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Hi all. I sat my grade 1 exam today after about 6 months playing and it didnt exactly go to plan. I'll put it down to nerves.

First of all I done the scales no problem. On my first piece I played, I had one mistake along with a little bit of hesitation to get back on track. My second piece went great but my third piece fell apart on the second half and I made 3 or 4 mistakes. My sight reading and oral went ok after that (apart from the singing section, I have no tone in my voice).

I am doing the exams through lcm and I'm wondering how hard they are graded and would a performance like this get me a pass which is over 65% I believe. Just wondering does anyone have any experience with lcm and got any advice? Alos does anyone know how long it takes to get the feedback?

Pass or fail I will continue playing anyway

dmc, good luck with your exam and perseverance is an inspiration. But I am thinking that if you have mistakes and hesitations it's unlikely to have a pass of 65%, though I don't want to sound discouraging if you didn't pass this time you will next time and probably with less nerves.
I am a beginner too and haven't yet taken grade 1, but I am working towards it. I imagine I would be a bag of nerves too. Sometimes we can be a bit harsh on ourselves thinking we just weren't good enough, when over all we did just fine.
What is lcm?
I am in the UK so it may be a bit different.

A piece well played musically with some mistakes might score better than a piece played note perfect but robotic. It does depend on the music and the examiner.
An exam is just a verification is not a deadline for your preparation.

Thank you, I think your right though, I am thinking of the slight mishaps over and over and making them bigger than they were instead of concentrating on some of the positives. I am in the uk also, LCM is the London College of Music

I'll keep my fingers crossed for you.

My wife and I recently took the Piano Guild exam for Level EC.

We were both nervous, and made some stupid mistakes. However, the judge was very nice and told us after it was over that she expects these kinds of minor mistakes, and tries to look past them and really LISTEN to the student and how they play.

Well we got our scores and they were very high. I wish you the best of luck.

I only know about RCM and ABRSM. From my experience, while you may feel you didn't crush it, your experience sound quite normal for most candidates, so to me you did well. As far as these things go, I often feel the same way, after all the preparation only to make many mistakes during the performances. Then, I'm pleasantly surprised to get back Pass with First Class Honours and such, so not to worry.

You'll be surprised how much the technical stuff count, scales, oral, sight-reading. Since you did well there, and you were able to play your pieces to the end even with a few mishpas, barring from something you haven't mentioned, you basically passed. How high you pass is just the cherry on top.

dmcgeown, Sounds to me it is still likely you passed, you may not get a pass in the piece were it fell apart, depending on how badly, but since you got 3 pieces and the other two were largely performed with minor issues by the sound of it, that would be enough I think.

I never did any exams as yet, I would assume all these exams would be similar in term of requirements. I use this site once for my self assessment for self teaching. There used to be some grade 1 to 3 test as well somewhere IIRC

http://us.abrsm.org/en/exam-support/on-your-marks/

You' be amazed how good of a self judge one can be. At least I surprised myself way back doing 3 such tests. Considering there are 4 categories so 12 categories in total in only two did I give one grade lower, examiner gave merit where I gave pass.

For the fun of it I just did a grade 5 scales and arpeggios ( much above my level ) just now looking for the links and I gave a merit, so did the examiner

Who needs a teacher

Only kidding of course, but on a more serious note, I found that site rather useful to see how I am doing with my easier early grade pieces. Of course without the pressure of an exam is much easier, but I play piece, record, self assess, I do that process from time to time with my method books, basically give myself one go to play it, that's it, self assess, give mark, very useful.

Good luck

Thanks for your support everyone. So I got my results back and apparently they take the overall performance of the exam and account for nerves and a few mistakes.

I passed with merit, very happy with that. Onwards and upwards, first milestone has been hit so going straight into grade 2 😃

Woohoo!

Congrats!

Well Done

Congratulations dmcgeown!

This is fantastic, congrats!