A2 music (ocr)

Can anyone suggest a study guide for OCR A2 music for the screen for The Hours by Philip Glass?

Thx

Hi, I am doing my A2 music OCR, anyone had any thoughts about their performance pieces? I understand the length should be at least 12 minutes...

Hey guys! I'm doing OCR A2 Music too! I'm re-sitting my As in January though because I got a U in it :/




Your teacher should have given you a textbook. If they haven't you can go on amazon and search for 'Rhinegold As Music'. There are some good books there.





I'm doing vocals and I have to do around 3 or 4 songs. Also, your performance has to have a theme and question. For example, how has the genre developed over a period of time.


Nice to meet you all!

im an external candidate, which means dad teaches me at home

20 mins till my first ever lesson :P

I'm doing a performance on the piano, does anyone know whether the pieces that I play have to be from the same movement?

Hey so I've just started OCR A2 music and I thought it would be a good idea to start this thread so that we could all share ideas, resources and panic together! :P I've tried to start it up nice and early (i.e not a month before the final exam!)

I just want to say good luck to everyone on this course. I did it and found it damn hard. It does, however, give you a reasonably good grounding for music degrees depending on what your set works are etc.

If anyone needs a hand give me a shout.

Thanks - what set works did you do?

Music is by far my hardest subject - there seems to be so much to do! And to get a good mark, you have to be a really good all-rounder in performing, composing, harmony and essay writing. I suppose with a degree you can specialise a bit more in your strongest areas?

I originally did stage works, but my school was rubbish; they cut down my lesson time by over 50% because I was the only music student, so I did the popular works. I got a D overall and got into uni, but I decided to resit and get into a bet uni, so I dropped back a year where there were a couple of others doing music and we did stage works

It is a difficult subject! It's not like a lot of A levels where you just need to be a good essay writer. In music, you need to be able to perform, compose, understand some fairly advanced theory and do some historical study! The first year of my degree (and most music degrees I'd assume) has been, in a nutshell, an expansion of A level. We do composition, performance, history (term 1), contemporary music (term 2) and harmony & form. In the latter years, of course, there is plenty of scope for specialising. I'm not even sure what I want to specialise in :s

And on top of that, the marking is really subjective as well - I get the feeling that you can only get good marks if the examiner likes the pieces you're playing or likes the style of your composition.

Stage works sounds cool - my class is doing programme music, so the focus of the whole course is pretty much on conventional classical music. I miss the jazz we did last year!

What uni are you at?

Yeah the marking is strange. Despite being a first study electric guitar player, I managed two high B's in my performances. I may have even got an A at A2- I can't remember. I thought our performances were marked accurately and well.
My resubmission of my composition was basically me carrying on composing the piece I did for my first sitting of A2. I blagged it as film music for the first one and they didn't like it much. I think it initially got a low C. I revamped it and passed it off as programme music; saying that the composition told the story of a random picture I found on Google Images. This got an A or a B, despite the picture playing no part in the composition progress.
I do think that their composition marking is completely flawed though, as is the criteria for the composition itself. At AS, I submitted an original composition. Not my best piece by any stretch, but it was a fair crack of the whip, put a lot of effort in, probably a C. They gave me an E. I had to resit obviously, and I was running out of time because I was doing AS and A2 coursework all at once. In the end I resorted to doing a big band arrangement of The Beatles tune Ticket To Ride. Really no effort put into this, nothing added to the piece, did it in an afternoon and got a B. What on earth.

Stage works was good. The variation was nice. West Side Story, The Ring Cycle and Dido & Aeneas. I agree- I think they should have a jazz option, seeing as they have a popular music choice. Programme music is good too though, I do enjoy the Berlioz.

I'm at Goldsmiths College

Hello again! Thought I'd revive this thread a bit, as we're getting quite close to the end now... How's everything going?

I've got my performance exam tomorrow... Stressing out about the viva voce thing - not really sure what I'm doing. And my coursework deadline is next Friday! When's yours?