CHOOSING REPERTOIRE

One of the most common questions I get from students studying music at an NCEA level is "how difficult does the piece have to be". This is a hard question to answer, as there are a lot of factors that make up a good performance, beyond technical skills or song-length. As a rule of thumb, 'achievement' at level one is based on where students would be if they had started getting once-a-week lessons at year 9, and practiced fairly regularly at home. If you're familiar with Trinity or ABRSM exams, it's roughly the same as Grade 3 performance exams. These exams can be a good source of repertoire, particularly if you're interested in playing classical music.

However, you can really play anything you like provided the piece has enough substance to demonstrate your musical and technical skills.

Its a good idea to choose pieces that are reasonably challenging (at the upper-end of what you are comfortable with), but not too difficult for you to perform well under pressure.

On this page, I will provide some examples of effective repertoire for a range of instruments.

CLASSICAL GUITAR