All Students preparing for Grade exams are recommended to use the Hofnotes on-line training pages to practise for the aural tests. 

At higher grades  you must be able to discuss with the examiner musical features such as texture, form, style, and period of a piece of music.  My own  web pages to help with these parts of the test at Grade 5+ and at GCSE are available here!

"Great composers wrote their music.  Lesser musicologists came after and worked out their system and came up with the 'rules'. The rest of us do what we are told!"

There is no substitute for the gift of being able to 'hear inside' the harmonies you are reading or putting down on the page.  For many of us this is a very difficult skill to acquire. The more you listen to orchestral music with a score in front of you, the more piano music you sightread, the more quickly you will come by the skills you need.  

While you are waiting and working for these skills, the 'rules' of harmony are there to help those of us not blessed with a perfect inner ear to avoid the ugliest mistakes.  

Anne Butterworth's Harmony in Practice is an excellent source of advice and exercises in classical harmony 

Last updated on: 10/10/2011