The Violin Exams

All the Sliding, Tapping and Bowing
Just recently, I've been playing the violin to prepare for the Grade 3 violin exams just now. Yup, the scales, especially D major (2 octaves) scale, D minor (2 octaves) scale and all the chromatic scales, kind of hurt my fingertips a lot because of the sliding action involved while changing position on the strings. After doing so much scales, my fingertips had start to harden (it does feel funny when I'm typing out anything on the keyboard).

Well, didn't really played my pieces well as I shaked my hands too much because I'm feeling a little nervous, but I hoped I can still get at least a pass for my pieces.

Scales are fine, luckily he only asked me 1 D major scale (seperate bow), the only scales/arpeggios that requires changing of position.

Sight-reading is still ok, but think I didn't played so well though as I didn't really care too much about dynamics (loud/soft) and the gradation of tone (increase/decrease in loudness/softness). Anyway, the good thing about the sight-reading that I'm being tested was that there wasn't any position changing involved. :)

Aural... Hmm... look like no more full marks for me, never mind, I'll try to aim for a "fairly good" pass. For Test A, think I answered the time wrongly... For Test B, the examiner gave me a D-flat major piece, in which I have problems singing using the fixed-Do solfege ("Do-Re-Mi"), which I always use it for my singing test in aural... Well, after I looked through the aural syllabus for Grade 3 Aural, I realised that the candidates didn't really have to sing using the solfege, but instead can use "La-La-La"... Ok, maybe I should have use "La-La-La" rather than solfege ("Do-Re-Mi"), which makes singing much simpler... Test C and Test D is still fine though.

Well, before the start of my exams, the examiner tried to adjust the music stand so that it is suitable for my height, but unfortunately, the music stand could only be raised to a certain height, so I need to look down to look at the music scores. The examiner also commented that I must have eaten too much good food that I've grown up so tall, after adjusting the music stand to the maximum height... Ok, at least I'm still considered to be average in terms of height. I wonder what would happen if people like Kai or Hui Huang are to take music exams like violin, viola, flute, oboe, clarinet..., or any instruments that require them to stand while playing. Maybe after the exams, they might not be able to stand properly and straight after all the bending...