Piano Forum
Piano Board => Teaching => Topic started by: pianojam on April 09, 2006, 09:40:30 PM
-
i am taking my piano grade test soon, its grade 3 and i find it sooooo easy, I play things so much harder normaly. I want to do things like i do the rest of the time, its so boring when its so easy.
when you take your piano grade test are the songs you do about the same difficulty as the ones you normaly learn or are they soooo much easier like mine?
-
Removed
-
While you increase your quality, hability, grade..... you are GETTING THE POWER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ;D and little by little, you can play Whatever you Want!!!!!!!!
Today, by example, I've learn 5 Scarlatti sonatas. Easy ones, certainly, but beautiful. And my repertory is growing huge.
I think you posted in the wrong topic.
As for me, I usually play harder pieces for grade exams. If I feel like the pieces are too easy for my current level exam I skip a level. I don't know if you can always do that though, but I know the california CM lets you do that.
-
It's not so much the pieces as the technical requirements--I'm doing the Grade 6 RCM piano exam in June, and while I am in the process of memorizing my pieces (one is from the Grade 7 list, and can play up to Grade 8 music quite comfortably), it's a big jump in terms of technical requirements and sight-reading between Grade 4 and Grade 6. Plus your teacher wants you to do well--would you rather get a 90 on an easier exam or a 70 on a harder one?
I actually took a clarinet student back a couple of levels (who thought he weas playing at a Grade 8 level for 1 1/2 years of playing at only 13 years old) in his playing, to correct some problems in his playing and to give in confidence in performing, he achieved a 93 on his Grade 4 clarinet exam.
Meri
-
Grades have been terribly "watered down" in the last few decades.
I was looking through a pile of very old ETUDE magazines dating from about the 1940s or 1950s.
Each of these magazines contains a section of about 20 pages of music for piano. One of the pleasures of subscribing to ETUDE was to get some fresh pieces to try out each month.
Here's the point. The pieces included in the magazine were all graded. Students today would be appalled at how difficult the pieces were at such marked grades as 2 or 3. Today they would be more like "grade 6."
It is like "grade inflation" at universities today. It is easier to keep lowering the standards than it is to attempt to bring students up to demanding standards. And perhaps today students cannot be made to practice sufficiently to make progress any other way -- so just take "Chopsticks" and mark it as Grade 5-- then everyone is happy, the students, the parents, and the teacher. Unfortunately, no one has really achieved anything.