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What Does It Cost? Well, almost nothing...
Aside from the cost of the exams themselves (which are longer and yet cheaper than many other exam alternatives), most of the costs usually associated with exams have been eliminated by clever planning. Here are some of key items...
Flexible scheduling saves you money. The AMEB does an excellent job of scheduling the thousands of students that do their exams. But frequently this means that in order to do a 20 minute exam, you have to take some time off work, and your child has to miss some school, just to travel to an exam centre during work hours. Because we examine in teachers studios, we don't need to bulk-schedule a major exam venue. This allows us to schedule weekend or evening exams if required, for no extra cost to you. This saves you time, money, school hassles, and travel.
We have a "free music" policy If you write a piece of music, your composition is protected by copyright (and quite right, too!). This protects you against people illegally copying or profiting from your hard work. After you're dead, your work is protected for another 70 years (this makes sure that your family gets their fair share of your hard work). Now, if instead of composing a piece, you were to spend hours typesetting and editing a piece of music, that would be protected by copyright as well (in this case, for 25 years). However, there are many composers who have been dead for more than 70 years (well, most of them, actually!). Under copyright law, anyone who died before 1923 is now out of copyright protection. This means that students can use these pieces (from editions more than 25 years old) without any legal worries. By structuring our syllabus and exam requirements carefully, our students can do their entire exam without having to pay a cent for their music. There are over 20,000 such pieces available for students on our database. Additionally, open-source projects such as Project Gutenberg, the Mutopia Project, the Internet Audio Archive and others have made available many hundreds of quality recordings for students to listen to or use as backings. Finally, there are many composers and arrangers (such as Gilbert de Beneditti and Stephen Walter) who have made modern pieces available for free for education purposes. These composers also often include MIDI or mp3 audio files with their work.
What If I Want To Do Modern Music? Our syllabus also uses "horizontal programming". That is, we frequently will use one book that will have pieces for several grades. A fine example would be Christopher Nortons' excellent MicroStyles Collection. This book includes 48 graded pieces. The easiest (such as Metal Merchant) can be used as a Grade 2 piece. The most difficult pieces are still acceptable at Grade 6. Parents can therefore buy one book, knowing that it will last for FIVE years of exams!!! (This book also includes an outstanding CD with the composer playing the pieces on piano, and separate recordings done by a live rock band - way cool!) Finally, there are many composers and arrangers (such as Gilbert de Beneditti and Stephen Walter) who have made modern pieces available for free for education purposes. These composers also often include MIDI or mp3 audio files with their work. See "Copyright Info" for more details
Syllabus - yes, it's FREE too... Many courses (such as Trinity) already offer their syllabus online as acrobat pdf files. We do the same. The AMEB will charge you to buy a huge book with the syllabuses for many different instruments.
What about the study material I need? Students can download, for FREE:
From 2008, Preparatory to Third Grade will be able to download:
And the cost of all this material? FREE !!!
Our exams really ARE cheaper! Our exams are mostly cheaper (and longer!) than many other exam types. Compare our current prices:
And our exams include a beautiful FRAMED certificate!
So to summarize:
HUGE amounts of FREE Support Services Starting in 2008, we will provide FREE backings for all technical work from Preparatory Grade to Third Grade. We are also updating our syllabus to link to various open-source projects to provide free recordings for as many classical works on the syllabus as possible. These will be available in mp3 format for use with iriver or iPods etc
Support for mp3 Players We already have downloads for iPod and other mp3 players that will allow you to use your mp3 player as a metronome, drum machine, or guitar tuner. iriver users can take advantage of our high-quality versions. These are, of course, FREE !!!
Outcomes-Based Assessment Theory Exams Commencing in 2008, we will offer outcomes-based Theory Exams, utilizing weekly computer challenges. There may be a small charge for this, but at this stage we hope that this will be essentially free.
So to summarize:
©2007 Australian Independent Music Examinations. The use of images, text, music scores, backings or acrobat files without permission is illegal. Material noted as 'free to download' cannot be used for commercial purposes. Equipment & courses offered may vary without notice. Views
expressed in this newsletter are opinions only.
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