Music Exams — Do I Love Them Or Hate Them?
I’ve just received a batch of music exam results. The months of preparation have come to an end. The deed is done, and now the results are in. It’s my half-term holiday this week so I have a moment to reflect on the process of preparing and doing exams. Is the pain worth the gain? Why do I put my pupils through it?
Focus
As a teacher I find exams helpful. They provide structure, repertoire ideas and clear goals for assessing progress. The longer I teach, the more I feel I can correctly judge the standard required and teach what is needed to reach those levels. I enjoy getting to know the set pieces and working out strategies to help pupils overcome tricky phrases or sections. I also find working towards a specific date a really useful aid to encouraging pupils to practise. (You’ve got your exam in three weeks’ time. Do you know your scales…?)
But I know I am a goal-orientated person who thrives on structure and attainment. Is the pressure of an exam always required to help pupils make progress? The focus exams give might help me as the teacher but does it really help my pupils?
Pleasure
I admire those pupils who decide they are not going to do exams but are learning for the fun of it, spending time each week practising pieces and consistently progressing. But I have to say they are few and far between. I have not seen that many pupils over my twenty-plus years of teaching who play purely for pleasure in these early learning years.
Our UK education system is an exam-orientated system with almost weekly assessments and very clear directives and levels from an incredibly early age. Children grow up used to working towards an end result, a given goal. My observation as teacher and mum is that music practise is not an instinctive discipline for kids. That is to say, most children do not naturally want to spend time practising. It is often difficult, physically demanding and time consuming. Let’s face it, after a long day at school most children want a bit of chill out time.
Conflicted
So it’s here that I find myself conflicted. I know that putting my pupils, children, or even myself in for an exam gives that extra motivation to be a bit more consistent about practise and do it even when there are other things demanding time that may be more enjoyable.
But I also strongly believe children need to be children and have time to relax, to choose what they want to do in their spare time and to have time that is unstructured and relaxed, away from academic pressures. Well-being and young people’s mental health is of great concern to me, especially with four daughters aged 9–16.
But no-one can enjoy the pleasure of making music unless they can actually play an instrument. And learning to play an instrument to any kind of standard requires self-discipline and perseverance. Watching my own children learn to play has been an enlightening experience in itself. It is a slow, arduous business to master an instrument. Somehow I have forgotten a lot of the struggle now I am a competent musician myself – although I do have a vague memory of crying at the piano and can still recall the sense of intense frustration when I found a passage too difficult to master quickly.
No gain without pain
So I fall back to my original question. Is the pain of preparing for exams and taking them worth the ultimate gain of being able to play an instrument well?
I hesitantly think that exams are valuable. In fact, I would go further and say that they are invaluable to some students and have been the sole motivating factor for some of my pupils, giving them exactly the structure they need to lead them to successfully master their instrument and become talented musicians. Without exams they would never have experienced the depth of enjoyment and fulfilment they now have in making music.
But, of course, exams are not for everyone. And I think the growing trend I am beginning to see of pupils coming to me with pieces they have found on the internet, or seen on YouTube, is a healthy and positive step towards musical independence. I always encourage my pupils to find pieces they enjoy and try to source scores for them if I can. Websites such as SheetMusicDirect.com have a huge range of popular pieces that can be transposed to different keys before they are printed out. This is very helpful if pupils need an easier key for their particular ability.
I have also started to write a few piano pieces myself in a style that many pupils seem to enjoy. These can be found at the PianoMusic page on my website where I have provided a score and YouTube video so pupils can see and hear what I intended and print off the music if they want to try and learn the music for themselves.
Motivation
It’s all about motivation. And the ultimate goal is to enable a beginner to master the instrument sufficiently to have a choice over what repertoire can be played for pleasure. I love it when I hear about pupils just playing the piano for fun. I believe the ability to make music is a wonderful gift and I am passionate about inspiring and enabling people to be able to do this. Music exams can play a vital part in that, but I am also working very hard at trying to find the styles of music my pupils want to play and encouraging them to go for it if they find something that starts to catch their interest.
So I love music exams for what they can offer by way of motivation. But I hope that I can ultimately enable my pupils to think of music practise as a pleasurable pastime for its own sake.
