Kerry
Formerly HipCity
- Messages
- 119
- Locality
- Leeds
Well... its my exam three weeks tomorrow and I'm beginning to wonder what possessed me to enter for it, I was clearly temporarily insane but now need to make the best of it, any exam or practising tips would be a big help.
Last Saturday I went to a meeting of a group of adults learning instruments and played my exam pieces for them, never played in front of anyone other than my immediate family and my tutor before, I was much more nervous than I had anticipated. I managed to play all three of my exam pieces to the massive audience of 12 people but made a few silly nervous mistakes which I have never made before when working on my pieces. They were all very nice, supportive and complimentary and the whole experience should have helped me with my confidence but I'm still quite worried about the exam.
The meeting was at the exam centre and I even got to practise my pieces in the actual exam room which should be a big advantage, must say the acoustics in the room were great and I sounded really quite good but that was just me in the room, will be different with an examiner there.
I know my pieces really well, know what I can play over each bar of the improvised sections but seem to play the same or very similar phrases every time, I'm wondering if that will sound too pre-prepared. I know all the scales for the grade, still finding B mixolydian 2 octaves tricky to play so I'm practising that more than the others. Trying to find a balance between speed and accuracy for the scales, can play them in one breath if I go faster but then more chance of a mistake (can play them fine at that speed on my own but in exam might fluff them), if I play them round the minimum speed I need to take a breath which affects the rhythm.
I've upped my practise to two hours a day and I intend doing lots of sight reading practise and improvisation practise using the scales set for the grade. I have some example answer and response tests I work through regularly but feel I know those too well now, does anyone know where I can find more of them?
I'm really worried about the aural tests, I don't generally do well on those, I've spent ages trying to recognise intervals, definitely not my strongpoint, I have memorised songs which start with each interval but still finding it very difficult. So any tips on this would be great.
I'm not generally a nervous person but don't do well at face to face assessments, once went completely blank in a job interview, couldn't even have told them my name if they had asked! I also had a very bad experience at my last music exam 35 years ago so I need to prepare for this as best I can, I think once I get this over with I will be able to lay that ghost to rest and if I'm mad enough to take any more exams they wont be quite so daunting.
If there's anything I should be doing that I'm not (besides cancelling the exam!) please let me know and any tips to help with exam nerves would be great, thanks.
Last Saturday I went to a meeting of a group of adults learning instruments and played my exam pieces for them, never played in front of anyone other than my immediate family and my tutor before, I was much more nervous than I had anticipated. I managed to play all three of my exam pieces to the massive audience of 12 people but made a few silly nervous mistakes which I have never made before when working on my pieces. They were all very nice, supportive and complimentary and the whole experience should have helped me with my confidence but I'm still quite worried about the exam.
The meeting was at the exam centre and I even got to practise my pieces in the actual exam room which should be a big advantage, must say the acoustics in the room were great and I sounded really quite good but that was just me in the room, will be different with an examiner there.
I know my pieces really well, know what I can play over each bar of the improvised sections but seem to play the same or very similar phrases every time, I'm wondering if that will sound too pre-prepared. I know all the scales for the grade, still finding B mixolydian 2 octaves tricky to play so I'm practising that more than the others. Trying to find a balance between speed and accuracy for the scales, can play them in one breath if I go faster but then more chance of a mistake (can play them fine at that speed on my own but in exam might fluff them), if I play them round the minimum speed I need to take a breath which affects the rhythm.
I've upped my practise to two hours a day and I intend doing lots of sight reading practise and improvisation practise using the scales set for the grade. I have some example answer and response tests I work through regularly but feel I know those too well now, does anyone know where I can find more of them?
I'm really worried about the aural tests, I don't generally do well on those, I've spent ages trying to recognise intervals, definitely not my strongpoint, I have memorised songs which start with each interval but still finding it very difficult. So any tips on this would be great.
I'm not generally a nervous person but don't do well at face to face assessments, once went completely blank in a job interview, couldn't even have told them my name if they had asked! I also had a very bad experience at my last music exam 35 years ago so I need to prepare for this as best I can, I think once I get this over with I will be able to lay that ghost to rest and if I'm mad enough to take any more exams they wont be quite so daunting.
If there's anything I should be doing that I'm not (besides cancelling the exam!) please let me know and any tips to help with exam nerves would be great, thanks.