The culture of self-care has become more prevalent in our way of life over recent years. It’s not unusual to see mindfulness and even meditation programmes in schools. But has the self-care culture filtered through to music exam preparation, or is there room for improvement?

Exams can be very stressful for pupils, and so support from you as the teacher is paramount. How can you best encourage your pupil to look after themselves in a stressful situation and build in good habits for any future assessed performances?

Having a check list can be extremely helpful and you can go through this with your pupil before the exam itself.

Practical tips - a checklist:

  • Music - make sure your pupil remembers their music and music for the accompanist if relevant.
  • Energy -  it’s a good idea to suggest that your pupil have some food with them if the exam is a long time after breakfast or lunch and they feel a drop in energy. Some nuts, a sandwich with a bit of protein, or a banana are all more advisable than sweet sugary snacks which can bring on a sugar crash at the wrong time.
  • Hydration - encourage your pupil to have a small bottle of water with them before and during the exam. It is said that being well hydrated can help your brain work more efficiently and it’s very useful in the case of a dry mouth.
  • Warming up - it’s easy just to focus on warming up on the instrument, but how about encouraging your pupil to do a few simple stretches? Physical tension through nerves can kick in so easily and this can do wonders for keeping your pupil free, relaxed, and alert.
  • Breathing - this is so helpful for calming anyone before a performance. Long slow breaths while waiting for the exam can help calm jangled nervous systems.

Physical and psychological:

  • Walk tall and act confident - this is something that can be practised in advance. If you can push through any self-consciousness, this will help them with their confidence even if they don’t feel it. Watching even just a few minutes of the superwoman pose TED talk might be very helpful to them.
  • Smile at the examiner -  this is the last thing your pupil may want to do, but encouraging it will get their endorphins going and lift their spirits just as they really need it.

In the exam itself

Nerves can show themselves in rushing, so spending a little bit of time planning exactly what your pupil will do in the exam itself and practising it will be very supportive to them. Encourage them to:

  • Take time to tune, adjust the music stand or piano stool, check reeds, spike holder, take a sip of water, or whatever they need to do support themselves and their instrument.
  • Breathe one long, slow deep breath to calm their nerves and help them focus.
  • Count to three silently before they start to avoid rushing into the performance.
  • Smile!
  • Know that when mistakes happen, to let them go – and breathe!

You as the teacher also need to model what you want your pupil to learn. If you’re calm and confident, encouraging and supportive, making sure you’re not showing your own anxiety, this will have a very positive impact on them.

Recorded exams

Over the last few years, recordings have become a normal and accepted part of assessment. Recordings have their own stresses, some of which are identical to a live, face-to-face exam, and some which can be very different.

Key stresses that are unique to recordings

Not having a real person to perform to can be very challenging because it’s difficult to get a sense of rising to the occasion. You can set up the recording so that the pupil:

  • Plays to you as the teacher.
  • Plays to a couple of friends or family members as an audience.
  • If the pupil doesn’t respond to these suggestions, you can suggest they imagine playing to an examiner, or friends/family, or try out playing to a teddy bear!

Whatever you choose needs to be practised in advance for the pupil to feel comfortable. Recording a few times might seem a good idea to your pupil but they can easily get tired and won’t necessarily produce better performances the more recordings they do.

Recording with teacher in the room

A teacher who is experienced in doing recordings with their pupils will know that very often it is the first take that is the best. Your pupil may not have a sense of what is a good take and what isn’t, so having a teacher’s guidance at this point is valuable.

What can work extremely well is to say to a pupil that you will record the pieces two or three times and that the first take will just be for fun. It’s a good bit of psychology because the pupil thinks that the fun recording won’t be the one that is used, and they relax. You do another couple of takes just in case, but you may well find that the first one is the best. If it isn’t, you have another couple of takes in hand just in case. Any more than three takes of the pieces will be very hard for an inexperienced musician to manage, so it’s advisable to stick to three at the most.

Recording with teacher out of the room

This is possibly the most challenging scenario out of them all. It’s less likely that the pupil will get a sense of performance without the teacher there even though imagining that scenario is always an option. A friend or parent can do the recording but it will then depend on how experienced that adult is. The pupil can also press record themselves, but how will they know whether they’ve done a performance that is up to standard or not?

Self-care after the exam

Your pupil has finished the exam! How can you help them look after themselves at this stage? It’s so easy for them to fixate on the few mistakes they’ve made that loom disproportionately large and beat themselves up about them. Instead, they need to know that there will have been many positives in their performance and those need to be acknowledged as a priority.

Some pupils will also be fixated on the result, so why not encourage them to celebrate the actual performance in its own right, and see the result as a snapshot of what they have achieved over their whole time of preparation?

Emotions can run high after a performance and musicians can feel especially vulnerable. What they need more than anything is validation, kind words and the encouragement to have a break and do something fun, even if only for a couple of hours.

There’s so much that you as a teacher can do to support your pupil in an exam. Good preparation is essential, and yet when you add in all these various support mechanisms, it gives your pupil a good chance of making sure that all the preparation works for them when it counts the most. Testing out these ideas in school concerts in the run up to an exam for example, can be very helpful. Even better, making sure that performance is a normal part of their musical life takes the pressure out of the exam itself; it helps them play their best, and with luck even enjoy it.


Last modified: Wednesday, 4 September 2024, 12:33 PM