Bradley’s Examination Tips!!  

After having examined many drum kit and percussion exams around the country I have found there are some excellent teaching practices and some that are not so good! 

If you have an exam or you are entering a pupil then I hope these tips might be useful to you. There are also some free downloads of possible exam questions for drum kit (based on the guildhall syllabus) for grades 1 to 6. I use these sheets of questions as written homework for pupils to cover the Musicianship Questions, which currently has almost 10 percent of the total exam marks awarded to them! These sheets are only a selection of possible questions, but please feel free to email more questions in to be added. I will be adding questions for percussion at a later date,  so send yours in soon! 

1 Do Not turn up to the exam with photocopies, they are illegal and you will be failed!! The only exception is enlargements made for dyslectic people. 

2 Rudiments must be learnt from memory, if the examiner asks for a double paradiddle and you play a paradiddle diddle, then you will lose marks. 

3 If the examiner asks what the tempo of a piece should be then make sure you give a complete answer, for example 110 CROTCHET BEATS PER MINUTE. You must mention the type of beats (crotchets, quavers etc), and it is always per minute, NOT per BAR! 

4 Another common error, especially for young candidates is answering questions with  different names, for example: If the examiner points to a group of four semi quavers and asks what are these they will expect the answer ‘semi quavers’. However when candidates have been using phonetics as a teaching aid they will often give an answer like ‘coca cola’. So make sure if you teach  using phonetics then your pupil is aware of the correct names.  

 I will be adding to this list, but please feel free to ask questions and add your own helpful hints!

 Bye for now and happy drumming!

Possible Exam Questions grade 1 & 2  Exam questions grades 3&4 

 Exam questions 5 & 6  Exams questions grades 7&8