Category: Extension

Grade 4 Piano

In December 2018 I started to work on learning Grade 4 piano and in Term one of this year my music teacher suggested that I should sit the Trinity examination in August.

I learnt 6 grade 4 pieces and picked three of those to do in the exam. The pieces I ended up playing where: Study in E Minor by Henri Bertini, Barcarolle by Friedrich Burgmüller and Tango Passionis by Barbara Arens. Over the 8 months that I spent learning grade 4 pieces I had a 45 minute lesson once a week and then practiced for about 30 minutes a day. As the exam got closer I sometimes had two lessons a week and increased my practice to about 45 minutes a day.

Three weeks prior to the exam I played Barcarolle at a master class, where a visiting music teacher helped me to fix errors in my playing. There were 4 other students there as well and we all got to listen to each other playing and hear what the teacher suggested.

The exam had five sections; scales and arpeggios, exercises, pieces, musical knowledge and aural. You can gain points from each of these sections which go towards your final score. Practicing for the musical knowledge section involved going over musical terms and knowing the names of the notes. In the aural section you need to listen to music and being able to identify mistakes, or say if the final cadence is perfect or imperfect.

The exam was held at the Nelson Centre of Musical Arts on August the 15th which was a Thursday so I had to take the day off of school. We drove over in the morning and Mum had booked a practice room so I could play my pieces through before I went into the exam. The whole exam only took about 15 minutes and I felt like I had done well overall, although I knew I had made a few mistakes.

About two weeks after I sat the exam I got my results from Trinity College London and I passed with Distinction.