music exam prep 2025-09-16T10:13:55Z

Last November, my flute case smelled like defeat. I’d spent hours in that drafty practice room, fingers stiff from cold, while a robotic metronome click-click-clicked like a mocking judge. Playing alongside prerecorded piano tracks felt like shouting into a void—my phrasing drowned, my dynamics ignored. The disconnect wasn’t just technical; it was emotional. I’d finish scales feeling lonelier than when I began.

Rain lashed against my attic window as I glared at the sheet music for Handel’s Sonata in F Major – Grade 5 ABRSM mocking me from the stand. My metronome’s robotic tick-tock echoed the sinking feeling in my chest. For weeks, I’d been wrestling with the allegro’s triplet passages, my flute sounding like a distressed teakettle whenever I rushed ahead of the pre-recorded piano track. The disconnection felt physical; muscles tensing as I strained to match an unyielding tempo, sour notes piling up li