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Sweet! It is a great achievement!

Congratulations, earlofmar!

Yes, the syllabus has been revised this year with the release of new repertoire books, and a major revision of the technical works. So for this year, (and perhaps next), they still offer exams on the previous syllabus for those of us who had commenced before the changes took affect.

Ah! I see. Thanks for the information.

thanks for the replies and lovely comments. I really savored my achievement for a few days before looking at AMEB grade 7. It doesn't matter what grade you are doing though, the first time you look at the new material it is quite confronting.

Congratulations! Good that you get a day or two to savor your achievement before plunging into Grade 7 material.

I'll go out on a limb and guess "quite confronting" is a euphemism for .

Congrats, Earl!

Congratulations, earlofmar! And thank you for posting the comments.

Thanks for sharing.

There are 8 units, the test is timed. The 8 end of the unit test make up 60% of the grade and the final 40%. You can do a practice test at the end of the unit as many times as you want. Unit 1 was 100, unit 2 was 88. For unit 2 must have done the practice test 10 times, each time it was different questions. I was trying to build up speed.
I tried the unit 3 practice test, still have a lot of work to do to get faster. This unit is timed at 10 minutes but there are 20 questions. I know the answers but not instantaneously, if it was not timed I could do it. I will need to practice on getting faster. I think it was worth $179. I am happy I started with unit 5 as this will be a challenge for me but not overly difficult. Never thought about the tests being timed.

Great job earlofmar. And don’t get phased by the next level - clearly you are ready for it!! I have the highest respect for everyone here going through exams. I toyed with trying grade 10 again but I have to say I’m so much more relaxed just playing pieces for myself. I’m working on Bach partita 2 in c minor, a Scriabin prelude and Schumann Traumerai right now and finding 3 pieces is more than enough. Perhaps one day I’ll retry but for now I’m celebrating vicariously through all of you.

Just sat down with my teacher last week and discussed our plan of attack for my Prep B exam and it dawned on me that we only have a few lessons left before the exam, 3 to be exact and I felt I made a big mistake registering for this sitting. No matter, it’s only Prep B. So my job now is to learn and memorize all 3 pieces, which I’ve already chosen and my teacher has approved, start cramming on aural testing apps and musicianship stuff, and solidify my technical requirements, which are pretty much learned.

The weeks off for the holidays really screwed me up in terms of how often I’ll get to see my teacher but no matter. I’ll probably add a few extra lessons in and... it is what it is. I’m doing a mock exam next week.

Thank goodness I can cram Prep B!!! I promise I’ll do better planning next time.

Here's a brief of my exam this week when I took my Grade 5 (Wedn)

Technique:
Played well except for one scale (C sharp minor contrary motion) which I tried twice and it was as bad as a scale can go - literally! Not sure why because everything else was fine, including the other contrary motion scale. Depends how much I get deducted but potentially 16/21 on this? Hopefully not much more deducted than that…

Pieces:

Haydn – I think I had two very small mistakes and not sure if she even picked up on both. I expect maybe ~27. Pretty happy with the overall piece

Schumann – I played it as perfect as I could. If I had 100 other tries I would still keep this one because I don’t think I can physically do better. Even though she was very serious throughout I could tell she enjoyed it so I expect a high mark here

Poulenc – I had a few missed notes on left hand which I was disappointed by but kept the rhythm throughout. It’s fairly dissonant piece so I am not sure if it was very obvious so I score myself 25 to be very harsh - will have to find out.

Sight reading: 16-18 / 21 • I think I did mostly ok and kept the rhythm going despite some mistakes in the notes

Aural 15-17 / 19 • I don’t think I did great but did mostly ok in everything and particularly well in the musical features.

I think it would be one of those where the examiner would have to decide between distinction or merit and forget about the scores for one second. I would be shocked if I only get a pass but hey, happy to get to where I am despite slightly rushing through the grades.

Congratulations Peter - even if it is a bit premature, it sounds like you did well.

WeakLeftHand - wishing you all the best. It would be good to hear how your mock exam goes.

Been practicing all technical elements (scales, chords, arpeggios) about 5 times each, every day. I dream these things. Hopefully, it won't unravel on exam day in 2.5 weeks. Most I've gotten to tempos 50-100% faster than they need to be. I'm going to have to practice slowing them down before the exam.

I think, realistically, I hope to "pass" sight-reading, but that may just be hopeful thinking. Unfortunately, I just don't believe sight-reading is something that can be triaged.

I'm feeling ok on the other stuff. I also have two ear training-dedicated lessons next week and have been doing a bit of sight-singing.

I laughed and laughed when I first read my examiners recent comment, ''good sight-reading'', for that was not certainly not my understanding of what I did.

I am sure you have your own plan and RCM maybe different, but with AMEB and ABRSM staying in rhythm will be marked as more important than accuracy.

Good advice here:

For what it's worth, in all of the sight-reading tests of the eight ABRSM grade exams I did, I never once played all the right notes in the right order. In fact, I missed out a note or three - occasionally deliberately - in almost all of them.

But what I always got right was to keep the beat going at a steady tempo, no matter what happened. (After all, if you're accompanying someone, the most important thing he requires of you as accompanist/collaborator is to keep a steady beat, so that he doesn't suddenly find himself a beat or two ahead of you while you're stumbling and fumbling for the notes, when all is lost......). And I always got close to maximum marks every time. I regarded the sight-reading test, along with the aurals, as 'easy money' .

Good to know about the importance of rhythm. I have to practice that daily then since I've been focusing mostly on the notes.

Are the dynamics important, or is that like notes? Also, what about articulation? (staccato, etc)?

As the grades go higher, it's expected that the candidate will take more notice of the phrasing, dynamics, articulation, pedalling etc. You wouldn't be bombarded with detail that a student of your grade level wouldn't be expected to manage.

Almost always, dynamics, articulation etc will be simple to follow, probably intuitive and nothing to trip you up. The more musical your playing is - even if there are wrong notes - the more marks. It should flow, and not sound like a series of stutters.

Think of a concert pianist playing something you haven't heard before. Would you notice if he plays a few wrong notes, or leaves out a few? No, unless the note is an important melodic or bass note that defines the harmony. Would you notice if he has a memory lapse and stops suddenly for a second, then restarts - half a beat behind? Certainly! If the pianist is any good, he'll somehow muddle through while keeping a steady beat, playing some notes within the same harmony and dynamic level, until his memory kicks back into gear.

This is a sample of ABRSM grade 4:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azdwq6KsSDI

Unless you're already very good at keeping time just looking at the notes, counting the beats in some way ('internally' with your tongue perhaps) is very useful: it's important to keep those LH half notes steady, for example, regardless of whether the RH is playing quarter notes or eighth notes. That is why it's a mistake to practice habitually with a metronome. Practice playing quarter notes and eighth notes back & forth in one hand, over half notes and full notes in the other, until it becomes second nature and 'instinctive'. Always follow the fingering given.

So sticking with your Grade 4 example, what do you suppose the relative importance of these factors are at about grade 4-ish: rhythm, notes, articulation, and dynamics? I already gather rhythm is #1. But is notes #4? I only have limited capacity at my level to get certain things right and not all 4 of these during the sight-reading - I just run out of bandwidth. So what comes after rhythm?