i did Grade 8 paper B in June

8/15
8/15
16/20
10/25
10/25

52/10
failed


i'll sit the exam again!

Oh what a shame. Were you expecting it?

Anyway great you've already decided to have another go. At least you know what it's like and what you need to work on.

Good luck for next time!

I am so sorry. It must have been really hard, I am trying to work my way through Grade 6 which I find really hard, it appears to be taking an age. Maybe next time when you take the exam, you will get a meit or a distinction as you will really by on the ball with it by then.

ET

yes,it is expected
cuz i learnt it by myself, no teacher\

but im surprised that i scored 16/20 in question 3
cuz i didnt do any practice on this part lol

Aww Sorry.
I did G6 alone and scraped a pass - although I still think the paer I sat was much harder than any of the past papers I worked through. It's much easier now I have a teacher for G7. I found the teacher at my local sixth form college, if that helps,

Oh I'm sorry!

Was it ABRSM theory?

Does that mean the results are out for everyone?

yes ABRSM grade 8 music theory! I'm in Aussie by the way

Stop being so keen, it'll make the wait seem even longer! Results are released a bit at a time, not all at once; no, mine aren't there yet (for a B centre, for G5).

I hope your happy.
Now ill be checking my candidates results. Hourly.
Without Fail.


Whats good about theory is that its alot cheaper, so its not so bad if you fail.

Questions 4 and 5 have clear-cut "right or wrong" answers. Questions 1 and 2 don't have a specific right answer, but there are things you can do that are clearly wrong. Question 3 is the most open-ended - there's actually very little you can do to it that an examiner can be certain is /wrong/ rather than merely unconventional.
This means that there's not a lot you can really do to prepare for question 3, so getting a decent mark for it without practice isn't unusual.

Broadly speaking, the second half of the paper tests your knowledge and understanding of the basic facts, while the first half tests your ability to apply some of them to certain tasks. So there's some scope to bluff your way through the first half - you might be able to give plausible answers based on your general musical experience even if you don't really understand all the underlying theory - but you can't really do that with the second half.

The extracts questions should give you easy marks though. As long as you learn the foreign terms, transposition intervals, chromatic chords, etc. you should find that half of the paper straightforward. I'm not sure that just taking the exam again would help much, given where you lost the marks. If you'd done well on the second half of the paper but badly on the first half, then a retake might make sense. But given that you lost more marks on the second half, you really need to fill in the gaps there before you try the exam again.

How did you do a grades 6 and/or 7 if you've taken them?

If you've tried to jump straight from grade 5 to grade 8, you might find it useful to work through the books for 6 and 7 and maybe take one of those exams before looking at grade 8 again.

Also, if you've tried to study for grade 8 using just the theory workbooks, you may find it useful to make sure you've got a thorough grasp of formal harmony. Harmony in Practice is a very useful book to work through before or alongside studying for the higher theory grades.
You also need copies of the AB Guide to Music Theory (books 1 and 2) - I think it would be possible to get through the upper grades with just those and a few past papers (plus Harmony in Practice if you haven't been taught formal harmony). The other workbooks are useful but not essential.

Finding a teacher would be helpful, but I know it can be difficult to find one for higher theory. If you live within reach of a university, the music department there may be able to put you in touch with a theory tutor.