NYAA Entry-Skills-Overview for year 2006, September to October

Overview

• Last 3 topics of the theory exam
• General Practices and Specimen Papers
• The taking of the Grade 5 Theory of Music Exam

Venue: Tampines (Piano Teacher's House)(every thursday)

Dates(in year 2006): 7/9, 14/9, 21/9/, 28/9, 5/10, 12/10, 19/10, 26/10

Hours completed: 8hrs in total

In September, I was in the midst of my preparations for the Grade 5 Piano Theory exam and the preparations included finishing various specimen papers and practices that allowed me to continually brush up on the theoretical aspect of piano.

From the 7th of September 2006, I had begun on the last few topics required for the Grade 5 theory exam, namely: Instruments of the orchestra, Reiterations and repeats, and last of all Performance directions which entailed memorizing a considerable amount of Italian, German and French musical terms which were often utilized in music scores to create certain styles or effects e.g. piangevole(Italian) which means to play in a plaintive manner, hence setting the atmosphere/effect.

The first few lessons in September focused on completing the 3 last topics remaining on the agenda before taking the exam. I was taught about the common music orchestra and the instrumental families that made up this orchestra, which were string, woodwind, and brass family instruments. I was required to memorize the basic information about these instruments; things like the clef it was played in, the range, and whether the instruments required transposing as some tended to sound lower or higher than what was written on the music score e.g. the double-bass of the string family would sound an octave lower than what was written on the music score for it. I completed various exam practices for it, familiarizing myself with the common questions that had recurred over the years.

In the next topic, Reiterations and repeats, I learnt about the various ways in which repetition of rest(s) or phrases of notes could be represented. I had learnt to write and interpret the representation of reiterated rests, some of which could stretch over a varying number of bars. On top of this, the same was taught of reiterated notes, for example the writing and interpretation for tremolos, which were 2 consecutively reiterated notes over a certain value. I was also taught how to represent repeated notes (phrases or bars of notes) and subsequently how to interpret these representations, which is the usage of certain symbols to represent repetition.

Performance direction was the last topic I had learnt. As I progressed through this topic, I had to constantly revise mentally the meanings of the musical terms that presented themselves in Italian, French and German to prevent myself from forgetting them. It included memorizing phrases of these terms in context with the musical score as I had only been able to understand individual words and could not as yet comprehend phrases though some their meanings could be deduced.

After finishing off these topics by late September, I begun working on general exercises and specimen papers all the way into October. I had managed to complete the general exercises in the Grade 5 music theory book and Specimen Papers from the years 2003, 2004 and 2005. From these practices, I had managed to form a rough gauge on the difficulty of the exam as well as the common styles of questioning that the exam took to in testing students on their music knowledge. The exam took place on the 4th of November, the first Saturday of the month. I have gotten back my results and had managed to achieve a distinction score in the Grade 5 Theory of Music exam.