Music Support Sessions

Choosing pieces for your exam can be stressful. Knowing you are performing at the right standard can also be stressful, why not let us help you - we will even give you a mock exam!

We can help you develop the skills you need to be able to give a good performance for your music exam at GCSE or A Level.

Being able to read the notes and rhythms is not enough to get you a good mark. You also need to demonstrate that you can follow the performance directions and express the composer's intentions through your performance.

To be able to create strong compositions means that all of the components have to work together seamlessly. You also need to have good musical ideas to start with! Do you find it challenging to create musical ideas? We can help by sharing with you the top tips of famous composers.

Just like a piece of writing, a musical composition has to have good structure and style. This means you need to know how to organise your ideas and which techniques will work for the period you are creating music

Once you have a solid structure and you have organised your musical ideas, you need to add performance directions and expressive markings. Again, these must be appropriate for the style but also the instrument you are writing for.

Being able to write and play music is only part of the story! Understanding the history behind music enables you to talk about the music in a new way. To do this, you need to know lots of key words and understand how music changed through time.

Where to begin? The musical elements are a great starting place for talking about what is happening in the music. Being able to link the composer and / or title to the way the elements are used is fundamental in the analysis of the music itself.

Understanding the signs and symbols is also an important part of analysis. This will help you to be able to describe the composer's intentions in line with the style / period in which they have created music.