Hi,

I am on grade 4 violin, and i was just wondering what grade I should be on to do my GCSE's in music.... What do you need to do get A is GCSE????

Manpreet

You need to perform very well. The standard isn't all that important.

Depends on what your school think too.
The school my daughters attended allowed people to take GCSE music with no previous instrumental experience.
The best they could get to was probably around grade 2!

If you are on grade 4 violin then if you perform well (and get good marks in the other parts of the course) then ther eis no reason why you shouldn't get an A.

Davidmusic- yes I agree that you need to perform well but you get marked on the difficulty of the piece as well so the standard needs to around grade 4 ish to get good marks in that part.

Manpreetpangli- what year of school are you in, im presuming the year before you do GCSE's?! you have to do 2 performances, a solo and ensemble. For the ensemble you get marked on how good YOUR performance was, the sense of ensemble and the difficulty of the piece. or the solo, I know you get marked on difficulty and how well you perform, I cant remember if there was anythin else!!

In my school you are not allowed to take GCSE music if you don't play an instrument(any level) or sing.

Nat

In my experience of GCSE music the benifits seem to come from playing a hard piece badly; rather than playing a simple piece well. Which seems different to the ABRSM's philosophy.

The course I did each piece was marked out of 10 with differnent scalings according to difficulty. If the piece was 'recognisable' you got 6/10. Each mark was then multiplied by a number depending on the difficulty of the piece. If the piece was in a 'harder key' (the example given was Bb major) then your piece is multiplied by 3 (to give the final mark out of 30); if it was easier the mark was multiplied by anything (in increments of 0.5) between 1 and 2.5, this clearly seems flawed: there are many difficult pieces in C major! It seems that in practice the difficulty is judged by your teacher (although it will be moderated). This marking favours hard pieces played badly: at least 18/30; easy piece played very well: 10/30...

that explains why, when my daughter took GCSE a gade 2 piece was considered lower than a grade 1!