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I am wondering about the mother who was concerned about her daughter's first Guild audition. Also, has anyone already completed their auditions?

Mine were last week. I only had four students (homeschoolers and adults) because our school district is such a pain about excusing students from school. Anyway, the auditions went very well. Our judge was very flexible to hear students who were obviously Top Talent Circle (the teacher whose students played before mine!) to the Hobbyist category (my adult student who is so afraid to play in public). Her comments were very encouraging and I can't wait to share them in detail with my students this week.

My students are Tuesday this week. But I find your comments interesting. Yesterday was our "dress rehearsal." Each student came to the studio, at the same time as their appointed audition on Tuesday, and performed their entire audition, in order, with IMMT (scales and chords) straight through. While each student was playing, I was sitting at a table, just like the judge will be, but I was filling out their certificate, and insuring that everthing was in order for each student.

At our audition center, I usually give the judge the stack of certificates at the beginning of the day and each student brings out their certificate/report card after completing their audition.

We take a quick look at it, several minutes at least, and then we take a photo of the student with their certificate.

I keep both certificate and report card, so I can make a copy of them, and also so we can go through them in detail at the next lesson.

At the annual recital, I hand out the certificates along with their pins (I have found that if the pins are given out any other time, they bcome lost before they make it to the car).

I am certainly pleased to hear your autitions went well. Congratulations.

PS I keep a copy of all three pages of the Guild report for each student, so that while filling out the report card & certificate, I can refer to last year's and "fill in the blanks" quickly.

My Guild auditions are Friday. I have 22 students participating, mostly at the lower levels.

I did Guild as a child myself and I'm curious: it seems the certificates/report cards and way of doing things haven't changed at all. There's not much space to write out the program, the comments section is small, and I (and parents) spend a lot of time deciphering the judge's comments because they're written so small and many times in what appears to be shorthand. With other programs being updated (such as online registration) over the years, I'm just wondering why Guild hasn't.

D3 - The Guild program is a BIG job using a small staff. I've stopped in at Guild HQ in Austin several times, and frankly I don't know how they do it. Their web site is behind the times, but they really don't have the staff to work it. I've suggested to them that they are undercharging for the Auditions. If instead of the oddball charges they now used, they increased student fees to $30 for Elementary; $40 for Intermediate, and $50 for Preparatory and special medals, they'd give themselves some cushion.

In the meantime, what you and & can do is to encourage other piano teachers to participate. When I moved to Olympia, no one was doing Guild. At the same time I started another teacher moved in who had extensive Guild experience, and she helped me along. Now, we've got four additional teachers participating. It would be nice if we could get 20 - 30 of our local teachers going. It would help raise teaching standards and most especially, help students.

I often wonder why more teachers don't participate in Guild. You don't have to have the list of qualifications required for MTNA and it's a wonderful way for students to receive constructive criticism and for teachers to gauge how well they're teaching.

In my town there are about 140 piano teachers. 25 are members of MTAC. 4 are members of Guild (who are also MTAC members). It's really a shame.

I wanted to hop in here for just a second for some opinions from the teachers here.

I will be judging my first Guild audition in a couple of weeks; it will entail two days of participants. I am certainly not new to adjudication on a wide variety of levels, just new to the Guild scene.
I did participate in Guild auditions in high school back in the early 90's as a student.

Do you have any words of advice for me as a judge? "please DO or don't do the following", etc.
It seems like a very nice organization indeed, but it is worth noting that they pay judges roughly half what other organizations in my area do for the same amount of time/mileage. I will still do as thorough a job, but I am much less inclined to accept invitations from them than the other area teacher's competitions.

Thanks for any input!

Well, when I was in high school, my guild judge told me that even though I had a little talent, my work ethic obviously wasn't up to par and that I shouldn't consider going into music because there was no way I'd ever make it.

So I'd start by not saying things like that.

Hi, your comments are most interesting! The next time I'm in Austin, I will make a point of asking about judge compensation. Sometimes organizations make judgements on what fees the market will bear, and wrongly. My parents pay the fees, not I, and while I don't want them to be outrageous, most of my parents can well afford them at the level I suggested in a previous post. Actually, $10 higher.

As for judging: Thank you!

What I as a teacher most appreciate is a judge who fairly evaluates. I don't like puffery, nor do I appreciate judges who inflate ratings. I've worked hard with my students, and sometimes, they just need to hear the same thing from a different person or perspective. I don't want to see "Top Talent" ratings except for those who obviously are - they're playing 15 pieces, playing very well, without memory slips, and musically. A few years ago, a judge gave one of my HS students a top talent rating with a program of only 7 pieces and she stopped practicing after that! Her playing, in my judgement, didn't deserve more than a 18 - 22 rating. Students need to hear from an impartial source areas they should work on.

By the same token, I'm not looking for judges to crucify students, either. You can tell who knows their material and who is well prepared, but who is suffering from nerves.

It's best if you ask the student to play their IMMT right up front. I would ask students if they'd like to play their IMMT first, and get it out of the way, or to play it with each piece. Some judges forget, and then students begin to think this is optional.

Finally, I really like judges who can keep track of the time! It's hard, as a teacher, to schedule dozens of students, only to have the audition process go into extended overtime. I print up a schedule which I give to the judge, so there's no guessing. If the judge had an electronic timer, so they knew when they had 5 minutes to go and could wrap up, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for listening

Again, thanks for judging.

Yes, thanks for judging! The Guild judges I have talked to in the past echo what you are saying, that they always get paid lower. We really need the best people to be judging Guild.

What I need most from a Guild judge is honest encouragement. Observe everything possible that you can honestly say deserves a "C". But, please put at least 1-3 "A"s on every report card of mine. I need to show the student where there weaknesses are, from another teacher's viewpoint (hopefully some of the same things I've been saying all along!) Also, the best Guild judges I've had always challenge the gifted ones, encourage those with learning disabilities, and treat the average student fairly. That's a tall order!

I had my students, 19 of them, take their auditions last Thursday.

It was the first for me as a Guild member and for them as Guild students.

It was pretty much what I had expected, perhaps more lenient than expected.

I wish the judge asked for my student's IMMTs every time before their pieces. Instead she asked most of them, "Would you like to warm up with a scale?" And then went through one piece after the other. No verbal comments, except for that is nice, lovely, etc... We were ahead of time the whole day. What she wrote though was more specific, which I liked.

But really this put my students at complete ease, which was good. They did very well. Lots of C's. I was happy that she encouraged the students that played only 1 piece to do more next year. But still gave C's for that one piece because it was well played.

It is a wonderful program for ALL students, not just for your very best students. This I think is wonderful.

Do Guild adjudicators go through training so that they are all somewhat consistent with how they judge?

By the way I agree whole-heartedly with John and Okie and others that think the adjudicators need to earn more (close to what they get teaching)when adjudicating. The standard in judging should remain high.

My students have had a different judge every year. When it comes to IMMT, there's no consistency. This year, the judge had them play several scales and chords, and then, if it was obvious that they were prepared, she just skipped over it for the remainder of the time. This bothers me, because it says that IMMT is sort of an after-thought.

In general, though, all the judges have tried to find good things to say about students' performances.

It is actually quite a challenge to memorize ten or more pieces through the year, maintain enthusiasm and walk in and perform for a complete stranger. In reality, most teachers are not willing to organize themselves and present a disciplined course of instruction through the year, insuring that students are prepared for this. It's actually a lot of extra work on the teacher's part (at least that's how I feel at 64).

PB, you're students are really fortunate that you'll willing to do the extra work to prepare them for Guild! They owe you a big bouquet of roses tomorrow!

Sorry - for some reason, the form hangs and when you click again, you get a double post.

Thanks John. You said it. I'm tired!! It is a lot of work (teaching) (Guild) and this next Sunday is our big recital. This is when I am going to give them there pins, certificates and report cards, and some other goodies.

At least I have enthusiastic parents. They are already asking me about summer lessons and I am really feeling like taking the summer off. I want to do some things for myself, take a breather. But I'm afraid my students will fall behind. When I have more time I will take a look at the Summer Lesson thread.

Until then I will say goodnight.

Happy Mum's day to you, PB, and all the others who contribute here.

As we had our lessons this week, we went through their report cards in great detail, then we talked about goals and opportunities for the coming year. Did they want to work for a special medal, like the Bach or Sonata, or the Founders Medal? For those who had lower scores than previously, we discussed possible reasons why, and ditto for those who scored higher.

One of the big problems teens face is too many interests, not enough time. Several advanced studends saw a decline and were shocked. I reminded them that their music was longer, more complex, and simply took more time to prepare than before (subjects we address frequently through the year). They can do a smaller program, that is, a State level program, rather than a National or International, or they can drop another activity, and devote more time to their music.

Handing out the pins and certificates at the recital is a great idea. I have a special "gift" for those students who earned "top talent" ratings.

My auditions were Friday. Then on Saturday I hosted a recital in my home for those who could come, so they could receive their certificates. Many students were first-timers to Guild and it was nice for everyone to hear other students' pieces.

While you're on the subject, I've not yet gotten involved but in hearing some teachers in the area tell me a little bit about it, a teacher said it annoyed her that a student could play a piece for example, out of the classical period beautifully while those students just because they played piano lit. pieces from the modern era seemed to be graded or judged better. Has anyone noticed this as to whether judges seem to "favor" pieces in this way?

sarabande, the requirement, except for the most elementary of students, is to include repertoire from all four major periods - baroque, classical, romantic and contemporary. My teacher's report (which the judge provides every teacher) always is highly complementary in that aspect, as I try to have a very broad base of repertoire represented. For some reason, this year, there weren't any American composers, and the judge asked me about it. I was actually surprised, because I usually have American composers well represented. It must have been just one of those things this year.

I forgot to add that most of the judges have made favorable comments about the baroque selections. I try to balance students' programs with 3 or 4 selections from each period, and usually different composers.

I just returned from a two-day stint judging a Guild audition 150 miles from my home. Many thanks to those of you who offered advice and suggestions.

I pretty much had the hang of the grading system after 3-4 students filtered through. It's certainly a different process than "traditional" judging. I found myself spending most of the time expediting the audition itself and checking the report card, and then spent a couple of minutes scrawling comments after the student was dismissed.

My total numerical scores seemed to be slightly lower than what the teachers expected to see-- the top score was at the bottom of the "superior" range... 18-19 or thereabouts. To be honest, when I read the judging packet the Guild sent me, none of them really deserved the "superior plus" at this audition, and I already felt I was inflating the "C" checks slightly beyond what was deserved. All of the teachers and hosts were very courteous and friendly, and were very appreciative of my efforts and comments. One teacher took me out for lunch, and another bought me a card and chocolate. Very nice touch...

One question for those of you who do guild:
Occasionally I would hear a student who, in my opinion, warranted some slightly longer/more descriptive commentary than the 2"x2" space on the page would allow. Sometimes the student would even ask me for detailed commentary about a specific piece. If I was running on time/ahead of schedule, and the teacher and parent were present outside, I called them into the room and made a couple of more detailed comments verbally. [this was prefaced by saying "This is only my opinion, and that of your teacher is more important than mine."] The teachers seemed to appreciate this when I did it [it only happened 3 times in 2 days], but I'm wondering what you would think if I did this with your student?

Thanks for your input!

terminal degree,
Thanks for your comments! Sounds like you did a great job adjudicating your first Guild audition week. I would not mind at all if you had given my students verbal pointers. I do appreciate it if they are offered in a kind verbal manner, with a positive finish to them. Let me explain.

It is apparently common practice for band and orchestra judges in our area to do this - give each student a verbal opinion after their solo or ensemble has performed. Since I accompany these students on the junior high and high school level, I have heard this quite a bit. It is one thing to see a judges' opinion written on your form. It is another to hear it, with the impact of the human voice, facial expressions, and body language. This can be very powerful, in a positive or negative way. I have seen both.

To me, the purpose of judging someone is to give them a pat on the back for what they are doing correctly, and gently remind them of how they can do better. Most of all, we want them to leave the room committed to further study.

Unfortunately, lately the solo & ensemble contest judges I've worked with have been discouraged from speaking to the students after performances--the kids are supposed to be "in and out" in 8 minutes, including playing their scales. And heaven forbid a student's piece should run longer than 6 minutes. My daughter had to make a BIG cut in her Mozart concerto movement this year (she's a flutist).

I agree with you that a judge's verbal comments can add much to the experience. Written comments are helpful, of course; but the judge who warmly smiles and speaks to the performer can make all the difference in a student's attitude toward contests in general!