Reply 1
Honestly, I didn’t enjoy academic music at my school, although I’m not sure what exam board we studied since I didn’t end up doing the GCSE (we did the same things in year 9 as they do at GCSE) and I have a couple of friends taking it. I really love music, play the piano and the cello and sing, and I could easily get a good mark on the performance aspect. Composition is fun especially if you have ideas (really important to try to find inspiration otherwise it could feel stale). But for me there was too much theory and analysis. If you enjoy telling me what rhythm features Beethoven uses or what characteristics of a romantic piece are (or if you just don’t mind this and can put up with it) I would say music GCSE will be enjoyable, and as a more practical subject is a much needed break from more exam-focused academic subjects.
Reply 2
I do music wjec/eduqas, gonna take the exam in two weeks time wish me luck x
Honestly, I don't regret doing music I'd choose it again if I had the choice. Music was the subject which acted as the 'fun', 'rest-based' subject from my other essay-based GCSEs (many people would disagree with me lol). If you play an instrument outside of school (apart of an exam board) then you should at least be on grade 5 as the standard. This is because at that level, it's pretty easy to gain high marks, especially if you're higher than grade 5 then I'll say it's easier to obtain a grade 9 in the performance aspect imo. However, if you're self-taught, then just know it'd be good to learn two 'grade 5' piece in terms of difficulty. Performance is only 30% of it tho
Composition is wayy harder and it's quite time-consuming. I liked it in the fact that whenever I got bored of my other subjects, I could just work on my composition as a form of procrastination lol. But I worked my ass off on it and got a 6 cause I had 'too many ideas' ☹️ . The key tip for composition is to not be creative and just expand from one original idea cause exam boards are boring like that 🙄(jk) or if you're ever bored in the summer then you can work on a composition/composing since one of your compositions you can do whatever u like, no particular theme or anything (there's a time you have to reach but i cant remember)
The actual exam paper is the main bit which takes up 40% of your grade, icl if you listen in your lessons then you should be fine. Unlike STEM or literature u only need to revise once in a while and it should be fine. This might be biased since I've done the theory exam outside of school which helped me consolidate my knowledge. You also learn about the history + diff genres of music which can get quite boring imo but I'd say choose it cause it really acted like a breather and a change of environment amidst all my heavy content essay subjects 🙂
Honestly, I don't regret doing music I'd choose it again if I had the choice. Music was the subject which acted as the 'fun', 'rest-based' subject from my other essay-based GCSEs (many people would disagree with me lol). If you play an instrument outside of school (apart of an exam board) then you should at least be on grade 5 as the standard. This is because at that level, it's pretty easy to gain high marks, especially if you're higher than grade 5 then I'll say it's easier to obtain a grade 9 in the performance aspect imo. However, if you're self-taught, then just know it'd be good to learn two 'grade 5' piece in terms of difficulty. Performance is only 30% of it tho
Composition is wayy harder and it's quite time-consuming. I liked it in the fact that whenever I got bored of my other subjects, I could just work on my composition as a form of procrastination lol. But I worked my ass off on it and got a 6 cause I had 'too many ideas' ☹️ . The key tip for composition is to not be creative and just expand from one original idea cause exam boards are boring like that 🙄(jk) or if you're ever bored in the summer then you can work on a composition/composing since one of your compositions you can do whatever u like, no particular theme or anything (there's a time you have to reach but i cant remember)
The actual exam paper is the main bit which takes up 40% of your grade, icl if you listen in your lessons then you should be fine. Unlike STEM or literature u only need to revise once in a while and it should be fine. This might be biased since I've done the theory exam outside of school which helped me consolidate my knowledge. You also learn about the history + diff genres of music which can get quite boring imo but I'd say choose it cause it really acted like a breather and a change of environment amidst all my heavy content essay subjects 🙂
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