Good luck to all those doing exams, whether practical or music theory!
Our theory exam date here in the Republic of Texas is November 2nd. I have a student taking G5, and I'm taking G6.
My G5 student has worked though stacks and stacks of practice problems, including last year's practice papers. Her working on the practice papers is at high distinction level - think 99% or 100%. I am so incredibly proud of her. We've also been playing through most of the pieces on the G3 piano syllabus (the ones I could scrape together without buying extraneous books). She'll be doing G3 next May, in the same session where I'll be taking ARSM.
I have also been working G6 past papers, as well as problems from the G6 Theory Workbook. I'm fairly confident I'll get at least a Merit at G6. One thing I've noticed is that the score analysis problems in the G6 Theory Workbook are much harder than the score analysis problems in the past papers.
I'm still working on my ARSM programme for next spring. It has done at least one thing for me: I never, never, never want to play another mazurka in my life. I merely disliked that musical form going into ARSM, now I absolutely hate it. That said, my Chopin mazurka is starting to sound pretty good.
My advice with G6 is make sure you read the questions! 3 minutes before the 3 hours were up I realised I had modulated to the subdominant rather than the dominant (as requested) in my melody in question 3... there had to be some immediate emergency surgery which I only just completed in the closing seconds of the exam.
