Hey folks,

because so many of friends said that they struggle in grade 8 for piano, I would like to ask some of you whether grade 8 is really that difficult.( although I don't really find it that difficult...) So what do you think?? I would personally vote for 40%.

I seem to think we've had a thread very similar to this one recently (within the last week)

But if I have to give an answer I would suggest that if they struggle with grade 8 then they're not ready (or of a sufficient standard) to start working on it and should play a variety of other pieces around the same level until they are ready. THAT'S why they're struggling, NOT because it's too hard, but because THEY'RE not yet grade 8 level!!

What chocolate dog says is absolutely right: grade 8 is not that difficult if you're already diploma standard before you start working on it; and rather difficult if you're grade 1 standard when you start working on it. Grade 8 is as hard to a grade 8 standard student as grade 1 is to a grade 1 standard student. Then of course, it depends how well you want to do it: it's a lot harder to get a distinction than a pass; and it's a lot harder if your teacher doesn't do all of the work for you.

You haven't got the category of "harder than Grade 7 but not as hard as a Diploma"
I'd have ticked that one!!
Sorry to be flippant, but it's one of those "how long is a piece of string?" questions isn't it? A lot of it is down to your ability I suppose!

Gae

Agree with Gae and others.

If you're comfortable at grade 7.9 then grade 8 should be all right. If you're grade 1 it might seem a trifle difficult. However, I am not a grade-ist so just guessing.

Don't understand "percentage difficult" so couldn't vote. unless you mean
* I haven't yet started to play, therefore 100% difficult. Or
* I'm a grade 9, therefore it's 0% difficult.

??????????
PF

Yes, I couldn't vote on this either! Given to me NOW, I would say not difficult to PASS but to get higher than that, then 50%. Given to me say 15 years ago, I would say VERY difficult, nearly impossible.

Maybe we should vote on how difficult it was to vote in this poll

What are we comparing it to?

As a personal view, I really don't think that Piano grade8 difficult....don't know why people complain about failing their grade8 exams...( lol...of course Grade8 for violin to me to absolutely impossible....... )

It's a bit of a silly topic... to me, grade 8 is an impossible far off grade that on the piano I'll probably never reach. To others it's that grade they did and got 142 in years ago. So obviously my vote would be somewhat different to others'!

Here we go again...YOU don't find it difficult...not surprisingly considering you got distinction.........

You don't know why people complain about failing grade 8?!

Maybe because it's not a terribly nice feeling to fail an exam Not that you'd know

.....my violin exam might be the case....don't really want to fail it though....
(getting the result from my teacher 4 more days later....oh no....)

But you must have done grade 8 when you were of a genuine grade 8 standard, not like a 'just done grade 7 must do grade 8' type of person who's only stuck at grade 7 level of ability and needs a lot of other playing and technical/musical knowledge to get up to grade 8. If at all possible I never let my pupils do exams until they can prepare and play past pieces from that particular grade with no real difficulty THEN I know they are ready and won't take months and months struggling with the exam pieces, just a matter of 1-2 months instead because they now find that grade quite easy.

Gosh... I'm finding grade 3 hard enough actually.

But you can't really say something like " i find it 10% difficult..."

Well I can play a bar of Debussy's Arabesque No.1 and a bar of a Shostakovich Prelude

.......So I'd say I find it about 86.7932% difficult

What on EARTH is the percentage meant to represent? Sorry 1210, not meaning to have a go at you but it seems an impenetrable set of choices.

Was it Menuhin who declared that any piece is either easy or impossible? Depends entirely where you are in your development...

Lol....how did you caculate the statistics?? Smart....

about 28. 17651676756464486456646473345434633483445634447384785728463645642365726472374723
47457846389270867759753845675042503205460646050684764378378576557% difficult so I voted 30%.