Hi everyone,

I am so irritated. I chose one of the Buesser pieces (flute) for my exam and just got the part, score and cd music book for Grade 6. Only to find out that both piano accompaniments are missing on the cd. How am I supposed to practice without a pianist (which I would have to pay for every hour, I practice)!

Who finds something like that as annoying as I do? Why do they sell the stuff (or even ask for it in the exams) when they don't provide the proper practice possibilities? If it weren't for the cd, I would not have needed the score and the part as I already have the original music books for all other pieces I play. The piano accompaniment is the only reason I buy that. And I am not in the lucky position to have a teacher who plays piano. Aside the fact that my teacher makes home visits, and I don't own a piano anyway.

Has anyone of you an idea, where I can buy the piano accompaniment for those pieces? Or any other ideas, how I can get the accompaniment which does not cost me a fortune? My financials, too, are limited.

Do you know a friendly local pianist who'll record said accompaniments onto an MP3 player for you?

Nope. That was my first idea, too. But I don't. The only one I know, who accompanies me at my exams, I have to pay for each time. And she is expensive. I probably could not afford that. The exams already are quite life draining (financially).

Two suggestions:

(1) Try the Werner Icking Music Archive. You may find a track you can download.
(2) If you have, or can get access to, music writing software and a scanner, scan in the piano part and save it as a MIDI file.


Hope this helps.

P4

Don't know anything about the flute CDs and books. However, I have felt a bit miffed about the clarinet CDs in the past. They have all the pieces in the grade books plus a selection only of the alternative pieces. My daughter has, of course, almost invariably elected to play alternative pieces not included in the CD...

I haven't learnt from experience either. I shelled out for the rather expensive grade 8 CDs (no book at grade 8), and once again the pieces she favours are not included... However, I'm not too cross because I expect that some of the tracks on the CD are of repertoire she will play now for non-exam purposes or will play in years to come.

Fortunately her teacher is a good accompanist so she does get plenty of opportunity to practise with piano in lesson times.

Is it normal to spend a lot of time practicing with a piano-backing track? I've never had more than 1 hour to practice with a pianist before any performance opportunity, and sometimes even less than that. Are you saying that the CD doesn't have the piece you're playing at all, or that the version on the CD only has the flute part (which seems really odd)? Can you find a recording including the piano accompaniment somewhere else?

Have sent you a PM Lemontree.

N

Me too. My oboe teacher picks out bits of the piano accompaniment now and then (on the oboe) to assist in getting the flavour of the piece and sorting any tricky corners. Up to now I've only had a couple of sessions with my accompanist prior to exams.

It does seem a shame the CD didn't have a piano backing track though.

I'm having my first real experience of learning a piece without the accompaniment. My teacher is a good pianist but I'm now in the territory where some of the accomps are beyond her. It's a different skill to learn which those who have teachers who are not pianists probably learn sooner. I do refer to the piano score quite a lot and mark my score with useful cues and places where it's going to be essential to have eye contact with the pianist but it's not quite the same as hearing it. I don't always have the accompaniment in when my teacher can play it but I'm finding it quite different with pieces she can't.
Luckily my piano teacher is willing to play accompaniments but we don't have many sessions on that.
I don't think I'd want to work extensively with a recorded accompaniment though it can be a useful tool.

Thank you all for the replies!

In the past, I've had only two half an hour practice sessions with my exam accompanist (as I mentioned, she costs me a small fortune. She is actually worth it; she can play any accompaniment from sight; have never had a problem when it comes to that. She is amazing. And she has another professional flutist she accompanies, so she already knows many pieces already anyhow). Before that, I always practiced extensly with CD PLUS score (meaning flute AND piano part). I find, it helps a lot, because I can get accustomed to anything the piano does beforehand. If I get sidetracked, if I stumble during a piece, I can find my way with this kind of practice always back in only a couple of notes later. When I finally have my real practice, there is only very little to work on for both of us. Mainly the interpretation of the piece, some phrases which we would emphasize differently. Such things.

It is really annoying to pick pieces from the given exam list, because they seem appealing, only to learn that they are not on the CD. Not with flute, not without. With grade 6, I really got dealt a bad hand. I will perform the Koehler study for my solo, which isn't on the cd either. At least, I perfectly know how that thing should sound. As is with the grade 5 Koehler study the same. Not on cd. Luckily, there is no accompaniment needed.

Had I known / realized that beforehand, I would have gotten the Haendel accompaniment for the complete HWV 363b, not just the small part that is on the ABRSM cd. Wouldn't have cost me more than that, and I certainly would have had more from it. Well, one learns from experience. For Grade 7 I will be much more careful. I have not had a peek yet if the tracks I need are on the cd. But somehow, I doubt it. Nothing from the first 3 pieces there either.

Daughter was in a similar situation with one of her Oboe pieces and it is frustrating.

One of the things she is supposed to be working on at the moment is a classical piece with improv. We have a recording but not one just of the piano part. Wish there were more CD backing tracks available.

Have you tried to find a recording of this piece at a library or even on YouTube? I would imagine the flute is a popular enough instrument that there must be a recording somewhere...

Apologies for taking this in a slightly different direction but I wondered how those who, like Lemontree, only ever have a short time with an accompanist at exam (or performance) time get on with learning how to play with an accompanist as they develop. Do those of you in this position find that they mostly have to go along with what the accompanist does due to a combination of time constraints and lack of experience?
How do you learn how and when to lead when you have such limited and infrequent time with an accompanist?
How do your teachers go about teaching these skills?

I actually do not find it that difficult, sbhoa. When I practice at home, I have quite distinct ideas how to play a piece. When I do it with her (and thanks to her skills), she adjusts pretty quickly to my ideas, discusses some other stuff which she thinks is not right. And luckily, I adjust pretty fast. I have nearly no problem to change something in a piece even if I have practiced it for a year differently. But that is just me. By the time I have my second session, we both do what we have discussed in the first session (because we made the appropriate notes during practice). And that works fairly well for both of us. I guess, thinking about it, we have similar working styles.

I did not feel up to performing with others up till now. I felt, I had still so much to learn that I could not focus on pieces that involved others with the INTEND to play with others. I did a lot of pieces with piano, but without the intend to play with anyone in particular. I just wanted to be able to know the notes and play it without mistakes. Just that far. No personal interpretation as yet, not much anyway. That is changing. But it will still take some time. And certainly not till March until I did my Grade 6 exam. But I just started on a very nice piece for clarinet, piano and flute. And I actually itch to find some musicians who will try that one with me. I even have in mind to make a workshop with others. But that involves practicing such a piece particulary. And I am not there yet. I only have 2 hrs practice time a day due to apartment house rules. And they are already completely planned.

I think, the accompaniment may just be an equivalent to playing with other musicians and working on a piece when several instruments are involved and everyone has its own way to interprete things and putting it together to something lovely to listen to.


It might be harder with serious ornamentation in baroque pieces. But I am still on a normal level with that. Just starting to do my own ornamentation. But I am not yet having difficulties getting along with my accompanist when it comes to that. So, I cannot tell if it would make a difference with limited amount of time.

It's of no consolation to you, Lemontree but it seems that for other instruments also when it comes to the higher Grades the ABRSM doesn't include all exam pieces on their CDs. None of the CDs in the higher oboe grades has the complete exam repertoire even on the double-CDs (Grade 8). I expect it is because of CD capacity and the ABRSM has opted for a lower cost option versus complete repertoire. So watch out for this for G7 and G8 too.

I didn't have the resource of backing tracks when I was young and I find them really useful. I just tell myself something is better than nothing - but then I'm not actually doing ABRSM exams.

Whatever, I hope you find a satisfactory solution and wish you the best with your G6 exam.

At school, I was never accompanied except on exam day...and on the 'run through' which would be in the week before. Which would consist of the piano-lady playing the intro a couple of times (assuming there was one), and then saying "is that about the right speed?" And that was about it, we didn't get to play the whole piece through together until the actual exam

Now I get a fair bit of accompaniment in my lessons from my teacher, albeit on guitar. Actually it works pretty well most of the time. His wife is a piano/singing teacher, who accompanies his examinees. Pre-exam I've been able to meet with her a couple of times - it helps that she is one of those annoyingly brilliant sight readers (you can put a song in front of her, and she can play it and sing it simultaneously immediately). So I know if anything goes awry, I just keep going and she will work around me.

Only occasionally are backing tracks available for recorder players. There is no AB CD at any grade, for example. Recordings are often few and far between too. For one of my G6 pieces last year, we found one recording and it was actually at a very good speed. So it was a case of play along to that, and try to ignore what the pre-recorded recorderist was doing! It was mainly to help with the fact that this piece had several multi-bar rests in it, so it gave me a chance to hear what happens there and get my entrance right (knowing also on the day that if I messed it up, my brilliant accompanist would sort me out!)

The skills you describe are really important particularly to candidates going for auditions or playing at higher grades. One of Emsoboes teachers plays for her regularly but two of them don't. Recently she has taken sax to piano lesson but that ends up sacrificing piano lessons. This causes issues of piano practice as it's easy to put aside an instrument that is weaker.

The issue of lack of accompaniment at exam grades is a problem but there are some at least. At post grade 8 there are hardly any cd accompaniments available. There are pieces that a candidate would really benefit from practising with a backing alongside an accompanist.

The option available at post-grade 8 that I know of is the Music-minus-one series.

Other publishers do make some music available at this level and more is being published.

The world is waking up to the tech-savvy nature that many people are practising their instruments these days. I think it is a matter of time and more music will be available with backing tracks on CD.

OF course working with pianists is part of learning the flute. However it does tend to cost more than a CD if you have to pay per session, and not every teacher can play all of the accompaniments on the piano.

There is nothing wrong with practising to backing tracks. If it is the best way to familiarise yourself with the accompaniment then that is better than nothing at all. My one caveat is they are rather rigid. Some discs come with software that allow you to vary the tempo. Do play with this. You do want to own your performance at the end of the day.

Modern technology can be really helpful, but don't be a slave to it.

I think the reason the Busser pieces aren't on the CD is because they were on earlier exam CDs. "Les cygnes" can be found on the 2004-2007 CD and "Les ecureuils" on the 2000-2003 CD. It is worth hunting on sites like ebay to see if copies are available.

We have been in a similiar situation and solved it by having a very good pianist friend record the piece, on mini-disk so that my daughter could use it for accompaniment at home practice.

Have you considered using the online pianists to record a backing track for you? http://www.pianotracksformusicals.com - they are versatile and cheap!

I've just changed teachers due to his move to a new town, but my exam accompanist was his wife, so I was in the very fortunate position of having both of them in the room when we started to put the pieces with piano. However, I always learned them without any knowledge of what the piano was to do, as that made my own rhythms secure. Luckily, she charged me for the rehearsals and aural training, but never for her time in the exam, although I always bought her a thank you gift.