Fascinating stuff.

Im looking at The Lark in the Clear Air, arr. T. C. Kelly, which is an ABRSM grade 3 piece.

I don't have a file I can upload, but there are various people playing it on Youtube.

Its second half has some third position work, but how much? The youtube versions vary from all of it to only a little bit of it (with variants on where the shift down to first comes), to most, but not the very end. It's all a bit crazy and perhaps purely a matter of taste. But it's also in F, so maybe I can work something out from the example above.

Maybe I'll try to find a way to upload it and see what FM's preferred way is.

Fiddlerman said
I'll be happy to help out.  

Is that clear enough? From the C after the 3 bars' rest. I've pencilled in some of the options. I hope they aren't distracting. I'd be really grateful to know how you'd play to the end.

Fiddlerman said
I like most of your fingerings and could easily use them but can offer an alternative. If you feel comfortable using 2nd position, this is an option worth considering.  You can also tastefully slide with your third finger from the A to the Bb or do it subtly.

Sorry for offering too many options in one sheet. I would experiment with it musically and see what sounds the best bearing technique in mind as well.

  

Fabulous, thanks, FM. I will practise every option, and see if I can get a feel for the style.

By the way, I'm having difficulty with louré bowing. Is that really for beginners?

Is it more about pressure than bow speed?

Fiddlerman said
I like most of your fingerings and could easily use them but can offer an alternative. If you feel comfortable using 2nd position, this is an option worth considering.  You can also tastefully slide with your third finger from the A to the Bb or do it subtly.

Sorry for offering too many options in one sheet. I would experiment with it musically and see what sounds the best bearing technique in mind as well.

  

There's a follow-up to this story. It turns out the examining board requires these three lines of music to be played entirely in 3rd position with no shifting!

No, ABRSM require a tiny amount of (optional) 3rd position work starting at grade 3, not before. Optional in the sense that not all pieces have it, and you choose what pieces you play. It's only when you do grade 4 that you get more frequent examples of 2nd and 3rd position with easy shifts.

Having said that, for grade 3, I'm pretty sure they require the D major scale over 2 octaves shifting into 3rd position and back on the A string.

And, to repeat what I said about Whistler elsewhere,

Whistler's two books are pretty rigorous, and perhaps not very interesting either.

There's a guy called Mackay who did two easier and more interesting books on 3rd position in the 1960s.

(Whistler vol 1 is about positions 3, 5, 7 and higher; Whistler vol 2 is about positions 2, 4, 6 and higher)

bocaholly said
It looks like ABSRM is a pretty cool system. I've seen several videos of folks who posted videos of their exams and they're not just making it through the material... they're playing it extremely well. Some self-selection among the Youtube posters likely... none the less, good stuff.

Gordon, what's your guess about the demographics of violinists going through the ABRSM paces: Mostly young people working up to potential conservatory level or is there a good share of adult starters just in there for the challenge?

I'd guess it's mostly kids. They go up to grade 8 then enter music college, which is also audition based, and when I was doing piano, everything I did was aimed at performance standard. Adults can do it for fun, but it used to be the case that your teacher had to enter you for an exam, so you couldn't do it alone, or maybe that was just for kids? Also for grade 6 and above, or thereabouts, it is or was compulsory to have passed the grade 5 theory exam.

But don't forget that's mostly just the UK. America seems to prefer Suzuki.

ABRSM isn't a method or a system, it's important to realise. It's just a series of exams. The method used to pass them is anything the teacher wants to use. For me the ABRSM books are just a yardstick so that I can know how I'm progressing.

I was planning to do two pieces from each book and two pieces from the corresponding Suzuki book at each grade, but I've abandoned the Suzuki books and I'll find four ABRSM pieces to do at each grade instead. They change their syllabus every four years, so you can find old syllabuses and get a larger range of music to choose from.

In theory there's a roughly one to one match between an ABRSM grade and a Suzuki level, but it's more complicated than that, as they stress different approaches and techniques, and the ABRSM syllabus prescribes a piece for an exam, say grade 5, that you might find in a Suzuki level 3 book, because Suzuki is far more rigorous about some things and neglects the ability to read music. I don't see much mention of scales in Suzuki books, either.