Lava Lamp for Grade 2, Sweet Child O’ Mine for Grade 3, and three years of rudiments underneath. The hard part was never the drumming - it was finding the time. Myra Nigam passed Trinity Grade 2 on drum kit with a Merit.

Her parents thought an exam would give her direction. Maya Arun wanted to learn songs and get them right. At nine she passed RSL Grade 1 in classical piano with a Merit.

Enakshi Mookherjee learned to sing beside her mother, a trained Hindustani classical singer. At eighteen she has carried that into a different tradition and passed her Trinity Rock & Pop Grade 5 vocal exam with a Merit.

Gavin Samson sat his Rockschool Grade 3 drum exam knowing exactly what it was for. He wanted a diploma, and this was the first part. Three pieces, and 90 marks with a Distinction.

Advay Praveen was three when his grandmother gave him a toy keyboard. He is twelve now, has four graded exams behind him, and passed RSL Grade 3 in classical piano with a Merit at 79% - his first exam with a new exam board.

Four boards cover almost every graded music exam taken in Bangalore. Which one suits your instrument, what actually happens in a recorded exam, whether you have to start at Grade 1, and whether your child needs to sit one at all.

Atharv Venkatesh began with Carnatic vocals and worked out fairly quickly that what interested him was underneath the melody. He moved to the drums, and at twelve he has passed his RSL Grade 2 exam with a Distinction at 93%.

Sathya Ganesh was seven when he decided that rhythm is what holds a song together, and that he wanted to play that part. Nine years on he passed Trinity Rock & Pop Grade 8 - the highest grade the board offers - with a Merit.

Satwika Sridhar learned piano as a child and stopped when college took over. When she came back years later she did not start at the beginning - she set herself at Trinity Grade 6, and passed with a Merit.

Felicia Irene Deborah initially wanted to learn keyboard and took up the guitar instead. After 18 months of learning at Trill Route, she passed her RSL acoustic guitar exam with a Merit.

For Syree, the hardest part of his Trinity Rock & Pop Grade 2 was not the playing. It was the recording - and the rules for a submitted performance explain why.