Practice Post: Practice for Working Through your Music Grades

Hi everyone,

In todays post I'm going to talk about to practice when you are working towards your music grades.

Exam Pieces & Technical Work

Most graded music exams usually work on the following formula :-

- Three exam pieces (either from the exam boards own syllabus or from the extended repertoire list provided by your chosen exam or a mixture of the two)

- Scales and arpeggios or exercises/ orchestral excepts

- Sight Reading

- Aural

This varies between exam board, and what type of exam your taking whether it is face to face or online/ digital.

Tip: Have a 'back up' piece/s ready just in case your original choice of piece/s don't work out and are not for you.

Get Into a Practice Routine

Try and get yourself into a practice routine early on - ideally across a number of practice sessions throughout the day, as it will make focussing and practicing a little easier; as you won't be cramming everything into one full on practice session.

Practice Plan

Before you start practice have a plan on what you would like to tackle for that day/ week, depending on what it is your working on. You might want to start working on your scales and arpeggios and/ or technical work in the morning, and your pieces in the afternoon. You might want to focus on working on different technical elements of your scales and arpeggios. Your practice plan could also change depending how far you are into working through the grade you are, and it also depends on what your teacher would like you to focus on at the time.

Tackling Those Exam Pieces

Start slowly - With the help of your teacher break the pieces down into more manageable chunks to focus on, and slowly work on getting used to playing that small element of the piece until you start getting used to it. 

Focus on the Notes - Work on the notes first just to get your fingers used to where they are supposed to go, and so then you can listen to how that little part of the piece/s is to actually sound. Once you have broken down all of the pieces into manageable sections, and you are fairly familiar with the pieces you can then start adding to the pieces to make them your own.

Adding to the Pieces - This is when you start to add in phrasing, and any technical elements such as bowing, and any dynamics. It might be worth focusing on this on a phrase by phrase basis, as that way then you can just work on an area without overwhelming yourself.

Play it Through - You might just want to play through a section or two at first to see how its sounding, and to gain your confidence in starting to play it through. Also, by playing a section or two through you will hear if any areas will need any extra work to get that section to sound better than what it already does. The aim is to be able to play through all of your chosen pieces through fully without stopping, and this takes quite a bit of stamina to do; so you might need to build up on your stamina over a period of time.

Scales, Arpeggios and Exercises/ Orchestral Excerpts

- With your scales and arpeggios I would recommend working through them slowly, so then you get used to the different octaves and scale patterns. Chromatic scales and any other specialist scale patterns may need a bit practice.

- Break the scale/ arpeggio pattern up into more manageable chunks to make it easier for you to understand, and to also help you to figure out where you are going with finger placements. Maybe focus on an octave or half an octave at time, and slowly build on it from there. If you are unsure ask your teacher to help you, as you may a little additional help as some scales/ arpeggios can be overwhelming (especially for the more advanced grades).

Orchestral Excerpts

Orchestral excerpts are short pieces of music taken from from orchestral pieces of music; and these can focus on certain aspects of playing.

- Treat your Orchestral Excerpts in the same way that you would learn a new piece of music, and try an apply your method of learning a new piece to learning your orchestral excerpts.

- Break the excerpt down into more manageable chunks when practicing, especially if you are just starting out learning and exploring orchestral excerpts.

- Work on phrasing, tone and articulation after you have got yourself familiar with the piece/s as a whole. 

- Try and put your spin on it, and make it your own (if it's possible)