Grade 4

I've been a bit slow in updating things on here but I had been practising and even had to change two strings since the last post. All preparation had been going well for grade 4. Of the three pieces Eriskay Love Lilt had had a public performance at Queen's Park, Sarabande gradually fell into place over the last few weeks and Butterflies got faster and faster with the aid of the metronome. I knew I was on straight after lunch and managed to arrive really early. I was able to leave my harp at the venue so I nipped next door to the pub to find Rohan and Anne who had organised the session. Also eating his lunch was the examiner so I joined them for a bit and chatted about the grade-1-a-thon, exams and the sabotage of the Tour de France.

I left before the others to warm up and had a play through a few scales and my pieces. I tuned my harp as best I could then Rohan came along and retuned it. Her keen ear noticed a possible problem with the tuning of one of the lower strings. E and E flat on the third string up were very slightly out of tune with each other. I hadn't noticed this before and Rohan had to demonstrate several times before I noticed. It didn't affect the pieces in the exam too much so we went with that.

I think I'm getting the hang of these exams by now. This is my fourth on the harp and something like my 19th graded instrumental exam. I felt no nerves, just a little bit of excitement and if I noticed my mind wandering very quickly managed to bring it back to the job in hand. Rohan had sneakily said "check your harmonics" as I got settled as the fingers need to be placed at exactly the right point on the string to get the bell-like effect just right. If you suddenly switch to a higher or lower stool this can affefct where your fingers might end up. I did this just as the examiner was filling out the top of the report form and made a mental note of where my fingers should be. I hit an unusual wrong note in bar 2 of Eriskay but nothing too obscure. Sarabande is a tricky one to get right first time and a few chords contained some chords Schoenberg would have been proud of then Butterflies was fine. It is difficult to get the rhythm sounding really even and I haven't quite managed it yet but this will come. Scales were fine, no hitches at all today with my levers. I memorised as much of the sight-reading as I could and got through this fairly well looking from harp to music to harp again where I needed to. However I did relax too soon and hit a wrong note at the end, just as I did in grade 3! Nothing disastrous but just goes to show how the concentration has to be in place until well after you have finished the task. The examiner tried to give me the grade 3 aural tests until I politely pointed out that I should be singing and not clapping a pulse and he apologised and chuckled and we carried on.

I came out smiling and left Rohan to sort out my harp while one of my youngest pupils, Maisie, warmed up ready for her grade 1 clarinet. Despite it being her first ever exam Maisie looked very relaxed looking as experienced as someone who had done it all before! She played her first two piece beautifully and she said the rest of it had gone well too.

Next up is the Harp Festival in Woking and I have already been sent some material to look at then I need to get a piece recorded for my wedding ceremony. And then I might start thinking about grade 5. As for this evening, I might just have a night off!