Tuesday, 23rd of October, 2007
Friday, 19th of October, 2007
Incidentally, they also used the "multimedia screen" to the fullest extent tonight - not only was the English translation projected onto it for the Berlioz, but they had a slide show up for the Zimmermann.
Tuesday, 16th of October, 2007
Amy Oshiro, first violin: I love, love, love La Valse!!! Do you need me to repeat it? La Valse is Ravel's mini-masterpiece. It is a hugely romantic approach on the styles and flavors of the orchestral waltz. Ravel was an orchestrational genius and this piece proves it yet again. You'll see me smiling a lot during this piece!
Bjorn Ranheim, cello: La Valse is one of the most manic and insane pieces I've ever played. In my mind it's a classic waltz meets grunge band/mosh pit!
Thursday, 11th of October, 2007
Results were delivered immediately, and passing was definitely not an issue since you only have to have 65% correct to pass. The questions are multiple choice, and they were all boring - no diagrams or illustrations. At least half of the questions are really easy - some even answered within other questions, etc. Some were poorly worded, and if I thought about them too much (which I have a tendency to do) you can start to second-guess yourself and even start proving to someone that more than one correct answer exists among the choices. They also used the a nice trick of having super-long questions that provide way more information than necessary to answer the question.
I heard that studying the course materials that the exam references was a good way to study. I would agree, but only as a first step. Memorizing the questions out of the course book is not the way to go - I don't recall a single question coming directly from those course questions. On the other hand, the test cleverly tries to test how familiar you are with the tool, in a real world work environment. There were multiple questions that asked you "if you were to perform such-and-such steps in such-and-such window, what would you see? Or what options are available to you?" If you are a visual learner this is convenient for you, because all I had to do was imagine what the tool looked like and I could recall it. If you use the tool enough, you're bound to remember what you're looking at every day at some point, regardless.
Therefore, in addition to studying the course material, I would recommend using the tool! Go through the exercises in the book if nothing else, even multiple times. This would also help you answer some questions that were not covered in the course material - of course I had no idea they'd ask about Basic syntax, in addition to Crystal syntax (course covered Crystal only) so I'm not sure how I would have ever gotten around them unless someone warned me. That was only one question though, which I probably got wrong because I just answered the question the way I would have for Crystal syntax which is almost definitely wrong.
Monday, 8th of October, 2007