We did 2 Grade 4 Pianos and a Grade 2 Singing.
Things did not always go smoothly.
Jamie's piano teacher theatened to send him home if he didn't learn the scales about 3 weeks before the exam. He did then learn the correct fingering!!!
Beth's singing seemed fairly poor a couple of weeks before her exam but it all came together at the end and I thought she sounded fine. I await the comments sheet with interest to see what is actually expected.
We were late for the exams today due to an accident but people moved things round and she was allowed to do both. I'm very grateful to everyone who made that happen. It is the first time we've been late to the conservatoire and I guess I'd done that journey 100 times.
I do now think that aural can be improved but I'm not going to work out how much I've spent on aural in the last 12 months. My plan is to continue investing in aural for another 18 months from now and hopefully that will be enough.
Jamie is going to do his Grade 5 Theory in March but apart from that he won't do another exam before next November/December.
Beth is due to do Grade 6 Sax next time and Grade 7 Flute in the summer. I have a horrible feeling that might be joined by her Grade 5 Piano.
But for now it is over.
Dora

You are a hero for organising and orchestrating all this - congratulations on all the hard work to you all and good luck for the results.

It's a big relief when it's all over. Best of luck for the results.

We join the wait today. Only Grade 7 Flute this time to get through luckily. Don't think we could have coped with much more on top of Concerts and NYRO audition.. Next time Grade 8's in Recorder and Sax look very likely (wish it wasn't the case). I'm not even thinking about the summer yet.

Dora Emsoboe has had enormous amount of help with Aural (she still struggles) from the Junior Department. I was very suprised, and pleased, as the Flute exam is not through them. Wondered if Birmingham are/can give Beth the same.

Wow, that's a lot of exams. I'm impressed and amazed at how you manage these.

I feel stressed and worn out just from the NCO and Music school audition in October and Grade 4 singing this term (along with the numerous concerts around the country).

Think that we have a Violin exam coming up in March and possibly another singing and piano exam in July, and perhaps a couple of auditions next term- that's about it.

We haven't given aurals a lot of extra thought so far and she's managed reasonably well, but as she moves to a much higher grade now, and every mark becomes important to her, I was thinking of getting some extra lessons for her just in case. People have mentioned Hofnote here and I was thinking of looking into that. As nonmusimum mentioned, the Junior conservatoire does give extra aural lessons to students in leading up to the exam, and although these were only 3 sessions last time around, these seemed adequate then.

Good luck with all the results and hope the Christmas break is a relaxing one for you!

Beth gets aural lessons and chamber choir at Birmingham. Plus of course singing lessons. We were part way through organising additional help with Birmingham when a different solution presented itself which was ideal for us.

I think Beth had a bad start with aural. She was very nervous about it and put off the Grade 1 Piano for at least a year because of her unwillingness to do aural. I'm sure she was well prepared for the Grade 1 aural in the end but only two terms later did her Grade 3 flute with no aural work at all. I didn't realise that there was aural after Grade 1!!! The result was not good.
Two terms after that she managed the Grade 4 flute aural without a problem so I was lulled into a false sense of security.
Two terms after that she got 9 for a Grade 5 aural and that was when I brought in the really big guns. She has had tons of individual aural work in the last year and the difference is amazing. My guess is that I could pull most of the extra support now and she'd be fine but I don't feel like testing my theory out.
I figure we are 18 months off a Grade 8 and after that we will back right off the aural provided that she does well enough.

Good luck to Emsoboe for her Grade 7 Flute.
Dora

Thank you!

I'm not being funny but how can you judge when Grade 8 will happen? I'm asking because I know other people who predict in this way.

We have set goals of the next exam but never much beyond that. It's a good job really as Oboe and Recorder have taken longer than Sax between Grade 7 and 8. I pretty much predicted when Sax would happen after Grade 7 (with the knowledge of a good result) but couldn't have done so after Grade 5.

I think Grade 8 Oboe will be in the Summer, along with 6 Piano, but it is a wild guess based on where she's at technically and with the pieces.

Our aim is to be pretty much finished with exams by the Christmas of year 11 (except Piano). It's a vain hope though rather than a done deal

I started by assuming a grade a year but that hasn't worked most of the time.
In the case of the flute our teacher said Grade 7 sometime this academic year and Grade 8 sometime the following academic year. Although the Grade 7 is at the far end of her estimate I think that is partly because the teacher is going to be away for January, so we are getting lessons through December, and I think she doesn't want a gap before the exam. My gut feeling is that progress is good so to leave a year between Grade 7 and 8 feels right.

At the lower grades, all my current experience is only up to Grade 5, we seem to take 2 terms a grade for everything except the piano. I can see that it might take longer at the higher grades but that still fits in with her teacher's estimate.

I think we will be done with Grade exams on the flute and the sax by the end of year 10 and the piano during year 11. But Beth is sneaking clarinet lessons in with her current and former (when she is around) sax teachers and I suspect she will want to take exams on the clarinet which may well take us past year 11. Plus I don't know at what point she will want to quit singing lessons. According to her speech therapist singing can be terrific for Beth's language problem because it engages both sides of the brain.

Obviously this isn't a race but I would like to ensure that the A level years are not too overloaded. But Beth wants to do A level Music at the Conservatoire, which she can do once she is 14. I have no doubt that she could follow the course if she wanted to but her writing is years behind her chronological age so the question is can we deal with that in time.

So I may be worrying about the wrong years in that it may be her GCSE years that are toughest for her. This is particularly the case because she is very good at Maths and if she opts to do 2 Maths A levels she might have a pretty easy ride at A level.

If that really looks like being the case I might persuade her to put the sax and clarinet on hold and take them up in the sixth form.

And of course it is entirely possible that she will decide she wants to be a vet next week. In which case I will change course with my normal enthusiasm.
Dora

I think you have there exactly why I don't try to look too far into the future. Often it's the things you don't expect that leap in and change things.

Beths situation sounds very similar to Emsoboe. She generally took two terms to an exam, just ofer a year between grades 5 and 7 Sax. Piano has been quick over the last 2 years but there was an examless spell.

It's only now on the last round up that I feel more able to predict when things will happen. GCSE Music generally slowed some things down last year and we had to be careful about what happened when. I don't think we would have seen that ahead of time.