Hey, my first post on this forum ^^;

I'm planning to do my dipABRSM on the flute. Fairly soon I have to decide whether or not to do the July exam or December exam next year.

As far as progress on the pieces is going, I would say they are fairly well progressed, but still not all that close to performance standard (except maybe one is already there).

One handy thing is, all of the pieces I did for grade 8 are on the dip syllabus! This is my programme:

Debussy Syrinx
Out of the Cool - David Heath
Bach Sonata in E Major BWV 1035
Hindemith Flute Sonata

I already know the first two movements of the Bach, the Syrinx and the first of the Hindemith from grade 8, but they do need a little more practice. Out of the cool and the final Hindemith movement (what a pain to get it right..) needs work still before I can play them through cleanly.

How long do people typically study pieces before going in for the exam? It would be about a year since deciding to do the diploma and starting to study the pieces by July for me, except of course for what I had already done for grade 8 which I had studied a fair bit before.

Doing it in December might be more comfortable as far as time, but I'm worried that I might even become a little bored of practising the pieces. Also I'd already be well into my third year at uni, which will be a distraction. I can only spend so much time practising before the summer break this year anyway, while I am coping with doing coursework and lectures.

This is turning into a very drawn out post for such a simple question.. basically I'd like to know how long people worked towards doing their diploma and how much preparation and practice they really needed to do towards it.

Welcome to the forums
I've just done my flute dip, and I started working on my pieces about 4 months ago. I'm not sure that doing the same pieces as your grade 8 would be a good idea though - I found that the pieces that I found the hardest to work on were the ones I'd done before...maybe because I needed un-learn everything I'd learnt as a less advanced player and look at it from a new perspective. And about which session...I found it a lot of work doing it this term, because I had all my uni work going on too. But not impossible
Hope this has helped!

I found one good reason for December exams in general - the results come out in February! This only matters if you don't pass all sections first time round, but it gives you a couple of months to decide whether to resit next session. With a summer entry you may have less than a week to decide whether to resit in December. It is worth taking the resit into account as well, as it's quite common to have to retake one part of the exam.

BBTOW - 4 months seems very short! You must be a really talented player.
Interesting thought about playing the grade 8 pieces. I don't really feel like I am having to unlearn anything, I spent quite a lot of time learning my grade 8 pieces, at least 6 months, so I feel confident that they are at a good standard. And actually they seem to be becoming a little easier to play since I've progressed as a player in general. What I'm really hoping is that I can refine the grade 8 pieces and use the extra time learning the rest of the music.

Which pieces did you play by the way?

andante: I'll keep that in mind as a possibility. Although I want to stay fairly positive about passing it, but I suppose if I did the July date, then there would be less time between that date and the resit which to me would be a positive thing. I'd rather have 5 months between than 7 months. Having a week to have to decide might be a pain but not too terrible.

I got a new teacher after my grade 8 as well, so started looking at the pieces from a completely different perspective - so that's probably why I found it so hard to get them up to the same standard as my new pieces. I did the Bach G min sonata, Mozart Rondo and Poulenc sonata. They're not technically the hardest on the list, so I was able to learn them in quite a short space of time One piece of advice though - start researching about the pieces/composers asap, I left it far too late even though I started at least 8 weeks before the exam!!