Q. OKAY, so as you all know, my soon-to-approach and dreaded grade 8 piano exam (practical AMEB) is giving me strife. My pieces are only a matter or practice, as with the scales. BUT, I cannot seem to overcome the horrid aural tests, memory and yes, my sight-reading is also a bit dodgy, these components make up more than like 50% of the exam itself and I just cant seem to do it!
Here is the syllabus thing, checkout the requirements for grade eight:-
http://www.ameb.edu.au/site/index.cfm?display=121539
My piano teacher is really stressing me out, she says that if I just blank in the memory section (which I always do, I cant help it! At home when i practice, it is fine but at lessons I go blank) Then the examiner will fail me immediately. I cannot afford to fail this exam. So pleaseee,, how do I learn to distinguish the different harmonies etc. How do I memorise the memory section? Any tip would be appreciated. :D
Thankyou, and please give me some tips, God knows I need them!! xox
A. Do not worry so much! You can do a lot of things by yourself by practicing online. There are many very good interactive websites that can help you with interval, chords, cadences recognition, etc. These websites are free. Unfortunately through "Answers" I can only give you ten links, but there are more for you to choose from.
Go to my website http://piano-lessons-toronto.com/level-4-and-up/ where you will find a lot of links.
For sight reading, you have to practice very consistently and effectively. No way around!
You can do it! Trust in yourself. My students are doing miracles just before exams. I don't know how much time you have, just start doing online exercises now.
Good luck!
How do you develop advanced tone recognition?
Q. I have a pretty good musical ear. I can hear individual tones but I'm not to the point that I can easily hear intervals or chords. When trying to find them on an instrument, it's trial and error until I finaly find it.
One cannot be a performer if they can't recognise these things on demand.
A. It won't happen overnight, but practicing daily will improve your aural skills immensely. The most important part of ear training is audiation, which is a fancy word for your musical imagination, the tape recorder in your mind that holds the melodies that you hear. I'm sure you've had a song stuck in your head before. The trick to ear training is getting all of the musical rudiments (intervals, chords (arpeggiated, of course), scale degrees (using numbers or solfege syllables), and rhythms) stuck in your head one by one, over and over until you never forget what each one sounds like.
I don't recommend using well-known songs for identifying intervals. Here's why: Let's say you use "Here Comes the Bride" for an ascending perfect fourth. This is scale degree 5 ascending to 8 (or 1 an octave higher), or "sol do". Now that you've learned it, you can recognize that pattern whenever it happens. What will happen if you hear scale degree 3 jumping up to scale degree 6, though ("mi la")? (Listen to the beginning of Brahms's Intermezzo for piano in A minor, Op. 76/7 (http://music.barnesandnoble.com/search/product.asp?z=y&PWB=1&EAN=90266388622 click on track 6). This too is a perfect fourth, and sounds VERY different from "sol do"! Would you recognize that as a fourth? Only if you had also learned to hear that one too! Another different-sounding P4 is 7 to 3 ("ti mi")! When I teach ear training, I teach all of my students (and make them memorize) an interval drill that groups together all of the scale-degree combinations that form a single type of interval. My students sing this etude at the beginning of every class.
A far better approach to ear training than using intervals is using scale degrees. When you practice ear training, do identification drills, always singing what you hear (in a comfortable octave) after listening and then after you've learned the correct ID for the rudiment. Also do dictation. Try to write down melodies that you hear (and have the music for so that you can check your work when you are done). Finally, do a lot of sight-singing. Find melodies that you've never heard before and find out how they sound by singing them from the music. Try to avoid using the piano to help you sing, until you get lost. Then back up and find where you went astray using the piano. There's a difference between producing the right pitches for yourself and matching the pitches you hear. (You must be able to do one before you can do the other, of course.)
There are lots of great online ear training resources. One is http://www.good-ear.com/, and another is http://www.musictheory.net/. I'm sure you can find others on your own. Good luck, and let me know if I can help you in any other way!
Would ritalin help with piano sight reading for someone with adhd?
Q. I usually don't have the intensity of focus for piano sight reading and honestly can't comprehend how anyone does....
A. Yes Ritalin may help ... perhaps quite a bit. I would talk with your doctor about a good fit to try. Ritalin is addictive. Of course all of the ADHD meds have side effects. Piano sight reading is a slowly learned subject normally. Start with the simplest, and repetition on different music pieces. Slowly increase to the next degree of difficulty. It takes time for the brain to coordinate all of the learning centers involved with timing, note and chord recognition and hand response. You have to be real patient in this process. Learning to type is a piece of cake compared to piano sight reading. Take care !
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Title : I need help with my AMEB grade 8 piano exam??!! Please answer! :)?
Description : Q. OKAY, so as you all know, my soon-to-approach and dreaded grade 8 piano exam (practical AMEB) is giving me strife. My pieces are only a ...