Just to find out whether people actually judge a musician by their grades or not, as I have noticed a lot of articles recently on the students forum where people are comparing their grades and marks. I know that we are on the forum for an exam board, so it's obviously going to be one of the topics, and that people have done really well in their exams, but a musician isn't just a piece of paper!
I used to be a self-taught musician, and I have only had 'proper' lessons for two years while I am taking my GCSE Music. At junior school, the actions and words of one of my teacher's eventually lead me to believe that I was worthless as a musician, as I didn't have any grades and didn't fit into her idea of what a 'proper' musician should be (ie. grades, proper teacher etc) It was only at secondary school that our amazing music teachers actually made me feel proud of what i'd achieved.
Unfortunately, there seem to be a lot of people who think that grades show exactly who a musician is, and people think that if you have low or no grades you aren't a very good musician. After i had passed my grade 1 flute, I was playing pieces of grade 4/5 standard, but because i hadn't done these grades yet, i felt a bit out of place on the board.
There are also teachers who think that grades are everything, as one of my friends has discovered. She has spent a number of years going methodically through the grades, at her teacher's request, only to reach grade 5, hate music, and think that there is no point going to lessons because she doesn't want to do grade 6 and therefore has nothing to do.
I'm sorry if this has offended anyone in any way (not quite sure how it could but i suppose it could have done) but i would be interested to see what people thought of grades and what you would think of someone with lower grades - are they just as good?
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Grades don't mean you've got the same experience. You can be a grade 8 player and not have played in bands or orchestras. To quote one of my friends when we were talking about this yesterday "You can be a trained monkey and pass the grades, but it doesn't necessarily mean you have good musicianship"
But grades are nice to have as a benchmark, and make you feel like you've achieved something. I don't agree with competition which comes with it though, like people thinking that if someone did grade X younger than them, they think they're worthless, it defeats the point of why we play music!
But grades are nice to have as a benchmark, and make you feel like you've achieved something. I don't agree with competition which comes with it though, like people thinking that if someone did grade X younger than them, they think they're worthless, it defeats the point of why we play music!
We talk about grades all the time because...I guess it's just a way of showing our ability.
I mean of course there are such things like people who can play higher grade pieces, compared to th exam they are taking.
I mean i personally dont like to compare using grades (-________-")
but if someone were at a lower grade, I would just support them you know,,,give them tips and things when they ask, eventho im not the super pro one.
As i am of a low grade myself, i have had people comparing against me..especially if they are younger...and its just sickening. i just ignore them
I mean of course there are such things like people who can play higher grade pieces, compared to th exam they are taking.
I mean i personally dont like to compare using grades (-________-")
but if someone were at a lower grade, I would just support them you know,,,give them tips and things when they ask, eventho im not the super pro one.
As i am of a low grade myself, i have had people comparing against me..especially if they are younger...and its just sickening. i just ignore them
| QUOTE (missfabflute @ Jan 4 2005, 06:21 PM) |
| As i am of a low grade myself, i have had people comparing against me..especially if they are younger...and its just sickening. i just ignore them |
[QUOTE]
Yeah, I try to do that too, it just really gets on my nerves when people constantly seem to be "well i was such-and-such an age when i took grade 7 and i got ***marks for it and blah blah blah.."
sorry, just letting off a bit of steam!
Grades do not show how good you as a musician. For instance James Galway, a famous flute player has never taken a Grade exam. People can play to a great 8 standard but might play as well musically if they have been force fed the grades. So far I have done grades 1,2,3,4,5,6 on the flute but only because I want to. There is more to music than grade exams. 
I think grades are useful benchmarks, but no more... and it is possible to pass grade 8 and not have the best technique or be the best musician in the world.
As someone who's almost entirely self taught, I've only just started taking grades on the flute. I jumped right in at grade 4... however, when I was 18 I did my a-level recital on the flute, for which your pieces have to be grade 6 plus. My scales, however, took a lot of catching up, and I decided I'd much rather give myself confidence jumping in at a lower grade than try and do grade 6 and possibly fail. I also had a teacher who wrecked my musical confidence (sadly, I had mine during my secondary years, so it's taken a while to redeem the experience!) and I did the exam mainly to prove to myself that I can play the flute, and play it well. I plan to progress through the grades, but not to be able to say "Hey, look at me, I am a great musician", but for my own satisfaction and because I already teach a couple of beginners, and would like to expand that. I'm not planning on rushing through them, either... I know people who got to G8 with distinction, particularly on the violin, and then went back to bowing open strings so that their teachers could correct all the technique errors they had picked up over the years! to me, that is insane... I'd rather progress more slowly and be totally solid with technique, so that when I do my grade 8 I sail through it and wow the examiner... well, that's the plan, anyway....
I have a friend who has had a grand total of one clarinet lesson in his LIFE - he's been playing... oh less than 6 years I'm certain, and I think actually less time than that... he just took his grade 6 (the second exam he's ever taken on it) and got 133. So it just goes to show that self-taught musicians can certainly "make the grade".
As has been pointed out, some of our best musicians have never taken a grade exam... when it comes down to it, a piece of paper saying you can play to such-and-such a standard doesn't mean a lot unless it's backed up by consistent performance at that level. Anyone who looks down on your because of your lack of certificates, well, it's their problem quite honestly... they will be sick as a parrot when you skip4 grades and then zoom up to grade 8 with distinction
hehe. so ignore them - it's their problem. I know it's easier said than done, but as your playing improves and your confidence grows, you will prove yourself, both to yourself and to them, and you can then just smile sweetly and know in your head that the bits of paper mean nothing compared to actual ability to play.
As someone who's almost entirely self taught, I've only just started taking grades on the flute. I jumped right in at grade 4... however, when I was 18 I did my a-level recital on the flute, for which your pieces have to be grade 6 plus. My scales, however, took a lot of catching up, and I decided I'd much rather give myself confidence jumping in at a lower grade than try and do grade 6 and possibly fail. I also had a teacher who wrecked my musical confidence (sadly, I had mine during my secondary years, so it's taken a while to redeem the experience!) and I did the exam mainly to prove to myself that I can play the flute, and play it well. I plan to progress through the grades, but not to be able to say "Hey, look at me, I am a great musician", but for my own satisfaction and because I already teach a couple of beginners, and would like to expand that. I'm not planning on rushing through them, either... I know people who got to G8 with distinction, particularly on the violin, and then went back to bowing open strings so that their teachers could correct all the technique errors they had picked up over the years! to me, that is insane... I'd rather progress more slowly and be totally solid with technique, so that when I do my grade 8 I sail through it and wow the examiner... well, that's the plan, anyway....
I have a friend who has had a grand total of one clarinet lesson in his LIFE - he's been playing... oh less than 6 years I'm certain, and I think actually less time than that... he just took his grade 6 (the second exam he's ever taken on it) and got 133. So it just goes to show that self-taught musicians can certainly "make the grade".
As has been pointed out, some of our best musicians have never taken a grade exam... when it comes down to it, a piece of paper saying you can play to such-and-such a standard doesn't mean a lot unless it's backed up by consistent performance at that level. Anyone who looks down on your because of your lack of certificates, well, it's their problem quite honestly... they will be sick as a parrot when you skip4 grades and then zoom up to grade 8 with distinction
hehe. so ignore them - it's their problem. I know it's easier said than done, but as your playing improves and your confidence grows, you will prove yourself, both to yourself and to them, and you can then just smile sweetly and know in your head that the bits of paper mean nothing compared to actual ability to play.
There is a lot of hype about grades and I personally think that even people of supposedly the same standard grade-wise can be totally different. I recently accompanied three Grade 3 violin exams in a row, and as a violinist I could see that they all had their own way of playing and they all have their good and bad points. There is no such thing as a "perfect" player; a lot of it is a matter of taste, and everyone is different!!
However grades are a reasonable benchmark - there would be no point to them otherwise. Take a situation like this: say I'm setting up a string quartet and I want the players to be around Grade 8 standard. If I heard of two cellists, for example, one of whom had Grade 8 and the other of whom had Grade 7, I would want to hear both of them play before I decided which one I wanted in my quartet. However, if I had two applicants for the place, one of which had Grade 8, and the other of which had Grade 6, I would almost certainly take the Grade 8 player. (Unless, of course, the Grade 6 player had a really high mark and the Grade 8 player a really low one!) Also, if there was a Grade 8 cellist applying, and also a cellist that didn't take exams, I would want to hear both of them as well.
Grades are not the be-all and end-all of playing - one of the reasons I don't take exams on the horn is because I get fed up of people asking what grade I'm on. Also, I can do without the stress of the exams - better to enjoy your playing and not have it all twisted up. I think nobody should push themselves to do exams - if you're not sure whether you'll make it, ask your teacher, who will give you the honest answer. I knew I wanted good marks in all my exams, and for this reason I didn't care how long it took me - I was prepared to wait before taking them to ensure I did well.
If you want to be a professional musician, it's an idea to have your Grade 8, but don't rush into anything!!
However grades are a reasonable benchmark - there would be no point to them otherwise. Take a situation like this: say I'm setting up a string quartet and I want the players to be around Grade 8 standard. If I heard of two cellists, for example, one of whom had Grade 8 and the other of whom had Grade 7, I would want to hear both of them play before I decided which one I wanted in my quartet. However, if I had two applicants for the place, one of which had Grade 8, and the other of which had Grade 6, I would almost certainly take the Grade 8 player. (Unless, of course, the Grade 6 player had a really high mark and the Grade 8 player a really low one!) Also, if there was a Grade 8 cellist applying, and also a cellist that didn't take exams, I would want to hear both of them as well.
Grades are not the be-all and end-all of playing - one of the reasons I don't take exams on the horn is because I get fed up of people asking what grade I'm on. Also, I can do without the stress of the exams - better to enjoy your playing and not have it all twisted up. I think nobody should push themselves to do exams - if you're not sure whether you'll make it, ask your teacher, who will give you the honest answer. I knew I wanted good marks in all my exams, and for this reason I didn't care how long it took me - I was prepared to wait before taking them to ensure I did well.
If you want to be a professional musician, it's an idea to have your Grade 8, but don't rush into anything!!
I think really you need to look on grades as "useful"... they are a useful benchmark of how you are doing, they are useful as a qualification, they are useful to determine how well someone is doing on the instrument, they are useful as an incentive to progress... but once grade become the be-all and end-all, and all people care about is how many they have under their belts, that's when it starts to become the end, rather than a mean to an end!
It's always worth hearing someone play before you judge how good their playing is - as Cheeble said, two players of the same grade can be very different and will certainly have different strengths and weaknesses. And although the exams are moderated, even then different examiners are going to pick up on different things - it is possible that two examiners listening to the same exam could give different marks in the various elements, though one would hope that the totals would even out!
If anyone judges your playing from what grade exam you've done, without taking into account how long you've been playing, the marks you've got, the experience you have, etc, and without listening to you play, then they are behaving very ignorantly. And on the other hand, it can be dangerous to judge someone's playing from just hearing them: I know from experience that it's entirely possible to have a polished and musical performance of 3 grade 6 pieces backed up by little sight-reading ability (apart from that transferred from other instruments), not very good knowledge of the "geography" of the flute and no clue about scales (my A Level recital!). So... Be the best you can... use the grades, they are useful. Don't make them your aim, though: they are something to help you towards the aim of being a good musician!
It's always worth hearing someone play before you judge how good their playing is - as Cheeble said, two players of the same grade can be very different and will certainly have different strengths and weaknesses. And although the exams are moderated, even then different examiners are going to pick up on different things - it is possible that two examiners listening to the same exam could give different marks in the various elements, though one would hope that the totals would even out!
If anyone judges your playing from what grade exam you've done, without taking into account how long you've been playing, the marks you've got, the experience you have, etc, and without listening to you play, then they are behaving very ignorantly. And on the other hand, it can be dangerous to judge someone's playing from just hearing them: I know from experience that it's entirely possible to have a polished and musical performance of 3 grade 6 pieces backed up by little sight-reading ability (apart from that transferred from other instruments), not very good knowledge of the "geography" of the flute and no clue about scales (my A Level recital!). So... Be the best you can... use the grades, they are useful. Don't make them your aim, though: they are something to help you towards the aim of being a good musician!
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