Practical Tips for your music examinations

Here are a few ideas which might just help your preparation for the on-coming ABRSM examination

Irrespective of the grade or level of music exam for which you are studying, hopefully you have been practising consistently throughout the term. It isn’t a good idea to leave all the preparation to the week before the exam because little can be achieved this way.

Here are a few tips:

1. Establish a practising schedule; it’s far better to practise little and often especially when working towards an exam.

2. Scales are probably the best way to start your daily practice; they will get your fingers moving and are a good way to warm-up. If you don’t have time to practice them all in one session then establish a rota; you could assign two or three keys a day and practice all the elements in those keys (e.g if you are going to work at the key of C then you would play the similar motion scales in C major and C minor, thirds apart, contrary motions, arpeggios and so forth). All keys will then receive the necessary attention every week. Some exam boards require other technical work as well as scales so you can incorporate these elements into your scale practice too.

3. It’s also a good idea to practice scales in a completely different order to that which they appear in your scale book. The examiner will generally ask scales at random (obviously they will be from the list selected for the grade you are taking) and it can be a shock to have to recall keys in a different sequence from the one you have been used to.

4. You will normally need to prepare 3 or 4 contrasting pieces for most exams. It’s a worthwhile exercise playing through each one everyday without stopping or correcting yourself; this will get you ready to perform under pressure in your exam. Once you have done this many times and feel happy and confident with each piece, you can start playing them through to friends and relatives. Or better still, enter yourself for a local music festival where your performance can be appraised or judged by an experienced adjudicator and you will have a sympathetic audience too.

5. Don’t neglect your sight-reading. This is an important part of the exam but many students seem to leave it to the last week to start their preparation. The sight-reading element should really be incorporated into your practice schedule months before your exam. When practising, focus on two or three exercises a day playing at a very slow speed so that you are able to observe all the details in each exercise. The most crucial part of this test is to keep going right until the end. Once you stop and correct yourself you will probably fail this element of the exam.

6. Rather like sight-reading, aural tests (or ear tests) can easily be over looked or forgotten. It’s not easy to practice aural tests without the help of a teacher but there are ways to help yourself. Most tests require some singing so try playing single notes on the piano (to start with) and then sing them. Listen to whether you are actually pitching the correct notes. This isn’t really about producing beautiful singing sounds, it’s about attuning your ear and sharpening your sense of pitch. So don’t worry if you weren’t in the front row when God was bestowing vocal chords! Similarly, you can also train your ears to hear intervals and chord progressions by just playing them everyday to yourself on the piano.

Hope these basic tips are some help. All the best in your exams!