<p>where's the love for this?</p>
<p>it's the hardest and longest AP test in my opinion. it's dreadful and requires you to do a lottttt of stuff.</p>
<p>i somehow pulled a 5, when honestly, i was praying max for a 3.
i'm so happy. i hope it's not a mistake, lol</p>
<p>I will take it next year, self-studying. How did you prepare? Which out of the free response was the most difficult? Which textbook/prep books did you use?</p>
<p>lol i didn't study at all, actually. because i'm not going into music performance; i just wanted to see how i'd do, so i went cold turkey.</p>
<p>the sight-singing was definitely the hardest for me though. i can't sing for shat. the listening is tough too, but they give points for a lot of things.</p>
<p>Music Theory had a scheduling problem at my school, and there were only like 10 people signed up for the class. I signed up for it without really knowing how hard the test was. Luckily, after hearing about the scheduling problem, changed it to Comp. Government.</p>
<p>So you didn't study at all? Did you have any background in music? Also, was the harmonizing thing difficult? Like writing out the chords for the melody?</p>
<p>meh i don't have a great background in music. i dabble in a few instruments, but i'm no asian prodigy violinist/pianist. i don't even play either. i play guitar.</p>
<p>the harmonic dictation was all right. but i thought i was good at those. the other things i suck at. harmonic dict all follows the circle progression for chords (aka certain chords can only go to certain others), and then just be able to tell if it is minor or major and it kinda fills itself in.</p>
<p>You better be good at dictation. A pianist should have a sense for it- what you need to be able to do is a hear three measure piece, quarter notes chords the entire thing, be able to say what notes fill out the top and bottom voices (you are given starting pitches ) in addition to filling in the roman numeral value of each chord relative to your starting I chord and also say the quality of chord (is it a 5^7, etc.) The most difficult thing to dictate on this year's exam was a V7/vi chord, which you needed to be able to recognize for its resolution to the VI. Without perfect pitch this is difficult- you need to practice a lot.</p>
<p>The rest is just memorization. Also amply practice your sight singing.<br>
I got a 5.</p>
<p>I am a pianist, but I haven't done any dictation practice, melodic or harmonic. I can easily write out chords that have roman numeral notation under them but it's hard for me to know the chord by just listening.</p>
<p>IMO the music theory test is the hardest AP and I have taken 10 all together. The MC is not too difficult, you just need to know your terms and theory. Free Response is difficult. I struggled all yaer in this calss but somehow I mananged a 3 overall: 4 in MC and 2 in FR.</p>
<p>oh man was there a V7/vi on the harmonic dict!?!?!?! i knew they would throw one in and i kinda made a decent guess at it and it put that!</p>
<p>awesome</p>
<p>Virtuoso- practice. Get a friend who plays piano to just work through all of the variations with you. For instance the IV to the I always sounds the same- look for a common tone (the fifth of the IV is the root of the key). Tricks like that abound you just need to practice enough to recognize them.</p>
<p>Also prepare for inversions. There are some wicked inversions to watch out for- one common one is the I6/4 because that will put your root note as your dominant chord which might throw you off. But they sound different. It takes a good ear and practice. Good luck.</p>
<p>you're pretty much guaranteed to get a I6/4 V I cadence somewhere.</p>