How to pace yourself with Aural Test Training RSS

Little and often is the way to build up aural awareness  

We suggest that, for the best outcome, music exam candidates practise aural examples little and often. Just like learning to play a piece, practising aural over a period of time is more effective than doing a huge block of practice all in one go. We also suggest that you work through the examples more than once because, the same as in a real music exam, it is possible to guess the correct answer in some of the tests! 

The number of examples we offer in each grade is not standardised because of the painstaking way in which the resource was created - all the examples were recorded in our own studio on one of our grand pianos and we either composed the music ourselves or chose from out-of-copyright publications in order to represent the real tests in ABRSM and Trinity exams in as far as possible.

The Aural Test Training examples are presented in random order and then again in random order, this time favouring any tests where you made mistakes. When you start to recognise that you have heard a tune, don't skip over the test - do keep going with answering the questions until your scores show obvious improvement. You can check on your scores by going to My Aural Statistics.

Here is a breakdown of the number of examples:

ABRSM

Number of Grade 1 tests 

1A 57

1B 65

1C 54

1D 57

Number of Grade 2 tests 

2A 45

2B 43

2C 42

2D 50

Number of Grade 3 tests 

3A 41

3B 41

3C 41

3D 57

Number of Grade 4 tests

Test A 47

Test B 94 divided into 47 bass 47 treble

Test C 36

Number of Grade 5 tests 

Test A 43

Test B 90 divided into 45 bass and 45 treble

Test C 56

Number of Grade 6 tests 

Test A 91 divided into 45 treble and 46 bass

Test B 51 divided into 26 treble and 25 bass

Test C 78

Test D 30

Number of Grade 7 tests

Test A 46 divided into 23 bass 23 treble

Test B 42 divided into 18 bass 24 treble

Test C 56 

Test D 26 

Number of Grade 8 tests 

Test A 47 divided into 20 bass and 27 treble

Test B 69 divided into 25 bass clef and 44 treble clef

Test C 53

Test D 60

Trinity

Trinity tests come in sets of 4 tests for grade Initial – grade 7. Grade 8 is in sets of 3 tests

Number of Initial tests

384 tests divided into sets of 4

Grade 1 

244 tests divided into sets of 4

Number of Grade 2 tests

228 tests divided into sets of 4

Number of Grade 3 tests

168 tests divided into sets of 4

Number of Grade 4 tests

128 tests divided into sets of 4

Number of Grade 5 tests

104 tests divided into sets of 4

Number of Grade 6 tests

80 tests divided into sets of 4

Number of Grade 7 tests

112 tests divided into sets of 4

Number of Grade 8 tests

90 tests divided into sets of 3