it never felt like an interrogation session

Hmm, I wonder if I'll be allowed to do musical knowledge for my putative-upcoming-TG-G5? (on the other hand, it might be useful to get started on aural, given that I'll be doing that for subsequent exams [I'm really not yet an improvisor...])

I did Trinity exams too - back in the dark ages. It just happened to be what most teachers in that area seemed to do.

We had to do something called viva voce - sounds much like your description of musical knowledge, Maizie - I guess they changed the name at some point.

Aha! My teacher always used to call it the viva voce! So that must have been the proper name of it back then. I just picked up the name of musical knowledge because that's what it is on the current syllabus

I forgot to add the 4th reason for my change to TG for my pianists - the removal the the Grade 5 theory hurdle.

From my viewpoint, this is a pity as I enjoy teaching the syllabus. Happily, local instrumental teachers send students to me because they still need it. I often find myself teaching it to my own pianists whose instrumental\vocal teachers use AB.

I may enjoy teaching it, but I rarely find a pianist who enjoys learning it; so much of the syllabus lacks relevance to them. There are a growing band of people with grade 8 under their belt, whose exam progress would have stalled at grade 5 previously.

Hehe. I find myself teaching AB aural more now than I did when my pianists took AB exams. Instrumental teachers send pupils to me for accompaniment in their exams. Each rehearsal includes some practise in the aural tests, something that rarely happens during piano lessons with my regular pupils. Strange world.

None of my teachers have ever put me on Trinity, when i looked at the syllabus i wish i had been as the aural would have been alot more use to me, it would have also been easier for me to do and not spend many hours sat around gettin stressed bout them and i do prefer the idea of skipping the scales and doing the study instead. I am also going to ask my cello teacher during my next lesson to change board for my next grade as looking at the syllabus it suits me alot more.

It seems aural tests have been around for an awful long time.
According to the history of the AB (tucked away on the website) the first candidates sat exams in 1889 and aural tests were introduced in 1920.

Interesting that exams were around for 31 years before some idiot thought, "Hey, let's complicate them with something really useless."

The sad thing is that, 120 years on the rest of us are still trying to do something about this idiotic decision.

Hey ho.

What I thought was even more interesting (or peverse ) was that they introduced aurals before they standardised the grade system as we know it today. In the first exam session, there were only two levels "junior" and "senior." They gradually added more but only reached 8 levels in 1933.

It doesn't say when they added sight-reading and scales so maybe they have always been there.

I wonder if the minutes of 1920 meetings are still available, and what form the initial tests took?
And when and why the introduced keyboard skills (or whatever it was called) and which was available in the 1980s as an option instead of aural and why they later removed them...

*starts wondering if her English studies research group would think an analysis of why an English music exam board decided to introduce aural tests and how they have changed over the past 120 years would be worth funding*

You could also offer the opportunity to analyse the cost\benefit analysis behind introducing a theory hurdle introducing material that is irrelevant to most of the candidates forced to take the exam.