Certified Exams
Play Piano Certified Exams
Online Exams
Play Piano students can now sit our very own online house exams for both practical and Music Theory. Our unique exams can be undertaken throughout the year once you are ready and approved by your teacher.. For further details please see below
Gerry Nulty
School Director
Recorded Exam Entries
What is a Recorded Exam?
Play Piano is delighted to offer our students the faclity to sit our very own unique practical Exams as an alternative to exams set by other examining Boards. Candidates can record their performance at a time when suits in the comfort of their own home and upload their completed video to our website. Our in house exams remove the inconvenience of having to travel to an exam venue and also help relieve the stress of preparing for an exam conducted by an unknown examiner from an external Board.
Who can enter?
Recorded exams are open to all students of play piano and are available in most of our subjects and levels. Pleas consult your teacher for more information.
Please read all our guidelines carefully before submiting your videos for our online exams
- Candidates must verbally supply details of the pieces they are performing (titles and composers) before each piece. Candidates are not required to submit scores of any pieces performed.
- Students under 18 yrs of age may have a parent present while recording.
- Each piece must be recorded in a single, uninterrupted take with the title of each piece being stated before playing.
- All Technical Work should be recorded in a single, uninterrupted take with each presentation being identified orally before playing. For instance “C major scale”, “A harmonic minor scale”. Please do not submit each scale and arpeggio as a separate video file.
- Performances must be recorded using a static camera, which should be positioned in such a way as to show the performer, and their instrument, clearly.
- Always make a short test recording first to ensure the audio signal is clear and not distorting or clipping and the video image is clear.
- The recording device’s microphone must be of sufficient quality to allow assessment of all aspects of the performance, including tone quality and dynamic range.
- The microphone should be positioned in such a way as to ensure good sound balance between candidate and accompanist or backing track (if applicable).
- Typically a smartphone or tablet will be of perfectly sufficient quality here in terms of audio and video recording quality. We would recommend that you set your video camera resolution to 720p as this will ensure sufficient quality. A lower resolution than this (for instance 480p) might not have sufficient clarity, whilst a higher resolution (1080p or 4K) would result in an unnecessarily large file size.
- When completing the file upload to our website, candidates must declare that the performances in the video are that of the candidate named on the submission.
- When uploading a file to the website, the file must be either avi, flv, wmv, mov or mp4 format and should not exceed 150MB. The file must be labelled clearly with the candidate’s name and the name of the piece or component. For example:
- Jane Smith Andante in C major
- Jane Smith Technical Work
- All videos are discarded once the exam process has been completed and Certificate awarded.
Select the entry form link below and carefully read all the exam and technical requirements for your level. Then simply upload your recorded performance here. Your video files will need to be ready at the time of entry.