Old dogs

I stood behind my son and his girlfriend at the pc yesterday as they revised for the listening part of their Advanced Higher Music exam. There is a SQA school website where they can practice listening to examples, which accompany several questions with blank spaces they have to fill in. Initially I thought what an excellent tool this was, but I soon changed my mind.

They hear a (very annoying) voice interrupt the music with the number of the question at the point to which it refers. The questions often ask them to say how many beats are in a bar. For me this involves concentration as the excerpt is played and I found this very difficult as the questioner's voice would interrupt at odd points with the right number for the question but the wrong number for the beat, if you see what I mean.

I also noticed that the two of them have a repertoire of appropriate answers and even though I could suggest alternative correct answers, their answer would turn out to be accepted where mine wasn't. For example something like "The violins are playing a..." where I might offer "counter melody" they preferred "sequence" and they were judged correct.

There were other places however, where they offered perfectly correct answers that were not accepted, presumably because they hadn't correctly guessed the field the questioner was aiming at. And I don't know how they know how precise to be. If you know it's an A clarinet, or soprano sax that's playing, do you put that or simply Clarinet or saxophone?

Not for the first time I'm very glad I'm not at that stage.