Oh no, I did just what Sarah and Tess suggested, only concentrating on SOME of the scales of the syllabus each day and the feared thing has happened. I got the ones I practiced on Saturday wrong, and the ones I practiced yesterday (Sunday) were ok during class today. I think I shall HAVE to practice all the scales each day.
For example:- B minor. It has so many open strings D, A and E. And those being so easy, I missed/forgot to play the open strings.
The difficult ones, C major and C minor came out passable.

Generally my intonation improved, but I kept missing the easy parts or some mistakes cropped up in those places. Maybe I DO have to play the whole piece through every time after practicing the tricky bits. Same thing with the songs. The tricky bits were fine, but the easy bits not! I wonder how it happened myself, and how I missed two bars of the easy parts in my first piece! Noo...

Maybe I should take the day before the exam off, then I can do 4 lots of half an hour practices.

Violin scales are easy!!! Use this method and you can't go wrong!!

I don't play any open strings in B minor, I start with my first finger on B and play the "minor pattern". If I have to play C minor I do the same but starting with my first finger on C etc. Once you have the pattern in your head you can play a scale in any key, just be sure you have the first finger on the right note.

Of course G scales are a little different by having to start on on an open string, and A minor a little tricky as you miss out a first finger on the e string and play an open e.

Same with major scales just learn the major pattern and work up the finger board.

Similar with chromatic scales but you don't start with the first finger on the key note, start with the finger it would be in first position and then just play the pattern but doing the right number of notes (does that make sense?)

Good also to do one octave scales on one string, same theory, you learn the pattern.

And works for 3 octave scales too, you just have a longer pattern.

Ok I'll try that after the exam, Jane. I don't want to confuse myself again. Already did with the B minor first using the 4th on the G string to get D. Then I kept missing the D, so I changed to the open string. Sometimes I ascend with the open string 'D' and descend with the 4th finger 'D'.

Violin scales are easy!!!?

I'll let you come and play them for my exams then.

Well I meant relatively compared to having to find all the different notes . It is a matter of knowing one pattern, not knowing lots of different ones.

I guess nothing is realy easy on the violin, not even holding it

T'aint easy, tis just a different kind of hard!

Well said! I got myself practicing all the scales again BUT with Sarah's advice on how to practice them, and scales are ok now. Should at least pass with 16 or above marks, or I'll eat my new bow! I got 17 for my last exam because I messed up a bit on the Bb major (which was the hardest scale for Grade 2)

Pieces I dunno, at least the tricky bits are not so messed up. I had fun today, my friend sight-read the accompaniment and had some rhythms messed up so I was the one following her, hee hee! But I got some notes wrong when my colleague (her teacher) peeped in at us.