<p>I have been playing piano since I was 8 years old. Almost 9 years have gone by. I am not going to brag about my skills, but I am more than average. How good I need to be to excel? Is it an automatic 5 in thne National or work hard? Thanks</p>
<p>Are you talking about your playing skills? If you are, it’s not going to help on the exam. The exam is all music theory, as the name says. And it’ll help if you have perfect pitch.</p>
<p>Music Theory is different than just your instrumental examinations (well it does correlate a bit)</p>
<p>What grade are you?</p>
<p>You write music, do dictation, and sight sing. You also have to answer multiple choice questions about chords and musical excerpts. Piano helps with this some, but you have to know how to do all this stuff without one. You are just going by a CD or proctor instruction.</p>