So definite practice days when we can do everything are:

Saturday and Sunday

Defintite no practice days:

Monday and Tuesday

All other days ranging from 20-40mins but lets assume 20 mins so what should I focus on in the three 20 min slots.

All two octaves

13 scales - 80% there from memory and speed
2 chromatics
3 dominants
2 diminshed
arepeggios
sight-reading
aural - is once a week enough, so at the weekend?

3 pieces of which one is purfect, two just has one problem area and three - eek!

So I need the most efficient practice and one that will help him to remember his scales, especially the chroms, dims, arps etc.

Have you seen the scales under construction series? Daughter used this on one of her instruments but I'm not sure if it's available for others. It's actually a very good idea in that there are lots of scale exercises and they can be practised with a CD.

There's also Paul Harris Improve Your Scales. These might help him work on scales and speed them up as they are less obvious than playing scales, though he would have to do both.

Not sure what to suggest on schedule in a very similar position where there just aren't enough hours in the day. Emsoboe is long past learning to play the notes she's on the more difficult slope of getting technique right at higher levels. I do know how scary it is and with three instruments it won't get any easier.

Sorry, I 'm not up to date with recent discussions or even which instrument your son is taking grade 5 in so
apologies if this reply is inappropriate! I haven't got time to trawl through old threads.

If it's grade 5 piano you are working towards, I just wanted to check you know that the scales are three octaves not two?

Argh I have accidentally closed this window TWICE now!
I used to take 3 starting notes and play every possible scale, arp etc I could be asked on each of those notes, each morning between breakfast and school, when working for G8. About 10 mins a day. Given that DS has fewer to cover, I would suggest dividing them into 3 groups to be done on weekdays, and note the tricky ones for more work at the w/e (when I suggest that you pick a few at random for him as well). Again, for weekday practice, I would look at the dodgy bits in the imperfect pieces and get him to do 5 mins on each one. Then put in 5 mins sight reading. His aural should be pretty good given his choristering, but do check!!!

I'd do arpeggios and scales in the same keys consecutively - they're kind of reinforcing. so when I just give a key, that's scale AND arpeggio, and tongued AND slurred if time, otherwise alternate each one.

These scales seem harder than when I did my G5, by the way! How about this for groupings?

G maj, E maj, B min, chromatics, D dom
F, Bb, Bb dom, Eb, Ab, Fmin, C dom
A, A min, C# min, F#min, Bb min, diminished 7th

Which pieces is he doing, did you say?

Suggestion - CD in the car for aural work?

Genius.

Paul Harris - Improve your Aural is currently attempting to improve daughter. Not sure how well that would work in a car though.

[quote name='tonedeafmum' date='May 2 2011, 04:15 PM' post='1055231']

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Paul Harris - Improve your Aural is currently attempting to improve daughter.
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TOO MANY JOKES that made my day!

Currently in London burying my head in the sand (gin) so will respond when I get back. Great ideas so far

At the moment he is doing:

A Sinfonia - nearly there
B Shepherds Hey - just started
C Scena - this is practically perfect

So do I do these pieces at every practice or can Scena be maintained by Sat/Sun practice only? I'm wondering if there is a B piece that would suit him better but I do not have any B piece music apart from Montagues, which we have ruled out.

Shepherds' Hey ? Surely that is worse than the teddy bears? I think daughter 1 did it for a clarinet exam.

Yes but given the earliest exam date could be the 6th June I may not have to suffer it for too long! On an up note it is ridiculously fast so Ds is not being asked to slow down, for once!

Steady on. That's a FINE morris tune. Rubbish on bassoon I would have thought.

1) School commute?

2) Age?

3) Other after-school commitments?

4) Other musical activities?

Back-tracking from exam date with a calendar and child following the dates with you helps to really get them to understand that an exam is actually GOING to happen.

Scales - typing up all the names of scales, arpeggios etc on slips of paper and choosing a set number to do each day at random is a forum favorite and a very good method!

Asking teachers of other instruments to help with the required scales/keys in the run-up to an exam is a great help for kids who have a variety of musical commitments.

If the school commute is long, a copy of the music that can be sounded out in the mind while reading (and visualizing any tricky fingering etc) is a time-saver, helps improve accuracy quickly, and I hope sows the seeds of sight-reading skills!

If the school doesn't forbid them, a cheapo mp3 player with the exam pieces on them also speeds things up!

And yes, it's hard on a kid to have a busy schedule, but there are times when it's unavoidable.

Just had a thought!

If the pieces are in a certain key/s is it unlikely that the scale or it's relative be asked for?

NOTHING is rubbish on a bassoon.

Interesting perhaps, but not rubbish!

off topic - whoops!

I doubt it would have much bearing.

Sorry to hijack MusicalNitWit's stress free thread (she's in gin-soaked in London anyway and hopefully won't notice ) but here at Tonedeaf Manor we are still battling the evil Grade 5 aural (Paul Harris notwithstanding).

Dreadful Daughter has now announced that she will be playing piano rather than singing back - she assures me this is easier for her but it fills me with dread. Under stress she has the musical memory of a goldfish with a hearing aid and now presumably she will have to keep the melody in her head while circumnavigating the piano and swapping seats with the examiner!

Should I encourage her to sing instead? - she has very good pitch.

ExHusband is right - we should have got ferrets instead.

I'm sure ferrets come with problems of their own.

Two of mine announced to the teacher tonight that they don't want to sit their grade six exams this term. (Well that's saved me a packet!) Alarmingly the teacher was heard muttering something about doing the same as another pupil who went straight from grade 5 to grade 8 in a very short space of time. Son is already working on grade 7 work, so missing grade 6 out will probably prevent treading water this term and give him something meaty to work at over the summer.

I'm not sure how much time you have between now and the exam but how about proposing the following arrangement. You will teach her/ let her practise playing it back on the piano for the next two weeks (or longer if you have time) provided that after this time period is up she will then have a go at singing and for the last two weeks before your exam alternate one day playing back, one day singing back.

I was older than your daughter but my piano teacher did something similar with me when I refused to sing as a teenager. In the past you used to be able to do keyboard tests for grades 6 to 8 instead of singing. I was so paranoid about singing that I didn't even want to do an exam. In the end he said that the keyboard tests were harder than singing but that the would teach me to do them provided that when I could do them satisfactorily I would then let him teach me the aural tests, including the singing and that he would leave me to decide the day of the exam what I wanted to do. Even when I went into the exam room I hadn't decided what I was going to do, but when the examiner asked me I opted for the aural tests and got a much higher score than any of my previous exams. I think the fact that I knew I had another viable option removed some of the fear and that I subconsciously realised (even if I wasn't going to admit it) that my teacher was right and the aural tests were the easier option.

This is sensible, but make sure he doesn't always practice the scales in the same order. The examiner can ask for the scales in any order, so you don't want him to be in a position where (for example) he can only play F#minor if it follows C#minor.

I had a similar 3 day schedule years ago for a piano exam. I was supposed to play each group 2 days during the week and on the 7th day pick them out of an enveloppe at random.

I'd group scales in related pairs as far as possible to help in learning which share the same key signature.
you make a good point about order Flossie but I tried for some time to follow this advice in the run up to my clarinet exam and it just didn't work for me. I needed a more ordered approach.

Er... MNW doesn't know what that means, does that mean relative minors so Db major and Bb minor for example? What about the ones that don't have a relative as a requirement, where should they be grouped?

And being totally thick, can someone write out a timetable for me and post it on this thread as I'm going round in circles with all this excellent advice...and, ahem, gin...

Tonedaftmum, was that should of had ferrets instead of children?

I'd stick to the gin, and let son deal with the tonic

MNW I think you really need to devise your own timetable - because it needs to fit in with whatever else you have going on - and the other thing I'd say is this - normal life, with normal kids, involves the unexpected, again and again. Timetable too rigidly, and you end up very very frazzled indeed - it's a recipe for feeling inadequate, and will almost certainly lead to you missing out on enjoying what kids bring to life.

Typical unexpecteds in anacrusis' household - kid one breaks bone in foot and two hours spent in A/E waiting to be xrayed and sorted, ballet put on hold until metatarsal mended, unfortunately this though co-inciding with the time kid one wanted to audition for Scottish Ballet Junior associates: kid two, unexpectedly sociable considering the parental genetics, expert at producing last minute arrangements which need to be worked round and reworked round: spouse needing to go off on recce to the other end of the country to see a man about a harpsichord, week of visit changed with very little notice because of some other gremlin in man-about-harpsichord's life, resulting in multiple rejigging of childcare, collection times, music lesson times even: self trying to meet requirement to do thirty hours' study for annual appraisal, having to squish in four evenings at the local hospital and a weekend away because so many other events got in the way the rest of the year.....it's normal family chaos in other words. We growl and grumble a bit, and try to get most of the stuff done we wanted to, but a formal timetable would drive me scatty: since you find timetabling useful, it's also best of you put that together on the basis of the advice given, so that it best suits your needs. And hopefully also your son's in the process.

29 scales/arpeggios to do over 3 practice sessions: Square brackets = related keys

1st session - concentrate on 'flat' keys (10 items)

Bb major, Eb major, [Ab major and F minor] scales and arpeggios, Bb minor, plus Dominant 7th in Bb

2nd session - concentrate on 'sharp' keys (10 items)

G major, A minor, B minor, [A major + F sharp minor]

3rd session - remaining sharp keys and other bits and pieces (9 items)

[E major + C sharp minor] Dominant 7ths in C and D, Diminished 7th on E, Chromatics on C and A

Don’t think I’ve missed anything out...

Alternatively,

Session 1 : major scales and arpeggios taken in a logical sequence (14 items)

F Bb Eb Ab

G A E

Session 2 : minor scales and arpeggios ditto (14 items)

A B F sharp C sharp

C F Bb

Session 3: Other patterns (6 items)

Dominant 7ths in Bb C D

Diminished 7th on E

Chromatics on C and A

Perhaps worth doing different combinations on different weeks and then doing the random selection thing once he is more confident?

EDIT : I can’t count, but you get the general idea….

Anacrusis!

Thankfully two out of three men are not around until each weekend so apart from potential cycling into car with blood everywhere scenario we are usually not too bad with our timetable. We lead a dull life...

SueHm - you need a pay rise!

I will go an practice now in gratitude!

I like both of these! You can tell I'm not a proper musician, I tried to be systematic but I don't know enough :-(

DS has been picked to play cricket so that's Wednesdays out!

I agree with sbhoa. I did attempt pairing "parallel" scales at one point (e.g. Bmaj and Bmin) but decided that, for me at any rate, it was necessary to embed the key signatures. Relative scales help in that respect. Now with exam time approaching and scales up to a reasonable speed I am going for a random selection with a view to reducing the thinking time between being asked a scale and actually producing it.

What would be the maximum thinking time for grade 5? The problem is going to be arpeggios in this area I think.

No idea, but I would say seconds. The ABRSM marking scheme mentions Quick, Prompt, Cautious, Poor and Very Poor or Incomplete Response.

I would have thought thinking time for arpeggios should be quicker than scales. 1st 3rd and 5th isn't much to commit to memory. In fact I reckon learning an arpeggio is a good first step to learning the scale. I do acknowledge though that different people find different things easy/hard and there's often no logoc to explain it.

First practice went well today. Luckily he'd played one of his pieces for a competition in school so we excluded that. I did each major scale and arpeggio alternating so if scale was slurred then arpeggio was tongued. E major was weak but it was slurred. Remembered all scales but some errors on arpeggios. He had an air of non-pressured confidence about him....little s*&+

Started the Montagues - went better than thought and focused on tenor clef troubles in one section so will do next section tomorrow.

I still need to get my head around aural and sight-reading but I think I will save that for weekends.

Feel positive today - that will change as all of DS cricket matches are away so home by 7:30pm every Wednesday as of next week!

Thank you for the support. Now off to do the minors as tomorrow will only be 20mins and we'll be on SueHM's schedule!

...well, I was just saying....
doesn't anyone else have occasional crises which put the best-laid plans to rout? The serious subtext of what I was saying remains: leave space for leeway, and opportunities to enjoy spontaneous happenings, that way if non-enjoyable ones come up, you don't feel so pressured, and now and again you also get a great boost from the right sort of spontanaity.

I have to say - all the scheduling I've seen in this thread strikes me as anything but stress free, and believe me, I know what stress looks like, in my line of work .

I do all the time I have decided it is one of the occupational hazards of having children

We'd picked out names and everything - but, fool that I was, I insisted on children instead....
Sigh ....

Practice sounds like it's going ok so far - well done to you both.

At the moment Daughter and I are having a crash course in identifying the character, style and period of music courtesy of the future Mr Tonedeaf (Paul Harris )

This is B1's translation for 10 year olds -
Baroque = fiddly bits - like Brighton Pavillion
Classical = normal - like Grandma's radio
Romantic = sad - like people in the rain
Modern (20th/21st Century) = none of the above.

It's only now I regret that poor B1 has grown up listening mostly to show tunes, worship music, and local radio pop - none of these styles figure highly on the ABRSM syllabus.

If you've time in your busy schedule - pop Classic FM or similar on in the background - and get him talking about it.

I have a colleague who, when under stress at work, sets detailed timetables to ensure that everything gets done. This then leads to everyone else getting hacked off as it means that they get their heads bitten off each time they have a question or a task which the colleague "CAN'T DO BECAUSE THEY ARE TOO BUSY". So I do try not to get timetable bound but just point out to my children that there is only a limited time in the day and it is obviously better to practice when they're not tired. DS1's piano teacher tells us that his mother would get him out of bed to practice at 10.30 at night if he hadn't done it in the daytime... I think he may be maligning her but I do remind DS1 that I'm not the meanest mummy in the world...

Sigh.....
I need a stress free schedule for my life! I got home yesterday to hear that apparently she is doing Gr 6 violin this term. She does not know her scales at all. Last term she was entered for her theory and I (We?) spent every morning doing theory before school. It was pretty stressful....... She was only half way thro the Gr 3 book at the time. I told her if she were my pupil, I wouldn't enter her- and she rose to the challenge.
So I have now tried that today- and she did practice properly without my supervision (YAY- one battle over for today). My pupils doing their grade 6 next term know more scales than she does! And she hasn't even chosen her B piece yet!
I was lying awake worrying about that last night! I thought we'd be ok, when piano teacher and I decided to put Gr 3 off til next term. Violin teacher had said they were 'Technique developing' and not doing exams for a bit... and I thought "YAY".
DD is vvvvvvv busy- she is a gymnast- doing stupid hours too! She also has lots of homework, school exams coming up (she's in 'scholarship set'- pressure!)...... On the plus side, she has just given up scouts and i've nearly persuaded her to give up ballet....... She is also in school teams... and like you MNW, she has some away matches this term!

Help me.... how am we going to cope (gym comp in July too, with a new heavier partner- so no let up there)

I think instead of a musical soiree to soothe our souls, we should all just meet up in London and hit a few wine bars!

Come and live in France - there's lots of wine and exams are only once every four years

Can I come too???!!! That sounds bliss... The 4 months I spent working in France during my summer break after 1st year uni were some of the most relaxed, enjoyable, most memorable months ever!!!

I should have added as well for MusicalNitWit that there are no scales either

But actually in reality I find the system excessively rigid

I get that impression from several posts from you and the other french living forumites... But I love France... Love the culture and way of life...

Tempting ......

hmmm I'm just remembering Cafe Bordeaux... such a long time since I was out with the girls...

If a student has two pieces near perfect, is once a week enough on a tight schedule?

If they are near perfect then playing and practising (not necessarily the same thing) those pieces once a week could well be enough and will help to avoid boredom.
At grade 5 (or any other...) level once a week practice is not really enough and though an able child might get away with it I think that there is a strong possibility that this would not be the case for too much longer.

Yes - get him to read that book by the Chinese 'Tiger mother' - Amy Chua(?)!

What is perfect? Emsoboe has taken lots of exams but I don't think we've ever thought she has had pieces "nearly perfect". There always seems to be so much that can be done to improve them.

Sbhoa is right that it's very difficult to practice an instrument once a week and maintain any sort of standard. We've been in this situation with oboe and Flute recently, where other instruments take over and these two lose out. It's now taking a lot of work to get them where they need to be and no way are they as strong just now as the instruments that have had the most focus.

The only way to deal with being a multi-instrumentalist is to rotate practice. It might be a case of focusing on one or two instruments and letting the others lie in the back ground until exam or whatever is out of the way.

He isn't practicing once a week but there are some things he needs to get on top of and with a tight schedule each evening I was wondering if he can leave his songs that are strong (well strong enough to get into RCM) to once a week for now?