Interview,
Victoria Proudler: Piano Grades are Go!
Pianist, educator, examiner, and composer, Victoria Proudler is undeniably an expert on piano examinations. Her recent series Piano Grades are Go! feature carefully graded pieces, sure to capture the imagination of pianists of all ages. Consisting of three volumes, the series has pieces at initial to grade five standards, aligned with the standards of the major exam boards.
Read on to hear Victoria speak about her experiences in the music industry, give advice on taking music exams, and discuss her series of books, Piano Grades are Go!.
What makes Piano Grades are Go! different to other graded piano anthologies?
Piano Grades are Go! speeds up progress by teaching the skills needed for the grades through fun and catchy pieces. The series is unique in that every piece Is carefully written to teach one technique or performance skill relevant to the grade. These are called superskills in the books. The superskills all contribute to the art of expressive musical performance.
Every piece also has expressive performance directions and the overall approach is holistic as the superskills cover a broad variety of skills relevant to each grade. For example, in Grade 1 the ten superskills include hand coordination, dynamics, balancing the hands and swing rhythm. Advice on each skill is given at the beginning of the books. At grade 5 the superskills include forearm rotation, tonal colour changes and communicating style. There are fifty-six pieces with superskills over the three books.
Different styles of music require different performance skills so the books contain a variety of popular styles including classical, romantic, jazz, ballad, rock, jazz-baroque and more. Every piece is designed to be easy to understand, with catchy tunes and chord progressions to make learning fun and build confidence. The pieces are also empathetically written for the learner, with a “less work, more play” approach. This gives more time in lessons to focus on technical skills and expressive performance. Ternary form (ABA structure) is often used, as well as repeated patterns. In the early grades the writing is often step-wise, and based on familiar pentascales or scales.
The pieces are also complete with exam-style articulations, phrasing, fingering and pedalling. At each grade is a range of the key signatures, time signatures and styles of music commonly found at that grade. This means that there is a very smooth transition on to learning exam pieces.
Four of the pieces from Piano Grades are Go! are already in the new ABRSM and Trinity piano exam syllabuses. These are Tarantella Twist (ABRSM Grade 3 A:3), Silver Lining (ABRSM Grade 1 B:13), March of the Druids (Trinity Initial), and Toccatina (Trinity Grade 1).
How has your musical career as a performer and teacher influenced you in the creation of the series?
“A successful musical performance always tells a story, awakens memories, stirs feelings and emotions”.
As a teacher I have taught piano for many years, from my first few piano students back in 1991 to still teaching piano three full days a week. I quickly learned that beginner pianists need to build up a set of skills and techniques in order to play a piece expressively. Then, during secondary school music teacher training, I started studying pedagogy and the psychology of learning. I learned how schemes of work and lesson planning vastly increase the rate of progress and transformed my piano teaching by applying what I had learned. I realised that, to quote from the third book in the series,
“pianists who enjoy learning carefully chosen pieces, developing exactly the right skills needed to perform in different styles, learn far more quickly”.
How has your career as a music examiner helped you to write the series?
I have been a music examiner for nineteen years and I can always tell in the exam room when a candidate really enjoys the piece they are playing! They bring the music to life and play so much more expressively. So for Piano Grades are Go! it has been really important to me to compose the types of pieces which learners really enjoy playing.
In the past, I was commissioned by an exam board to compose and arrange many pieces which were then published as exam pieces. This was invaluable experience for writing graded pieces. I also worked for many years as a music exam syllabus consultant. This experience gave me an inside understanding of how exam boards have parameters for the pieces at each grade. These parameters can include, for example, which keys, time signatures and hand stretches are found at each grade and this can differ a little between different exam boards.
From your experience as a music examiner, what do you look for in an exam performance?
I look for the good points of every performance and always find them! Also, I look at different aspects of musical communication such as accuracy, fluency, rhythmic precision, tone quality and intonation, style, and overall performance skills. With a performance which is already fluent and technically secure, really communicating the dynamics and shaping and using a variety of tonal colours can make a stand-out, memorable performance.
Do you have any advice for those taking an exam for the first time?
Yes, firstly to remember that the music examiner is always looking for the good things about every performance. They are there to help candidates to do their best. Examiners will have experienced taking music exams themselves when learning, so they understand what that is like from the candidate’s point of view.
The advice I give to my students for all exams, whether the first exam or one of many, is to practise performing the pieces in front of other people before the exam, whether just for family or friends or by playing in a concert. If this is not possible then making a home video or sound recording can also add a good “sense of occasion” to practising performance.
Practising the exam performance as a whole is also a very good idea. Playing scales and pieces one after the other with only a short time between each item really helps to mentally prepare. Or a mock exam run by the teacher can also be helpful, to become familiar with what will happen in the exam. Another helpful tip is to practise playing in the exam room before the exam day if this is a possibility, to get used to the acoustic and also mentally prepare.
Where do you get your ideas for your compositions, and what is your process for creating these?
Composing pieces for Piano Grades are Go! involved a lot of planning first of all. However, I find composing in general a very random process as the best ideas often arrive when I am nearly asleep. Sometimes it can take days and days to find just the first few bars of a piece – like a treasure hunt without a treasure map. But then, at other times, a whole piece can arrive in my head fully formed from nowhere, even down to the finest details.
I often have ideas when I am out and about and capture them by humming them into my phone’s voice recorder. I also often improvise on the piano, recording everything into the voice recorder on my phone. If none of the ideas “stand out”, I will then often go back over the recordings later, hunting for any gems. Then I transfer the composition onto Sibelius.
What is next for you?
I am having a few months off from educational composing as the last three years have been busy with writing the Piano Grades are Go! books. For now, I am really enjoying teaching the pieces from the series and having the time to focus on other musical projects. After the time off I will start thinking of ideas for what I could write next. It is lovely to have a blank canvas!
Ellena Taylor - Sheet Music and Books Manager
