Anyone who has take the AP Music Theory course: when do you recommend I take it? What are some of the challenges? How was it if you had background in music theory?. Give me the deets lmao
My kid took it as a senior in high school and loved it, but the teacher did not require the students to take the exam – he said it was the hardest AP exam he ever took. they did have both “listening tests” and “singing tests,” so it’s more than pencil-on-paper (requires a good ear, decent pitch, etc.), and toward the end they did a fair amount of composition, too. Most of the kids in the class were juniors/seniors. I think they had one sophomore prodigy in there who had perfect pitch.
If you have specific questions I can try to answer them. But a class like this is generally pretty teacher-dependent; I’d ask around your school and talk to kids who already took it.
I took the exam as a sophomore and self studied for it. At that point I had been playing piano for around 8 years… the test was a breeze. That being said, my friend (plays French Horn) who took the actual in class through his school had to put a lot more effort into it and ended up with a 4. So, I would say that while any instrument helps, piano is by far the best as far as getting an easy 5 goes.
The hardest parts are the free response/notation sections. I used the Barron’s review book to learn how to do it, and then I just kept practicing using the College Board resources since they have tests going back to like 1999. Rest of the test is pretty easy; probably less than 100 terms to memorize and just practice listening to music should be enough to get through multiple choice, and sight singing should be easy for musicians.