ABRSM exam pieces Grade 1 book

The 2013 syllabus pieces should be arriving in the post in the next few days. I will be learning all 9 of them solidly before moving on to grade 2.

If anyone wants to learn alongside me, then here's a link to the book. It's not that expensive. There are some nice little tunes in there. I have done two of them so far. Looking froward to the other 7.

Also another must have for me is the AB Guide to music theory. I think I have owned this book about 3 or 4 times and lost it since I was about 14 years old. It's the bible of music theory and is the go to reference on scales, rhythm, key signatures and time signatures. it goes on to discuss advanced scales and harmony further on.

Those are two ones I would start with to get a great solid foundation!

Grade 1 Update #4

Couple of things to talk about today.

Last night's practice went well again.

Mozart 'Minuet in G' was still getting better ( more accurate and less mistakes) but not perfect. I have found a weakness. That is a good thing. When you know what you are not good at, it means you have the ability to work at it. It's easy to get frustrated but I'm remaining positive.

I realised that I was good at breaking down parts and practicing them separately. The Bit that I was then failing at was the transition from each separate part into the next. For example, I had practiced the first section and second section quite a lot on their own. Thinking I have it down, I would play it through and there would be a pause and stumble when ending one and starting the other.

Sight reading practice material

One thing that I need to do more of is practice sight reading in keys other than C. A lot of method book, keep you in C for a long time and then only give you a couple of songs in G, F and maybe D. Once you learn these songs, it's no longer sight reading and becomes mostly playing from memory. From there the difficulty increases rapidly whilst new keys are being thrown at you.

What is needed to get better at sight reading is just lots of practice fodder material. I'm compiling a list of really easy stuff to learn that is listed by key. I think that I will stick to a certain key for a whole week and get used to playing and reading it before moving on to a new keys. A good resource is this site...

 http://www.pianostreet.com/

....where you can search by key and level and find pieces that you can play at your level and a bit higher before feeling comfortable about moving on.

Another good resource is IMSLP where you can download whole score and study booklets for free. A good example is Daniel Gottlob Turk's Study book which has dozens of exercises in many keys.

Have a look and you'll have an endless supply of material to learn from if you search well enough.