Music teacher here with lots of experience preparing children for the SW 11+ MAT.
I always tell families that your child should be able to perform to at least a Grade 3 standard to have a realistic chance of the top schools in the consortium.
You definitely don’t have to perform something from the ABRSM syllabus. But I don’t think picking something more ‘modern’ or ‘out there’ makes the assessors look more favourable on a student compared to another child performing exam syllabus.
What they’re assessing for is musicality, accuracy and musicality. As long as the piece is challenging enough to convey the above; then it doesn’t matter what you perform. I do have all my students do something from a Grade 3 syllabus however, as by the time a student is working from something in Grade 3, I am confident it has enough variety with musical details to be hitting that top banding in a MAT performance.
I always tell families that your child should be able to perform to at least a Grade 3 standard to have a realistic chance of the top schools in the consortium.
You definitely don’t have to perform something from the ABRSM syllabus. But I don’t think picking something more ‘modern’ or ‘out there’ makes the assessors look more favourable on a student compared to another child performing exam syllabus.
What they’re assessing for is musicality, accuracy and musicality. As long as the piece is challenging enough to convey the above; then it doesn’t matter what you perform. I do have all my students do something from a Grade 3 syllabus however, as by the time a student is working from something in Grade 3, I am confident it has enough variety with musical details to be hitting that top banding in a MAT performance.
Statistics: Posted by ncahmusix — Sat Apr 06, 2024 5:20 pm