We had a successful debut exam session on Monday 22 October 2007, taking place as part of Fèis RSAMD.  Amid all sorts of concerts, tuition for young people in piping, Gaelic song, fiddling, harp-playing and more, candidates from as far afield as Shetland came to take graded exams in Scots fiddle and accordion. 

We also held a number of graded exams for eager young fiddle players in St Louis, Missouri, USA.  Both sessions went well.

We are now looking ahead to our next scheduled session for fiddle, accordion and harp from Tuesday 25 to Friday 28 March 2008.  The last day of this upcoming session co-incides with the Edinburgh International Harp Festival taking place in Merchiston, Edinburgh (www.harpfestival.co.uk), so we particularly hope that harp players will take advantage of the occasion and limber up for the Festival with a graded exam or ungraded assessment by a specialist harp examiner. 

Some changes

There are just a few recent changes in syllabuses and guidelines to mention:

• In an effort to make our exams accessible and provide as wide a definition as possible of what we mean by ‘fiddling’, candidates for the fiddle exams are free to play the violin, viola or cello in the exam or assessment. 

• We now offer a Performance Assessment as well as graded exams.  The Performance Assessment is ungraded and unmarked and the candidate receives a certificate with written feedback on the day.  See our Performance Assessment page in the Syllabuses section of our website (http://gradedexams.rsamd.ac.uk) for more details.

• Remember, if you are too far away to make it to Glasgow, we can arrange either exams by videoconference or for an examiner to come to your school.  In the latter case we would need a minimum of approximately 10-12 candidates in one discipline to make it viable.  If you only have a few, why not pool candidates from schools in your catchment area together to make it work?  Please get in touch with us in the first instance to discuss arrangements.

• Our online PAM guidelines now include specimens with sample pulse marks and phrasing brackets to facilitate more effective preparation.

• We are working with the publisher Taigh na Teud of Skye (www.scotlandsmusic.com) to produce complete sets of supporting test specimens, printed downloads of selected tunes and, in time, printed collections of Scottish Traditional Music Graded Exams repertoire.  Test specimens and printed downloads should be available by early January 2008. 

As always, please get in touch with feedback on the exams whenever you wish.  We look forward to seeing you in March 2008. 

Josh Dickson

Graded Exams Manager

http://gradedexams.rsamd.ac.uk

Regards

Madeleine

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