Scottish Traditional Music Graded Exams

You may be a teacher with students interested in Scottish music, and would like them to receive some independent feedback on their playing.  You may be a student preparing for Standard Grades or National Qualifications, and would like to take an exam conducted by an experienced and insightful performer in your own discipline. Or you may be an adult learner interested in getting some feedback from a specialist.

The Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama addresses these needs by offering its own validated programme of graded exams in Scottish traditional music for learners of all ages.

Our programme promotes traditional Scottish performance skills and the best of traditional repertoire by the establishment of a specialist, performance-based series of assessments true to the artistic integrity of Scotland’s musical heritage.

We offer syllabuses up to Grade 5 for fiddle, accordion and Scottish harp, devised and examined by specialists in Scottish traditional music. We plan to develop our syllabuses up to Grade 8, however, and to develop additional syllabuses in time.

We also offer ungraded performance assessments in the above disciplines.

For further syllabus and application details, phone 0141 270 8242 or go to our dedicated Graded Exams website at http://gradedexams.rsamd.ac.uk .

Publications

We have teamed up with Taigh na Teud to publish collections of exams repertoire, offering a diverse and graded selection of traditional tunes and tunes recently composed in the traditional Scottish idiom. The collections for harp, fiddle and accordion are out now on general release and available on Taigh na Teud’s book and DVD website, www.scotlandsmusic.com.

Downloadable music files  are also available from Taigh na Teud’s download site, www.playscottishmusic.com, where you can hear MP3 sound files of the tunes and easily choose your repertoire for an exam or a new tune to learn.