grade 6 on the 19th! should be alright, managed to win my class in a music festival with one of my pieces (it was the 1st time I'd ever won bit nervous because it's not in my usual exam centre, it's at a private school that I've never been to before, but my teacher says they have the same type of piano as her, + a warm up room, so i reckon I'll be fine! only worrying bit is the aural; have decided to go for hearing impaired ones, as i attempted the normal ones last wk, and it was so bad it was quite amusing...i have a hearing problem that comes and goes, and has been getting worse recently, so I've never done them before, but it seems that they will be sooo much better

good luck with it!

what pieces are you playing?!

Thanks! I'm playing A1, Corrant which is ok, but i slow down a bit at the end for some reason, B2, einsamer wanderer, and C2, Prayer of the matador, which is the one i did at the music festival

Good luck, you sound quite confident, which is good . I hope you get the mark you deserve

Thanks!

i did Prayer of the Matador for my grade 6 too!

wow! i really like it, especially the spanish-y feel, and the sections where the tune is in the left hand

I did prayer of the matador & corant for my gr 6 in March (vals poetico was my B piece). I really liked all my pieces for a change & for once didn't have a problem getting corant up to speed (which is normally my problem with the A piece)

I thought about doing Vals Poetico, but decided to go for the other one because it's more my style I reckon...not sure about that now the other ones a pretty hard piece probably my worst out of the 3...but then the B piece usually is, on flute and piano...strange! with corrant, its not so much getting it up to speed, as I can play it with a metronome, it's just that i can never keep the speed rite up to the 3rd page with no metronome...& i don't notice doing it, so i can't stop...I'm improving though, because my teacher worked out where I slow down, so I think I can sort it before the exam!

Is Prayer of the Matador becoming the new Creepy Crawly now? everyone seems to be playing it!

QUOTE (AnotherPianist @ May 9 2005, 11:58 AM)

Is Prayer of the Matador becoming the new Creepy Crawly now? everyone seems to be playing it!

possibly! its just so easy and nice!

Good Luck with your Grade 6!

QUOTE (clarinetlover @ May 9 2005, 03:11 PM)

QUOTE (AnotherPianist @ May 9 2005, 11:58 AM) Is Prayer of the Matador becoming the new Creepy Crawly now? everyone seems to be playing it! possibly! its just so easy and nice!

I need to hear this piece, I've heard SO much about it!

QUOTE (sarah-flute @ May 9 2005, 04:45 PM)

QUOTE (clarinetlover @ May 9 2005, 03:11 PM) QUOTE (AnotherPianist @ May 9 2005, 11:58 AM) Is Prayer of the Matador becoming the new Creepy Crawly now? everyone seems to be playing it! possibly! its just so easy and nice! I need to hear this piece, I've heard SO much about it!

buy the book or cd!

...or get my friend who's a teacher and has all the AB grade books to learn it and play it to me - that's my plan *grin*

good plan heeh *nods*!!!

Good Luck I hope you do well.

thanks everyone!

QUOTE

Is Prayer of the Matador becoming the new Creepy Crawly now? everyone seems to be playing it!

Quite a few people seem to be playing feelin good, but I agree most seem to be playing Prayer of the Matador! I'm the only grade 6 at the visit where I'm doing it, so luckily he won't have to listen to it over & over! Although having said that, its a 2 day visit and theres a whole day of grade ones! not all piano, but still!

QUOTE (AnotherPianist @ May 9 2005, 11:58 AM)

Is Prayer of the Matador becoming the new Creepy Crawly now? everyone seems to be playing it!

Sorry if this offends anyone, but I think Prayer of The Matador is a miserable piece of music. It just sounds so depressing.

I like depressing music

There's no answer to that...

QUOTE (clarinetlover @ May 9 2005, 11:03 PM)

I like depressing music

Sorry Nat, but that piece is just not me at all. Certain styles just depress me.

I like depressing music as well but actually I didn't think prayer of the matador was depressing, just very expressive. If you want depressing then I would say the Chopin prelude from the alternative B pieces fitted the bill!

I really want to hear this piece now - it is very intriguing to hear such wildly differing opinions!

QUOTE (sarah-flute @ May 9 2005, 04:15 PM)

...or get my friend who's a teacher and has all the AB grade books to learn it and play it to me - that's my plan *grin*

Or listen to it in the radio programme from here. Don't know which date it is though, I'd guess it's either 2005-03-20 or 2005-03-27.

Some pieces I think are stereotypically depressing and melancholy, and I enjoy those kinds of pieces, and I also enjoy pieces where much expression is involved, but something about that piece just didn't strike me at all. The reason I found it depressing, was because I can't stand the idea of playing it day in and day out. Does that make sense?

Thing was I didn't have to play it day in/ day out to get it to exam standard (in contrast to Corant!). It was just lovely un-pressurised playing with lots of time to think about how you wanted each note & phrase to sound. And the enjoying of a piece thta I knew would be good even with shaking hands.
Mind you I've carried on playing Corant & Vals poetico for light relief since the exam but not prayer of the matador.

On that note, I will attempt to learn it properly now so I can honestly give an informed opinion about the piece, seeing as it is so popular.

QUOTE (Andy-piano-flute @ May 10 2005, 12:55 PM)

Thing was I didn't have to play it day in/ day out to get it to exam standard (in contrast to Corant!).

exactly, why i liked it! it was one of the easiest exam pieces ive ever done! and that shows becuase i got 26 for it- ok not brill, but my best ever for a piano piece...and thats saying something!

QUOTE (AnotherPianist @ May 10 2005, 11:11 AM)

QUOTE (sarah-flute @ May 9 2005, 04:15 PM) ...or get my friend who's a teacher and has all the AB grade books to learn it and play it to me - that's my plan *grin* Or listen to it in the radio programme from here. Don't know which date it is though, I'd guess it's either 2005-03-20 or 2005-03-27.

I'll check those out when I get the chance - thank you

Sorry guys... I've now heard it... I really don't like it (my friend who played it doesn't either!) though I *can* see that it's relatively slow and easy... but I much preferred the Brian Bonsor jazzy piece which was the other C list piece.

At last! Someone else who doesn't like the piece. I had a good listen to the cd today, and stick by my opinion. I don't think I can even bring myself to learn it.

lol - two people in fact! Yep, I agree with you... depressing and not at all inspiring! (to me)

The version on the cd is only one interpretation of the piece - I didn't care much for it myself - but I interpreted it my way (only heard the other version a couple of days before the exam & didn't care to change the way I played it).
So play it the way you want it to sound, like I did, The examiner liked my interpretation of it - I got 28 for it.
Please don't call it "easy" - it's a grade 6 piece not a grade 5 or 4 piece for a reason. And to play it well is possibly more difficult than you might think.

The version I heard was not the cd but my friend playing it.

Oh I don't mean easy in terms of easy - I mean I can see that it's slower and probably gives you more time to think than some pieces would... & it does seem to be the general opinion among those who've played it that it's not incredibly hard to pull off at least on the playing the right notes in the right order stakes. I know some people actually prefer faster pieces and find them easier but I and a lot of others find that slow and time to think is easier (relatively!) even though there is so much more room for, and need for expression (that can be just as hard, but it's a different kind of hard).

When I say easy I'm not talking "oh it shouldn't be grade 6" - I'm sure I couldn't play it by absolutely miles - but more that technically it looked to be simpler than the Bonsor, fewer tricksy bits (though there were definitely a couple) - and do bear in mind that my opinion of its ease or not is based on one hearing and seeing so I may well have not noticed something really hard in there (relatively harder I mean - all grade 6 pieces look more or less difficult to me...!)

I think that all exam pieces are balanced between their technical difficulty and their interpretive difficulty, or at least should be, so if a piece is technically easier then it's probably harder to pull of musically & vice versa (I should think that could be quite hard to pull of that one, because... well frankly I know I didn't like it - it was just a little odd - it'd take a very good interpretation of it to change my mind - whereas the Bonsor was very accessible to listen to by comparison... to my taste!).

All the syllabuses (syllabi?) are going to have pieces that different people find easier or harder in different ways, and once again I REALLY was not suggesting "oh that piece is dead easy it shouldn't be grade 6" - no way no how.

I wouldn't say that the piece is easy. I haven't played it, I have only heard it, but I would say it isn't easy purely on the basis that you would need a lot of expression into the music to pull it off to a decent standard and get a high mark for it.

I'd say for me it is easier than the Brian Bonsor one, i prefer slow, expressive pieces than fast ones where my fingers don't move!

i did ok with it, i got 26.

I'm doing the Lavender Field, on the alternatives list now instead of the Brian Bonsor piece. Have you heard of it/played it?
(That is when I finally get the book, I ordered it over 2 months ago from my local music shop and still no word. )

QUOTE (clarinetlover @ May 14 2005, 06:30 PM)

I'd say for me it is easier than the Brian Bonsor one, i prefer slow, expressive pieces than fast ones where my fingers don't move!

exactly - and some people would find the bonsor easier because they are happy with technical stuff and fast pieces, but not so great at the expressive side.

that's why I like it- my expression is better than my technique, but my friend, who has a better technique than me, but not as good at expression, is doing feelin good, because she loves fast, jazzy pieces

I'd recommend "Lavender Kind of Blue" (Norton) for third piece - it is light music but can be treated as an expressionist piece in terms of pedalling and rubato. The piece is actually marked Rubato at the top. Also some very good opportunity for melody in the bass and accompaniment figures in the treble. (additionally he is a NZer like me!)

I am also teaching the Richard Rodney Bennett piece "Eight maids a-milking", which I would rate the most difficult of the third pieces. This is and excellent piece, being 7 beats to the bar and with fast staccato. A good opportunity to teach a complex time pattern and finger staccato at this pace. Bennett wrote this Partridge Pie series for the Institute of Registered Music Teachers of New Zealand in in 1991 and I heard him play (jazz of course) on this visit.

[As a hint, I think that the English examiners we get would hold this piece and the composer in particularly high regard, so why not pay the compliment?]

I see a number of subscribers praising "Matador" for being easy. The alternative view is if you pick difficult pieces for Grade VI, the step to Grade VII will be shorter!

Well, did my exam on thursday! It went ok, a couple of slips in the scales but not a huge amount although I was very anoyed that I messed up the 3rds scale as i spent ages practicing that & could play it fine the night before! never mind...
1st piece, a few slips nothing major though, other pieces went fine.
Sight reading was ok but I know I rushed the end....aural, quite a few mistakes there but that's not surprising...

Overall, it was alright, but I'm worried because the examiner was really nice, and in my experience that means he'll be a harsh marker

QUOTE (flute_gurl @ May 21 2005, 01:09 PM)

Overall, it was alright, but I'm worried because the examiner was really nice, and in my experience that means he'll be a harsh marker

Don't know if this helps, but I messed up a few times in my last exam, and the examiner was very nice and tried to be cheerful and polite, and I got a much better mark than I was expecting.

I'm sure you'll be fine. Hope you get the result you want.

oh that's good! i know i'm a perfectionist anyway, so hopefully the mistakes weren't as bad as I think they were...

QUOTE (sarah-flute @ May 13 2005, 10:04 PM)

Sorry guys... I've now heard it... I really don't like it though I *can* see that it's relatively slow and easy...

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! It's far too slow!! It shouldn't be played THAT slow, I mean, it's a matador, hello? I don't like the speed... (Sorry for the rant)

Hi I only just realised there was a piano forum coz I have been using the link from the students page to get to the students forum instead, then someone on there said he was getting annoyed with people using that to chat about piano pieces etc so here I am!

I'm going to be taking my grade 6 in November as I've got to take my grade 5 theory first in June. I've chosen Vals poetico as my B piece, Feelin' Good for the C piece but I still can't decide what to choose from the A list. I liked the sound of Conrant but there was just too many trills and turns in it that I thought it would get annoying by the time I had the actual exam So I've had a go at Allegro and even though it was tough at first I'm slowly getting the hang of it now. The left hand goes so fast at the beginning but my teacher says the metronome mark is always only a suggestion in exams but I always think it's best to go with what they say. Everyone seems to have chosen Conrant as their A piece, am I the only one stupid enough to choose the one that's four pages long?

Lisa xxx (p.s. if anyone's got any tips for Allegro I would be really grateful!)

I like Allegro, despite its length, and I have been learning it for a while now. I am not playing at the metronome speed until I have learnt it properly. In fact I am playing at half the speed until I am completely confident with it. How are you getting along with the dreaded third page?


Nat, if you are around, how did you get on with the third page also?

I am here!!

I do like the Allegro...despite the fact that i'm hopeless at playing it

3rd page- i messed this up in my exam...one hand went faster than they other...grrr!

Oh no.

Any tips?

Don't do the piece!!

only joking! i dont have it in front of me, otherwise i would give more help other than the usual play it really slowly and gradually build it up.my problem was that one hand kind of ran away and left the other one behind!