Dreamaurora:

Not preparing exams all the time will allow the students to build proper technical foundations and acquire much more varied repertoire.

I totally agree with you that the students need to build up proper technical foundations and extend their repertoire. However, I can't see any conflict between taking exams and learning techniques or playing a varied repertoire.

Imo, it is not necessary for teachers to let the students practise only the exam pieces throughout the year if the students want to take exam. It is actually a bad practice like you said. The teacher could actually let the students learn other pieces at around the same level or technical works to strengthen the techniques and other aspects such as musicianship and interpretation. And when it comes nearer to the exam, the teacher could start the exam pieces with the students and prepare for the exam. This way, students can still build up proper foundations and extend their repertoire. And at the end of the day, they still gain a tangible achievement which is a certificate that proves they have done well.

I also agree with you that there's no need for everyone to take the exam for every grade. Those students who have greater so-called \"talent\" can definitely skip a number of grades and only take those \"important\" ones or there's no need for them to take exams at all, unless there are requirements from an organisation or a festival that they want to participate such as SNYO. But there exists students whose learning pace is not so great. What can we do with them? Sure the teacher can keep teaching and let them improve slowly at their own pace. But after a long period of time don't they get bored and lose the interest in music? There also exists students who really want to learn and play music but due to procrastination, they get to nowhere. I'm not saying exams are the only way to push those students to improve but they are one of the sure way that will definitely make students work harder and achieve something. As they move from lower grades to higher ones, at least they can see that they are climbing up the ladder, not staying at the same level. This, imo, can be a motivator for them to go even further.

As I understand, don't all conservatories in the world work the same way? Although there are a great number of music festivals and music competitions around the world, the conservatories themselves still hold their own regular exams. I think it's for the same reason we have music exams here in Singapore isn't it?

I know I don't know everything so I'm not saying everything I say is right. I just want to share some of my thoughts. What do you think about it? :celebrate:

Hi everyone,


May I share some thoughts on this topic? I've read in many threads in this forum that people consider ABRSM exams as \"exams\" and exam pieces as \"exam pieces\". I know it makes total sense, right? Because their names have already said it all, right?

Yes, I agree. But what if we look at them from another perspective? The music exams as \"milestones\" and exam pieces as \"songs\"?

For example, when we think about exam pieces as the pieces a student prepared to play for the exam, we definitely find them boring and meaningless, as nobody really enjoys exams anyway. But if we think about them as songs, or something that people actually took their time to create then, in my own experience, it will mean something very different. If it's a creation by someone or some community (as in folk songs), there must be a context and a state of mind in which the song was written in, and the ideas that whoever created that song would like other people to know. It's the exact same thing as when we post something in this forum or on social media. Once we think about it that way, why don't we go the extra mile and find out about all those things? And most of us grownups, I assume, know that the journey is always more fun than the destination. I think if we keep that in mind, it doesn't matter whether the songs are classical or pop or rock or jazz or whatever, we can find joy in learning them.

I just want to share with you an example to demonstrate what I said about songs. You may find below 2 videos of the same song performed by 2 violinists, one at a very young age and the other at a much more mature age.
This is the young one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDJdh13gHrE
And this it the older one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9uj_Xe7I7s
When you watch the 1st performer, you might find the song so difficult and you might go... :scared: \"How did she play such a song at such a young age?\". But when you watch the 2nd one, you might find the song not that hard as it seems pretty easy for him to play it. Then in the 2nd performance, you might feel that the song has so many different emotions embedded within it and it feels like you are watching a movie or reading a story with a very clear story line, which you might not have experienced in the 1st performance.

So, when you think about the exam pieces as \"exam pieces\", it's like that young girl who used the song for the competition. I'm not saying the girl's playing is bad. She's actually one of the best young violinists in the world right now. What I'm trying to say is at that time when she played the song, she couldn't understand it as well as the older man who had much more life experience and was able to bring out much more details in the song that the young girl couldn't.

Now when talking about ABRSM exams, do you think they are different from music competitions and performances? I don't see it that way. I find them pretty similar actually. The only difference here, in my opinion, is the scale of the events, whether the student is performing to 1 examiner in the exams, a few judges in the competitions or a large group of audience in the performances. In all events, the student must prepare the songs carefully and thoroughly without exception in any of them anyway. Can we say the student doesn't need to practise scales when he/she goes for competitions or performances? Can we say he/she doesn't need good ears or aural skills when he/she wants to win in the competitions or perform well on stage? Can we say he/she doesn't need good sight reading skill when he/she joins a music festival? If we can't, then now can we say that they are all different and it's necessary for the students to take part in competitions and performances but not exams?

Having said that, I'd like to clarify that I'm not saying that all grades are suitable for every student either. Some students may learn faster than others and they can skip some grades and only take exam at some \"more important\" grades. Others may not be so fortunate and have a slower learning pace, so they may just climb slowly up the exam ladder in their own pace.

But why should they take every exam anyway? There's actually no regulation regarding that matter whatsoever as we all know. It's just a way to keep pushing those students to go forward regardless of their progress. As someone said in this forum, it doesn't matter what pace your kid is learning in, as long as there's progress, it's good enough. And I totally agree, since everyone is not born the same. So if the students have the achievement of completing the exams with good results even if they need to take the exam at every grade, they will have the motivation to move on and achieve something even bigger down the road.

Thanks for reading! Above are just some thoughts that I think you might be interested to know. What do you think? :celebrate: