Rockschool is part of RSL Awards, an international awarding body based in London, UK. For the last 30 years we have been producing material to help people learn musical instruments and assess their progress. What’s more it really works! Artists such as Ed Sheeran, Jess Glynne, and Wolf Alice have all taken RSL Awards qualifications and gone on to have incredible careers. It’s not just for super stars, RSL Awards assess over 80,000 people each year across 50 countries – this is a world-wide community of creative people.

How does it work
At the centre of all our music qualifications is the fantastic material published in inspiring books. We believe that learning music should be about playing the music you love, so for each instrument we work with we create books containing hit songs that people can play from absolute beginner (debut) to advanced level (Level 8). At the lower levels we arrange the music simply and make the pieces shorter (3 minutes is a long time for a beginner to play!), but they are still recognisable as the original hit song. At the highest level we include improvised sections and a high degree of technical skill. There are also supporting skills covered in the books like scales, technical studies, and improvisation exercises.

What’s in a book:
A typical book like Electric Guitar Level 3 contains – 6 full transcriptions of hit songs, 6 original songs, backing tracks and example audio to download, scales and technical exercises for the level.

• Nirvana – Smells Like Teen Spirit
• Ike & Tina Turner – Proud Mary
• Taylor Swift – I Knew You Were Trouble
• Ed Sheeran – Thinking Out Loud
  Bryan Adams – Summer of ’69
• Otis Redding – (Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay

When students have learnt the music and they are happy with the skills they have acquired they can take an assessment. The assessments can be undertaken in a number of ways;

1. 1. In person – where students can go to an assessment venue and perform for a professional musician.
   2. Live via video – where students can perform from their own homes or a venue and connect with a professional musician.
   3. Sending us a digital video recording – so that one of our professional musicians can watch and listen to the performance and will will record a short video message to candidates that delivers the result for their exam performance.

Rockschool Instruments include Electric Guitar, Acoustic Guitar, Drums, Ukulele, Piano, Keyboards, Vocals, and Bass, as well as Music Production and Popular Music Theory.

Meet the examiners:
All our assessors are professional musicians at the top of their industry who will be able to offer real insight into the standard of the performance. Because they are so highly trained we are able to award UK regulated qualifications when students hit the standards. These can help students gain access to Higher Education courses.