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oy vey
Topic Started: Dec 8 2006, 02:02 PM (75 Views)
pianojerome
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HOLY CARP!!!
Just had my sight-reading final exam. It was very surprising.

There were two parts: [1] sightreading, [2] prepared technical idioms

The sighreading part consisted of a Bach chorale (and I had to name all of the chords at the cadences, and the teacher held a cardboard sheet over my hands so that I could not look at the keys while I was playing), a short (1-page) piece called "tsiganye" ("gypsies") which had a lot of syncopations, and two rhythmic etudes, one of which kept switching back and forth between 3/8 and 5/16 meters, and the other which had one meter but lots of tricky rhythmical stuff. That actually went very well; not much trouble there.

But then the technique stuff: broken 4-note chords, all major and minor, in all the inversions; resolving inverted dominant sevenths to either major or minor tonic; I-IV-I-V-I chord progressions in all inversions in all major and minor keys (while saying out-loud the name of each chord while playing, e.g. Ab Minor, Db Minor, Ab Minor, Eb Major-Minor, Ab Minor) -- and the teacher just picked a couple keys at random for the exam to play these in. I practiced so much, and actually was quite good at some of it, and then I completely blew it at the exam! Fortunately, my teacher is very kind. :help:

It's a bit surprising -- the unprepared sightreading I did very well, and then the prepared stuff just completely fell apart!

Well, you know what they say: a little joy, a little oy. So it goes.
Sam
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