Is there anyone who has achieved grade 8 theory entirely self taught? If so, how?!

My personal circumstances mean I'm unable to have lessons, so I'm starting by working through the Butterworth Harmony in Practice because it has an answer book. The main difficulty I'm finding is knowing whether an answer that differs from the book is actually wrong, or just different.

Incidentally I have an M.Ed, so I'm quite well versed in how people learn things, which is how I managed my grade 8 practical, also self taught.

Any advice would be appreciated.

If you have access to a keyboard I really recommend working through the Dorothy Pilling Harmonisaton at the Keyboard series, but do it gradually and thoroughly. This pays dividends in fleshing out what you're doing on paper (though I know the Butterworth books also recommend playing through the exercises.).

If you can't have a teach are you able to find somebody else working on the same thing and go through it together, playing each other your compositional technique stuff? Also listening to as much of the relevant styles of music as possible and trying to hear harmonies, bass lines etc.

Also the AB publications e.g. the workbook and Music Theory in Practice are useful. But at this level you have to really go through them carefully, not just skim and do a few exercises. This kind of stuff needs really reinforcing.

Good luck - grade 8 theory is fun!

No advice but I popped in to say Croeso Gwyn.

I must say I have great admiration for anyone who manages Grade 8 theory self taught. I don't know whether I'd have got my grade 8 theory by my self. I would agree that best thing you can do for questions 1 and 2 in particular is to study as many scores of trio sonatas and piano music as possible. after a while you will get the feel for what they should be like.

I did Grade 8 Theory completely self-taught (i.e. by reading that ABRSM theory book), and I got 91/100... I guess for lower grade theories it's better to get a teacher but higher grades you can do it just be leisure reading

But it's kinda sad.....after grade 8 there's no diplomas for it

I know I feel like there's still so much I don't know.

There aren't any AB theory diplomas but Trinity Guildhall do them. You can do ATCL, LTCL and FTCL in theory. The recommended books and past papers are a little difficult to come by, but I managed to get them in the end. The syllabus is on the TG website.

The link is TG website and if you click on the link in the panel on the right hand side of the page it'll open a pdf document that tells you all about it.

I did Grade 8 self taught, although I had covered all the material necessary when I was in college many years ago. I found that I hadn't forgotten very much of it, so it was a fairly easy thing to do.

What instrument did you teach yourself and broadly how did you do it.
Dora (interested)

I taught myself and ended up learning it all in 2 weeks (whilst being a full time medical student on placement!) so it's completely "do-able". I only got a merit, but considering what little work I'd put in, I was pleased. I used the ABRSM workbook and past papers with model answers to assist me. Good luck!

I've been teaching myself grade 8 theory. Again, it was a lot of the stuff that I'd covered in my music degree, but I find that I now understand it much better than I ever did in my degree because of it. I wanted to take TG Grade 8 but I'm having problems finding a centre near me that runs the theory exams so I might go back to thinking about taking Grade 8 with AB. I'm quite interested in these theory diplomas offered by TG though.

Errr, theory. Check OP

The OP doesn't specify which instrument, it merely says Grade 8 Practical.

I'm considering teaching myself grade 8 theory over the next couple of years so that I will have the 'grade 8 at practical and theory' A level equivalent most music courses seem to want. Out of interest, has anyone here self-taught it successfully without having done something like a music degree first?

While not exactly self-taught, I did pass Grade 8 with only a handful of lessons from a tutor, in a group class of four, and I passed the exam after roughly 4 months, with no music degree to fall back on either. I needed to do lots of reading, past papers, and a timed mock exam first though...

denmark

I didn't have a music degree

Sorrrry! When I wrote it I didn't look at the whole post. (Smacked wrist, and stands in the naughty corner)