Why Trinity Maizie?
Short version: scale requirements
Long version: I’d stopped playing at 16, then been reunited with my recorders in a house move aged 30, but it took me a year or three to go from having them to going to SRP to getting a teacher. That teacher was a baroque specialist, and we both agreed on a curriculum of “let’s play this, that and the other, and head towards an exam at some point”. Trinity was his preference for a couple of reasons, and I had no objection.
First reason, he did actually work with Trinity Juniors, and had advised on at least one previous Trinity exam syllabus (though I’m not sure that biased him towards them – he was pretty scathing about their administrative abilities, but I think it was a case of better the devil you know!)
Second reason, I was an adult and the scale learning could be put on me, but from his teaching of school pupils – who could not be trusted to do their scale learning without encouragement, and many of whom had a half hour lesson. For higher grades with AB, that meant spending more than half of a lesson on scales which was no fun for anybody…so the Trinity fewer scales or scale alternative was something he was a fan of.
Third reason, I think the supporting tests options were something he liked, i.e. you could choose what suited your strengths and no having to sing!
By ludicrously happy coincidence, I had been in an Oxfam bookshop a couple of months prior to lessons starting, where someone had clearly given in the Trinity G1-5 materials – I spent £24 and came out with so much good stuff. At the end of my second lesson, he said ‘OK, your choice, 5 or 6?’ and I went for G5 because the previous exam I had taken had been G4 in 1990 (also Trinity!) So we tootled our way through much of the G5 material before taking the exam once I’d played lots and decided what pieces I liked. But not just the exam pieces, e.g. if the exam piece was a movement from a sonata, I’d be attempting all of it. Or if the exam piece was in a book of many pieces, we’d find a piece or two or three from the same book to have a go at. Also, the way the lists were arranged then, you could do G5 as an entirely baroque programme, which really suited us both!! Subsequently did G6 and G7 in the same way before he retired.
Got another teacher a couple of years after that, but that didn’t last too long before I had major health problems. Did have another teacher for about six months or so before lockdown, and I just haven’t been brave/motivated/anything enough to get back in touch – but I will see her in early December at the recorder orchestra I’m in, so I might have a chat then.