I'm posting this in the general forum as I'm not sure whether there is a better place for it. A friend of mine who is a recorder and flute teacher has asked me to accompany one of her grade 1 pupils for her exam tomorrow as she doesn't feel her piano playing is good enough. This is something I have never done before. I was just wondering if anyone could give me any general tips, suggestions and what to expect. I have had several rehearsals with the pupil and she is very good. She has chosen two accompanied pieces, "Now is the month of maying", and the dreaded Schumann "Soldier's March" (I have nightmares about that piece because everyone gets the rhytym wrong ) and her third piece is unaccompanied. She seems confident and secure and thankfully the recorder teacher will be going too. So, do I just go in, accompany the two pieces, and then leave the room? I've absolutely no idea how it works, so I would like to be prepared. Any comments from accompanists would be welcome and appreciated. Thanks.

When I accompany I go in with the candidate and we do the pieces first. When the two accompanied pieces are finished I leave the exam room. You might even be thanked by the examiner! There might be a little bit of adjusting things for the candidate and you - height of music stand, height of piano stool, making sure you are both going to start the same piece. I always smile at the candidate after each piece even if it's not gone as well as usual - just to encourage them.

Don't forget the tuning note : on recorder, I usually use A. Some candidates will forget this without a reminder.

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind. I'm sure whether the girl has actually chosen the order in which she will play the pieces yet. Hopefully she won't put the unaccompanied one in the middle otherwise I guess I'll be in and out of the room like a yo-yo. As far as I know her teacher has advised her to do scales first, but I shall find that all out tomorrow.

Normally the accompanist goes in at the start, does the 2 accompanied pieces and leaves, and then the rest of the exam follows. If you are accompanying a recorder player, feel free to fiddle with the lid stick (or whatever they call it) and close the lid if it's a grand piano (that's terrible - I teach the piano and don't know what the liddy bit on a grand is called!) At my local centre they tend to leave it up for all the other instruments but recorders are so easily drowned.

Chances are if she does want the unaccompanied piece in the middle you will be able to stay, particularly at grade 1 where pieces are so short. If she does scales first you will be asked to wait outside the room until she's ready for her accompanied pieces. I did that when I accompanied a sax player who played her unaccompanied piece first.

Hopefully it will be like that, then it will be straightforward, but I'm fairly sure she will be doing her scales first. By the way, I call the stick a "lid prop". I'm not sure whether that's the "prop"er name (sorry for the pun!)

Also position the stand so that you can see one another if possible.

Oh yes, I must do that. Eye contact is very important. By the way, sorry if this is a silly question but as it's the first time for me to be an accompanist I need to make sure everything is correct. Does she need to bring her own stand with her, or it safe to assume that there will aready be a stand present in the room?

I've never been to an exam where there wasn't a stand.

I've been to one where the stand was a rickety nightmare, and collapsed as soon as I put any music on it....

I think the regs. say that it's best to bring one along.

(For the record, I decided to play the pieces from memory after all. And reassembled the stand for the sight-reading, only to watch it die by degrees while I was playing the SR piece through )

I always teache them to sing "here we go, marching, marching, marching - then that rhythm feels natural. I agree about people gettng it wrng; our music teacher used to play it before assembly in school and I always though the rhythm went something like "we are marching marching marching here"

I've never thought of doing it that way, but it works!! (I might "borrow" that suggestion from you, if I may )

Another thing to remember (and very reassuring for underconfident accompanists!) is that the examiner won't actually be listening to what you play. So long as you don't put the soloist off it doesn't actually matter what happens at the piano. I once got in a terrible muddle with a grade 3 accompaniment and had to stop and join in again a bar later. I apologised to the examiner at the end because I didn't want him to think the candidate had made a mistake - and he looked geniuinely surprised as if he hadn't noticed what I was doing.

If something does go terribly wrong with the recorder part - eg the candidate forgets to come in at the beginning - don't be afraid to make confident decisions like "let's start that again". Much better to have one false start than to muddle through all upset, but the candidate won't have the confidence to say it. Or if the recorder is gummed up and needs a quick blow to clear it. Basically, be proactive to support the candidate.

I often accompany recorder players with the soft pedal down - never thought of closing the lid

I have had the examiner come and look over my shoulder once, when I was accompnying a saxophone exam. The piece was very modern and very weird and strange - the sort where I thought it didn't matter what I played as it was so discordant anyway. I was mortified when the examiner got up from his seat and came and stood behind me so he could follow the music!!!

Thanks for all the advice and comments. It wasn't half as frightening as I thought it might be and I'm back now. There was a very nice lady examiner and the girl played her two accompanied pieces beautifully. Then I was asked to leave the room. The girl seemed happy afterwards and she said the thought she had done well.

Ta-da! Your career as an accompanist begins.....!

Well, I think it might have. There were supposed to be 3 girls taking their grade 1 recorder exam but the teacher took one out of the exam as she felt she wasn't quite ready (and I could feel that too when we had rehearsals), and the other one was attending the funeral of her grandfather today, so I had only 1 to accompany. I think she is going to re-enter the other two in the next period so I shall probably be needed again. By that time, there might even be some more!

I did that with a grade 8 singer, pupil of mine. He came in (I think) a beat or a bar early, and quick as a flash I messed up the piano part and said "Oh, I'm terribly sorry! that was my fault" and we started again. There was no comment about it on the mark sheet, in fact quite a good mark.

I remember accompanying the same singer in a festival doing Faure's Clair de Lune, and adding and missing beats all over the place - the adjudicator couldn't have known the song very well, becasue she said to him "you are most accurate in everything you do"

Thankfully we had time for a quick run-through at school before we left to go to the exam centre. She kept skipping one rest in the Soldiers March and was coming in a beat before I was, but we sorted that out, and her performance was great. The steward invited us to have a practice on the piano in the waiting room but the girl said she was fine. There was another grade 1 girl practising on the piano and if she played "Camptown races" once she must have played it at least 20 times.

Well done, porilo - it's never as bad as we think it's going to be. I can sense you're raring to go now this one went well!

KatyJay, many years ago I saw a soloist in a college choir set fire to the top of his music with the silly candle stands they had. Fortunately he was singing faster than it burnt. During the bit where the choir took over, he was able to extinguish the flames, but once he started singing, it caught again. By the end of the piece, he was holding a strip of paper about an inch high. It's a good job it was one sheet, and printed on one side only.