Struggling while Practicing Pieces for Your Music Exams

Hi everyone,

In todays post I will be talking about struggling while practicing pieces for your music exams.

One of the first things I would like to say is that it's going to be completely natural that you may struggle with certain aspects of learning and developing your pieces to get them up to exam standard. 

Tricky Passages or Finger Placements

For tackling any tricky passages I would recommend that you break the passage down into more manageable chunks, and slowly work through the passage. I would suggest that you work on between two or four bars at a time, and do this slowly to start off with until you get used to playing it smoothly. You could also run the passage through fully a few times to see how it feels in its entirety; and then see what it sounds like included within the piece as a whole. 

  When playing the piece through as a whole just play it at a nice, steady pace to help you to get used to playing it fully.

With tricky finger placements; the only thing I can suggest is slowly break the fingers placements down within the bars that you are struggling with to get used them, and to also some scales within that octave to help you to smooth the finger placements out. This should become easier the more that you practice it. It's still important to also take your time while adjusting to tricky finger placements.

Tone

While working on tricky passages and/ or finger placements one of the things that you might loose temporarily is your tone.

  So, to try and counteract this try some simple tone exercises for your instrument over a period of a few days/ weeks; depending on how long your tone will take to come back. By doing this, your tone for your exam pieces should start to slowly come back.

Take Your Time

Please don't overwhelm yourself when practicing pieces for your exams; and if you do start to feel overwhelmed then take a step back.

  Please take your time on working through your exam pieces, as this is how you catch anything that may not sound right, fingers that might not be in the right place, tone could be off, or your rhythm could be slightly out due to an odd time signature. By taking your time you are able to catch what it is, and then you are able to start working on it and improve upon it.

Ask for Guidance

If your still struggling, something else isn't quite right or there's an area of a piece of music that you can't get your head around - then ask your teacher for help and advice, as they will be able to guide you and offer you advice on how to tackle whatever it is that you are struggling with.

You will overcome the struggles for your pieces for your music exams; it will just take a bit of time to work through.