I went to Birmingham today to support my kids taking their trumpet exams. A nervous grade 1, a quick learning grade 3 and two very promising grade 4’s. All of these kids are no more than ten years of age and the grade 1 and 3’s have only been playing for a year.<\/p>\n
I was hoping for a couple more, but because of the season (and that schools have more germs in them than most biochemical labs) they were taken ill last week and weren’t able to play today. But my advice for young musicians taking their exams isn’t simply; don’t get ill. Although that is sound advice. It’s simply based on three unusual things that occurred with my pupils in todays exams.<\/p>\n
1) Make sure your mouthpiece is clean – so when kitchen towel is put into it, it doesn’t return completely black for the pupil don’t remark; “Oh, it’s much easier to play now” \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
2) Don’t give your teacher and accompanist a heart attack by playing pieces twice as fast as you’ve ever played them before. Even though they were perfect!! …Just don’t. \ud83d\ude1b<\/p>\n
3) Make sure your watch alarm doesn’t go off half way through your piece so the accompanist has to double your 2 bars of rest for you to turn if off before carrying on. \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n
Apart from that they all did really well and I’m looking forward to their results! And now of course they can burn their exam pieces.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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