<p>My D is considering doing this self-study with tutoring. Has anyone had any experience with a class or taken the test? Is there a book you'd recommend or you have used?</p>
<p>I'll bump this.</p>
<p>I would also like to know.</p>
<p>I've taken it. The test is difficult since Aural training has always been a challenge for me. </p>
<p>The test is split into Compositional and Aural subsections. The composition sections involve partwriting, realizing figured base, writing a melody given the base, harmonizing SATB, etc. Multiple choice on essentially everything compositional is also present.</p>
<p>The aural subsection involves several songs/audio samples being played with questions about each. There also is dictation (melody is played and student writes it on paper), harmonizing (harmonic chords are played and these are written down), and sight-singing.</p>
<p>I received a 4 on the exam with a 5 Composition subscore and a 2 Aural subscore. </p>
<p>Sadly no review books seem to have been produced for the exam. However, I must recommend my textbook Tonal Harmony by Stefan Kotska and Dorothy Payne. I found it covered everything on the compositional subsection extremely thoroughly.</p>
<p>The class was easy enough but some aspects of the exam are pretty hard. Make sure if you get a tutor that they are familiar with the exam format. There are certain parts of the test that you will need to study all year to have a shot at all of scoring decently on. Definately some parts you don't want to walk in to the test not knowing about... There are some text books that you can get, but no real study guides. </p>
<p>I got a 4 with a 4 on non-aural and a 3 on aural. I was pretty confident, and I'm happy with the score. Music Theory is generally considered one of the harder AP tests.</p>
<p>I recommend that you do a lot of ear training with intervals, scales, and chords. With an instructor, make sure that every lesson begins with 5-10 minutes of ear training (he or she plays something, you identify). The first 6-8 multiple choice questions are pure interval/scale/chord recognition, and you need to be able to ace this section. The ear training will also help you with the rest of the aural multiple choice, which is applied listening. They will play an excerpt, and you answer questions about it. For example, one question might be "What is the quality of the first chord of the excerpt? a) major, b) minor, c) diminished, d) augmented". There's a lot of similar questions, except with intervals and scales. If you've got ear training down pat, you should be very successful with what is considered to be the most difficult section of the exam.</p>
<p>I highly recommend books like Kostka's Tonal Harmony and Aldwell/Schacter's Harmony and Voice Leading for the theory. But you will still have to be able to do dictations and sight-sing. This is not something you can learn from a book; it takes practice. I recommend Berkowitz's New Approach to Sight Singing for sight-singing. For dictations, I suggest using a combination of online resources and past AP Music Theory free response questions.</p>
<p>Required materials: 1993, 1998, 2003 Released AP Music Theory exams! These will help get you a feel for the style of questions on the multiple choice section. You can get them from Collegeboard.</p>
<p>It won't be easy, but you can do it! I self-studied this exam, and scored a 5 overall with subscores of 5 and 5. And at the time I didn't have access to the great resources that I recommended to you above. (I just had the released exams, and a desire to learn!) Peruse the Internet; there's a wealth of music theory resources to be found. :)</p>
<p>DON'T take the exam. Many schools do not give music theory credit.</p>
<p>Might as well take it for the potential of elective credit, though...</p>
<p>Will the aural and sight-singing portions be a breeze since I have perfect pitch, or does it still require knowledge of terminology and such? Also, I'm VERY well acquainted with jazz theory. How much does this overlap with the AP?</p>
<p>...Darn you and your perfect pitch!</p>
<p>You will need practice with the sections at the bare-minimum. Aural/Sightsinging is pretty straightforward, with relatively little terminology. </p>
<p>However...There is a multiple choice subsection where music is played and questions are answered about the piece at hand... That will have some terminology.</p>