WHAT IS AN RCM EXAM?
TYPES OF RCM EXAMS
PRACTICAL EXAMS – Practical exams are mostly about your ability and expertise on your instrument. They available from Preparatory to Level 10. Furthermore there are Associate Diploma (ARCT) in Piano Performance and Pedagogy and Licentiate Diploma (LRCM) in Piano Performance. Exams take place in an examination room or remotely and are generally made up of four parts: “repertoire”, “technical requirements”, “ear tests” and “sight reading”.
1. Repertoire – for this part, students are required to perform a set number of musical pieces, each representing a different style and musical period. Each piece can be chosen from a wide selection of options that RCM provides. The higher the student’s level, the more pieces they must perform and the bigger their complexity. This is the longest part of the exam.
2. Technical Requirements – designed to complement the demands of the repertoire, this part is sub-divided into “technical tests” and “etudes”. Technical tests are things like scales, chords, and arpeggios, which are meant to develop students’ technical prowess and finger dexterity. Etudes are shorter musical pieces designed to develop a specific technical skill within a musical context.
3. Ear Tests – this part of the practical exam involves almost no playing on the part of the student. Instead, the the student is asked to listen to and correctly identify things like intervals, chord qualities, and chord progressions, which are played by the examiner. Students are also required to listen to a short melody and then play it back to the examiner.
4. Sight Reading – this is where students are given a musical excerpt that they have (hopefully) never encountered before. After clapping the rhythm of a short passage from this excerpt, they must play the whole excerpt. As a general rule, the difficulty level of the sight-reading excerpt is 3 levels below the level for which you are doing the exam. E.g. For a level 6 exam, the sight-reading excerpt will be comparable in difficulty to RCM level 3.
WRITTEN EXAMS – These exams take place in a classroom setting with a supervisor or online with a proctor. The most common written exams are “theory”, “history”, and “harmony”. Theory Exams are co-requisite for Levels 5 to 8, then it is substituted by Harmony on Level 9, Level 10 Harmony & Counterpoint along with History for Levels 9 and 10. Finally, in order to acquire your ARCT Diploma you must take ARCT Harmony & Counterpoint, History and Analysis Exams.
1. Theory – these exams test students’ knowledge of the building blocks of music and include topics such as major and minor scales, chords, intervals, rhythm, transposition, etc.
2. History – as the name suggests, history exams test students’ knowledge of important dates, musical eras and developments associated with each one, biographical information of well-known composers, etc. Expect to do plenty of memorizing here.
3. Harmony – harmony is what happens when many sounds come together. On this exam, students are tested on their knowledge of concepts such as counterpoint, chord progressions, harmonization, cadences, modulations, phrase structures, compositional techniques, and more.