I have only ever suggested to my pupils that they try out small tricky-looking sections of the sight-reading test during their 30 seconds preparation. However, it has come to my attention that some people actually try to have a run-through of the whole thing (achievable in the early Grades) before giving a final "performance" to be marked.

I have questions!

1) Is it really ok to play it all through - that's not quite sight-reading is it?

2) I am afraid of a run-through being mistaken for the actual test, so, how does the pupil indicate to the examiner that they haven't started yet?


I never tried out a note of it in my own exams, but that's because during the 30 seconds I was sitting like a rabbit in headlights with nothing but white-noise going on in my head!!

1: My teacher always said to work on the tricky bits in prep - I feel that is sensible. Why spend valuable time playing what is already easy enough?
2: The examiner has always told me when to start the test proper so I practice until he says
Yes it can feel like the rabbit - but I have learned, after earlier panics, to move on and treat the test as a clinical exercise.

I was told off by the examiner in my grade 7 piano exam for playing too much of the sightreading test. I didn't play it all. I think there needs to be some clarification about this as it could really upset a candidate to be pulled up like that. I still don't know how much "too much" is.

I tell my pupils to use the 30 seconds (although from what they've told me the examiner always gives them 1 minute) to look at the key signature, make sure they take note of any sharps or flats, look for accidentals, and try out any parts which look awkward. In the early grades they can easily play through the whole piece within that time and the examiner will tell them when to start their actual performance.

I think that it's only LCM who specify that you are not allowed to play through the whole of the sight reading test during the preparation time.

I usually try to do the first couple of bars, the last few bars and anything else in between that looks a bit tricky until the examiner tells me to start.

If your sight reading another good thing, especially for the higher grades is to make sure whats over the other side of the page. Especially g6 and above they can give you quite nasty things your not ready for

In my last exam I tried to play as much as I could before the examiner told me my time was up. I found it really helpful as it gave me a 'feel' for the piece. I think you can use the 30 seconds as you wish.

I agree about the clarification - last year, one of my grade 3 pupils (not very good at sight-reading) had a quick look at the piece and then just went straight into it and played it (NOT what she'd been told to do but there you go).

The examiner then told her that she could have another go, because she'd not 'used her time' and so the first was just a practise go.

She scored 17, higher than ever before or ever after !

To answer the questions precisely:

1) Yes; you can do whatever you like in the 30 seconds' preparation time. You could whistle it if you felt so inclined, I expect.

2) It's the examiner who indicates to the candidate when to start the preparation, when to stop preparing and when to commence the marked "performance".

My daughter was told not to play too much as it would then be taken as the real thing. I can't remember whether that was by the examiner in her grade 8 piano LCM or her grade 8 sax ABRSM

Thanks everyone! I still feel this is rather a mixed bag of responses - some saying you can play as much as you like and some saying that this has back-fired occasionally. I did read something a while back on this forum where a pupil had a go at the sightreading and the examiner then took that as the performance - which meant she didn't do as well as she could have done. As the teacher, I really want to give my pupils the best advice and avoid anything unexpected like that - or as AliciaOcean says above - their being told off for playing too much!

I am inclined to stick with my current process - advising that they pretend to play it - without pressing down the keys - and maybe play a tricky bit for real.

If I found out immediately after an exam that this had happened to one of my students a complaint would go in well be fore the issue of results.

Unless you have a candidate who is a particularly good sight-reader, and therefore could play the piece all the way through (in AB exams this has never been objected to in my experience, and I've done it many times myself), the advice I give is:

1. Tempo, time signature, key signature (title, if applicable)
2. Look all the way through to find any rhythmic or melodic patterns
3. Get hands/fingers in right position for the start
4. Play the beginning and the end, then hopefully it will at least begin and end well
5. Look through for any other awkward bits, and if time, try them; check dynamics

That said, very few pupils actually choose to follow this advice and most still insist on trying to play through as much as possible during the 30 seconds I think that by only attempting to do this, they often miss very obvious things like, for example, the left hand moves down one note in each bar etc.

The piece of advice I'd still stand by 100% is that candidates should play something during the 30 seconds, especially now as the examiners tend to say "have a look through this piece and try out any bits you want to". My feeling is that if you play nothing and the performance is a disaster, the examiner could quite rightly turn round and say "well you didn't try any of it out", whereas, if you've played something and it's a disaster, the examiner is more likely to say "well at least you tried and approached it in the right way".

For grade 7, I looked at the music, burst out laughing because the luck of the draw had dealt me a cracker: the examiner raised an eyebrow, I apologised, read the rest of the music in my head, as near as I could, spotted some likely gremlins, made shift to play those once or twice, and was then told, right, that's enough. I think it is one of those things which will be a bit individual, really - I'd regard it as not the done thing to play it all through, but I think the examiner also felt that my doing the tricky bit twice could negate the sightreadingy aspect of it.
The cracker they dealt me? I'd spent some time trying to get triplet rhythms into my head, as my sense of rhythm is pretty apalling - my teacher had been so patient, and still they'd not behave themselves for me. Then the examiner only goes and gives me duplets in a compound time piece .

As people are not entirely in agreement as to how much you are allowed to play in the preparation time, why not contact the Board and ask them directly to confirm the regulation definitively? And then you can report back and tell us all what we should be advising our pupils.

(Alternatively you could read 35 different opinions and then go back to doing exactly what you were doing anyway... )

Against my advice some of my younger pupils (boys!) try to play the whole thing through very fast so as to get through it once in 30 seconds. This, of course does not work.
It takes most of my Grade 1 pupils a full 30 seconds and more to find the starting position of each hand. They are amazed that it is then too late to do anything else.

As far as I know you can spend your 30 seconds doing anything you like(!). I am the world's worst teacher when it comes to sight reading. Well, either that or I've got the world's worst pupils. Last week I spent a lot of time saying encouragingly "Well, it wasn't a complete disaster."

30 seconds is far too short. It should be a minute for Grades 1 and 2, a minute and a half for Grades 3 and 4 and two minutes for the rest. That would be much more like real life. But then I suppose we would have to pay more for longer exams.

Point taken Czerny
To be honest - I assumed that everyone knew far better than me and I would be given a definitive guide.

Aquarelle - It may be that your younger pupils just don't realise how fast the time is passing. I remember having no idea how long 30 seconds lasted and having no clue how much I could get done in the time. At first, I give them a running commentary on what to do in what order - pushing them to get their hands in position quickly and then what to look for next, telling them when 15 seconds is up etc. We start with a minute and gradually work down to 30 seconds. I find that this helps them to get the measure of how fast to work. It doesn't always work though!

I sometimes take a page or two of sight-reading tests and simply go from one to the next seeing how quickly they can find the hand positions, making sure they understand that the number on its own does not tell them which note to play. Certainly in Grades 1 and 2 it's half the battle if they start in the correct position (and a bit of a disaster if they don't!).

I also tell them to take a "snapshot" of the beginning of the piece as quickly as possible, encompassing tempo / character (i.e. "Like a march"), key, time sig, hand pos, opening dynamic. Then scan through the rest of the piece looking for any patterns, jumps, tricky rhythms, dynamic changes and articulation.

My other "tip" is to concentrate on the broad picture of the dynamics so there is some variation even if they don't manage to get all the subtleties.

I have just had this response from the ABRSM.


"Thank you for your email. Candidates have 30 seconds to look through and play through the test they are given as they wish. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any further queries.

Kind regards,

Sara Trepte

Administrative Assistant, Syllabus

ABRSM"

I'm very happy about this. I was clearly being overcautious in the past.

Yes, I do that too and I also have a very nice old fashioned "clock face" stopwatch which I use to time them and let them play about with so that they get some idea of the length of time 30 seconds represents. This all helps but I still think 30 seconds is too short for the early grades - especially as some of the children doing these grades are quite young.

Off topic but still about time passing: ten weeks before an exam I give the younger ones a picture of a rocket with sections on it showing a count down to zero. Each week they colour in a section so they start to understand that time does pass and that you can't procrastinate for ever because lift off will eventually arrive. They like this and it does help to focus them.

My son has done 15 abrsm graded exams (Grade 2 in violin and recorder, 1-7 piano and 1-8 flute (skipped 6). up til and including grade 5 he always played through the test. He always got distinction, in every exam , and no-one ever told him not to just play through. Th examiner always indicated when time was up and that the real attempt was now to be played. grade 6+, he didnt have time so looked for repeated bits etc. About to do Dip AbrsM in flute - sight-reading rather longer....

I love that idea!

See Post #10...

Yeah, yeah, OK OK, many thanks to Czerny - who was right all along. I will know who to listen to in future

To help with the key signature and the right position a quick octave scale, or an arpeggio can help, and can help to remind the fingers when to aim at a black not.

Yes, I think that was mine at grade 1. I asked her if she wanted me to complain and she said no. It was only years later that she admitted to me that she had been upset by it. Normally used to get 19 or 20 for sight-reading.

The trouble with looking for the awkward bits in the sight-reading is that you often don't know which are the awkward bits till you hit them. They're not always the bits with more ink per square cm!

I can usually spot potential banana skins on a quick scan... (flute) But 30 seconds is unbelieveably quick - I run out of time far too quickly.

My list of things to do is:

1: Key signature- check first and final notes and quick scan for accidentals to get an idea of key and minor /major. Spot any nice scale/arpeggio passages
2. Time signature - and check for triplets/fiddly rhythms/ grouping if an uneven time sig (5/4 or similar)
3. Quick scan for notes with lots of ledger lines
4. Establish rhythm of 1st couple of bars in my head - pick nice "safe" speed and try to get time in my head
5. Finger through first couple of bars and last bar in rhythm (by now probably out of time)
6. If time, play a bar or two with a clear rhythm to firmly establish chosen beat
7. Keep chosen beat in head and finger through potential banana skins

Hope for the best, and try and end at the right time on the right note.

I did approach the Board about this, maybe as much as 20 years ago.

In those days the performance section of GCSE music included unprepared performance and one option was sight-reading. They were invited to play through the test twice (though with no appreciable "preparation" time) and were then marked on the better of the two. I asked the Board if they didn't think this would perhaps be a good option, since it would probably not take up much more time, if any. Their response was that it wasn't always easy to assess which of the two was the "better" (??just give them both marks and use the higher of the two??) and that often candidates tried it through once with one set of mistakes and a proper play-through with a completely different set of errors. I can't see what that had to do with the decision.

How often, in "real life", do you need to play something at sight?

1.When you're playing with other people (orchestra, chamber music or accompanying), which means you can't stop and correct - if you get hopelessly lost (not your place in the music, but your place on the instrument) you're likely to stop playing for a beat or two until you find your way back in. You don't really do that in a sight-reading test, though, marking time like that. The second time you try it, hwever, you may well fare better. I tell my pupils that what's really important in sight-reading is what happens the second time
(The exception to this is if you play for dance classes, when you [/i]have[i] to go on playing even if you've got into entirely the wrong position, as the rhythm is all-important, but then you wouldn't normally have that job unless you were a fairly proficient sight-reader.
or
2.When you're playing by yourself, usually to start learning the piece. There - though I'm ready for all the posts from people who say they don't do this - the odd mistake probably doesn't matter, but if you've wandered off in the wrong direction, you'd be more likely to re-start again at the beginning of a phrase, wouldn't you?

I have certainly met one person who said she always looked through a piece she was going to sight-read for herself, before ever putting her fingers on the piano, but when I asked why she thought that was better, she said it was good practice for when she had to do it in the exam. Which I thought was rather putting the cart before the horse.

When I'm trying it at home for myself for the first time, I'll always go straight into a piece, taking in the tempo, key-signature, time-signature etc "on the fly", and work out how to play it as I'm going along. Then do it again better.

This seems a somewhat peculiar response from an organisation, a large proportion of whose existence is based around assessing the relative and comparitive merits of different performances of pieces of music.

HI --- i did not know that you could play too much, i always thought you could do what ever you liked in your preparation time. I did not think they can tell you what you can play or not or how much. If you are a good sight reader and can go through it really quickly, then in the actual test put in all the extra bits, like dynamics etc.




But it is sight reading ---- because the an initial play through is your preparation time. If it is not, then, they should not allow the prep time at all, for then it would be real sight reading.

In the last exam session one of my pupils, taking Grade 5, was stopped before he'd finished his sight reading. He couldn't understand why and I've never heard of this happening. (He got quite good marks.)

There's nothing in the regs about how much you can or can't do in the 30 seconds.

The AB regs state: The bit that concerns me there is that they say 'up to' 30 seconds. Does that mean they could shorten the time if they wanted to?!

The equivalent TG reg is clearer - you get a whole 30 seconds (not up to) and it says you can play 'any or all' of the piece in that time:

Hi (i am a student so hope you do not mind . But i did an exam and the examiner asked me to stop at the very last bar. This was, i think (and feel quite sure about this) was due to me playing too slow --- and are fairly strict about the time! as have lots of others to assess. It did put me off a bit as i though Ho NO, but i got a good mark as well.
Although i did think it was a little silly as i was on the last note or two. But, in general i find it difficult to really tell how i have done, as sometimes you get the wrong "signals", but i now know that the examiner is probably tired and trying to concentrate. (sorry if you know this already, but just thought i would mention it as this happened to me).

Interesting to hear that it happened to someone else. My pupil was also near the end, in the last bar, I think. But it did worry him - I think he thought he'd played so badly that the examiner couldn't bear to hear any more!

Yes, exactly. to top it all it was my first ever exam and was really scared. But, i have learnt --- it is a time-thing and now know not to jump to conclusions. I think that if you where only, say half way through, then if they stopped you this may seem more acceptable, in a way (if it is due to time), but in the last couple of notes! Perhaps as teachers, it may be worth mentioning to pupils not to worry if they stop you, because you may still get a very good mark.

My teacher told his pupils to 'dummy play' the sight reading piece - that is to have the fingers on the keys, touching the notes as they are read whilst HEARING the piece in your head as though it is being played. Worked for me in my Grade 8 - first exam ever taken! As I've taken over some of his pupils now, I find that they are usually very good at this skill.

This has always been my approach and I find it mostly successful. However, since this thread I have been telling my pupils to have a brief go at the test instead of "dummy playing" and I have found that those who particularly struggled with sight-reading are much improved. The first "bash" is terrible and then the test is almost perfect. I think that perhaps they were unable to imagine the music so well as others, so I am working on that with them as well.