Student Day

M participated in Student Day today.  Her teacher is part of the professional teaching association.  M prepared 3 pieces in addition to scales, chord progressions and "Wedding Day at Troldhaugen" that she played in the January Recital.  We arrived by 8:30 so we could be not stressed when we were lost for 15 minutes.  We found the building, wandered around, found a bathroom, then we found the room for aural testing. 

During Aural Testing the proctor played chords, melodies, scales, intervals and musical techniques.  The students had a multiple choice paper they had to identify what was being played.  The test lasted 30 minutes.  M has never done any high stakes testing so this was sort of her first experience like that.

I was reviewing what to expect for the Audition/Playing Test and realized she was not prepared for the Harmonization and Transposition portion of the exam.  There was 3 excerpts with chord symbols.  She had to add the harmony for the key of A.  And then she transposed it to C.  It was a tense 20 minutes as she worked through that, but then she had it memorized by the time she had to play it. 

She arrived for the playing test 5 minutes early and then waited 10 minutes until she was called in.  A young boy was waiting when we arrived and almost jumped ahead of her when the judge came out.  They had been waiting a long time.  The playing test was scales, chord progressions, Sight Reading, Transposition, Harmonization and her 3 pieces, "Gavotte", "Ivan Sings" and "Puck".  She felt like the scales were the hardest parts since they would call out a scale and she had to play it cold.  M is used to playing the circle of fifths rather than individual scales.

There was a good chunk of time between the playing test and the recital so M went down and did the written theory exam.  It took her half an hour and she seemed unstressed by it.  I used up all the lives on two dots waiting for her.  Sorry M!

She ate her lunch then we used the restroom again and went into the recital room.  She played "Ivan Sings" and there were about 12 students in the recital.  It was fantastically 30 minutes.  Each part of the Student Day was 30 minutes and we had a lot of time in between to transition from event to event.  I'm really impressed by the people who plan and schedule the time slots.  The recital had students from level 1 to 8?  A wide range of students so it was entertaining.