I take my first ever AP Music Theory test

Рет қаралды 4,509

Күн бұрын

Пікірлер: 46

@bobsala7780 10 ай бұрын

It looks to me like some of these questions are not really about music theory. Who wrote the “Cradle Song” has nothing at all to do with music theory.

@michaelsheard4522 10 ай бұрын

I took a close look at the AP Music Theory curriculum a couple of years ago. (Just for fun; I'm decades past it being relevant to my formal education.) This practice test only addresses a VERY small portion of the kinds of things that are covered. As another commenter already noted, a large part of the test involves listening, and there is even some sight-singing.

@kassemir 10 ай бұрын

I seriously doubt an actual AP music theory test would be this easy. This was like, on the level of something like a Buzzfeed quiz, and had zero sheet music examples in there.

@dihydrogen 10 ай бұрын

as someone who took the exam in 2023, i can say that some of the questions here could have been actual exam questions, albeit easier ones. analyzing sheet music was a good part of the multiple choice segment of the exam. but about as big a part is listening to music excerpts, and making sense of them. there's also a free response, which involves transcribing melodies, and the soprano and bass voices of a four-part excerpt, as well as writing four part harmony through figured bass and roman numeral analysis, and also writing two-part harmony 10% of your score also goes down to sight-singing

@dr-ozone 10 ай бұрын

You really need to do the free response questions in order to get a feel for what the actual test is like. College Board posts all of their past exams on their website. It's mostly voice leading and transcribing melodies and chords.

@ociemitchell 10 ай бұрын

For a bit of context, AP stands for "advanced placement". The devil is in the details, but basically, these are standardized tests given to high school students that can count towards college credit in that subject (math, physics, language, comp sci, Music Theory, etc.). So in this case, by passing this test in high school, a student could skip the introductory music theory course in college and start with a more advanced course. AP is also used as a designation for the class that the student takes, so an "AP history class" would be a history course that prepares the student to take the AP history exam, while the "regular" history class might not cover enough material or enough depth to prepare the students to take that AP exam.

@SproutyPottedPlant 10 ай бұрын

It doesn’t stand for American Plant? 😢 🌱

@joeldcanfield_spinhead 10 ай бұрын

I got 9 out of 15 and some seemed arcane and impractical, like the opera questions. Also, how could you tell that the v was lower case? Got that one wrong because I couldn't see it. Your vision is better than mine, yeah? (vivace = vi VAH chey) It seems focused on orchestration, and theory for classical music. And yeah, the sax question caught me.

@enkiitu 10 ай бұрын

(vivace = vi VAH chey) BUT WITHOUT THE Y. Is just vivacheh

@Alfonso162008 10 ай бұрын

That v was smaller than the other one.

@myfunnyval1 10 ай бұрын

David, I can't believe I beat you! Love your channel, and you've taught me a lot. To be fair, I thought the wording of some of the questions was a bit vague.

@Polynom1995 10 ай бұрын

I'm a non-professional and did 80 %. And I think in this test you can see clearly what Adam Neely meant when he said that nowadays you usually can replace the term 'music theory' with 'the harmonic style of 18th century european musicians'. I mean, look at question 11, this is not music theory.

@nielsensejltur 10 ай бұрын

I got 100% and all I know about music theory is from KZbin. It is a rather basic test. To answer multiple-choice-questions is in general easy, because most of the times two of the possibilities are so wrong, that it can only be the third.

@azptoch 10 ай бұрын

looks like Music Theory AP is centerd on classical and opera music (not from the US here)

@MaggaraMarine 10 ай бұрын

Looks more like a "general musical knowledge" test (focusing on classical music) than an actual music theory test. Even the questions focusing on music theory were more general knowledge of the vocabulary than something that actually measures your knowledge on the topic (for example chord construction, analysis, key signatures, intervals). I mean, there is a difference between knowing that the IV chord is called the subdominant than knowing how to build the IV chord in any key. And there's a difference between knowing that major chords are written using caps and knowing how to build major chords. Maybe this practice quiz doesn't really represent the actual test you would take. It seems weird that the test would be just multiple choice questions.

@dihydrogen 10 ай бұрын

i can say for sure the actual test is much harder than this. some of these questions here could show up on the actual exam but they are among the easiest questions

@thegothaunt 10 ай бұрын

I took mine first and did my best to try to answer before reading the answers. I had such a laugh when I got 'When the last key of a mostly minor piece of music ends in a major chord, this is known as a:' and I blurted out "Damn it, it's um..oh, a Picadilly!! Picadilly?? *reads answers* Picardy-- yes that!" 😂

@FWFWFWF 10 ай бұрын

veev-atch-ay

@alamcho 10 ай бұрын

Correct way would be: vuh-vaa-chee

@FWFWFWF 10 ай бұрын

@@alamcho lol

@chrishb7074 10 ай бұрын

I got all 15, but I was dredging memory I was taught decades ago, before most of you lot were born. I doubt people who don’t routinely use orchestral or operatic scores would do so well at this test. Music teaching and rehearsal has evolved beyond the conductor yelling his demands in a bad Italian accent. To be clear, the music theory I’ve learned from this channel, the chord work, scales, harmony and modes by examples and listening properly has been far more memorable, enjoyable and satisfying than any of the classical music theory I did whilst at school.

@stevej1154 10 ай бұрын

As a musical amateur, I got 60%. Not easy.

@tylerhayes1663 10 ай бұрын

With only picking up some theory knowledge through KZbin I scored 80% -- I missed the "subdominant" because I was thinking it said "secondary dominant" :facepalm:

@justie1220 10 ай бұрын

13/15 on this and the two that I missed were stupid on my part lol missed the monophony question because I didn’t read all the answers before choosing and the question about the opera because I know nothing about opera lol

@Rik-B 10 ай бұрын

I got 13/15 although my only knowledge of music theory comes from KZbin videos. So I guess good job YT educators lol

@succumbtoviolets 10 ай бұрын

I got 13 out of 15 (one was a lucky guess), by using a combination of remembering being in school band in America nearly 30 years ago, and what I've learned from KZbin over the past five years or so. Interesting that this seems aimed at American middle/high school, when I was that age we learned basically nothing about songwriting/composing theory, things like scales, keys, chord functions, cadences, and so forth.

@lawrencetaylor4101 10 ай бұрын

Being a shitty piano player born with two left ears, but a music theory geek, I aced this exam.

@Maurriss 10 ай бұрын

got 12/15. not too bad

@acj2789 10 ай бұрын

This is the sort of stuff that gives music theory a bad name.

@enkiitu 10 ай бұрын

The first question is absolutely RIDICULOUS!!I Is like asking "how does a song sounds the best, played by a clarinet, an oboe or a flute" What a stupid question. Those are different kinds of soprano voices. You should look into the Italian terms, they are used constantly in all academic music.

@Trentstone121 10 ай бұрын

None of this will help you write music. This is exactly why i didn't bother to waste my time with music theory.

@condolcezza5850 10 ай бұрын

This is AP???

@dihydrogen 10 ай бұрын

the actual exam is significantly harder than this

@johnab67 10 ай бұрын

Vivace is pronounced viv-arch-ay

@joeldcanfield_spinhead 10 ай бұрын

In England, perhaps. In the US, there would be no 'r' in the middle syllable.

@GizzyDillespee 10 ай бұрын

@@joeldcanfield_spinheadhere in Massachusetts, we complain about the politicians in Warshington. We remove the R from California, and add it back at the end (Calif-on-yer). Canada gets an R at the end - it becomes Canader. I could totally hear someone here say, "Vivarche". Of course, they call our area New England.

@johnab67 10 ай бұрын

It's an Italian word so I would generally go with the Italian pronunciation.

@joeldcanfield_spinhead 10 ай бұрын

@@GizzyDillespee Y'all pirates, yeah? R R R R R, matey. (Okay, so "here in the US" is far too vague to be meaningful.) However, I don't know anyone who would actually say "viv AR chay"--whatever one's speech patterns, it would be "viv AH chay" as in the original Italian.

@reineh3477 10 ай бұрын

@@johnab67 I google and the Italian pronunciation is, vɪvat͡sɛ (vee-va-tse)