I know it’s way early to be talking about AP Exams, but knowing my habits, I won’t even read these responses until the night before the exam hahaha.
Anyway, I was wondering if it was possible to self-study AP Music Theory, and if so, what are the chances of getting a 5? I’ve read a few threads on this but tbh they weren’t too helpful.
Personally, I have a background of 10 years of piano, 4 years of saxophone, and 1 year of guitar. I did theory for a solid 5 years until I quit piano lessons, but I remember a lot of it and I’m also in band. I hoping all these will help me even a bit, like give me a good base to work off of? I also have pretty solid relative pitch, if that means any thing hahaha.
I’m looking into this bc I want to take another AP Exam (why not) and bc I want to experience the whole self-studying thing. Also, I really love music and think theory is super interesting, so I reckoned this was a good one to start with. My school doesn’t offer this course anyway, so this is really my only chance to learn the material.
So yeah, with my situation, what are my chances of doing well on the exam? And if I should follow through, what are some good books/resources to study?
Again, I know this is really early, but if I don’t study it now, I don’t think I’ll ever get around to it haha. Thanks!
I would only consider self-studying AP Music Theory if you are already an expert on music theory. Five years of music theory when you were a kid and “band theory” does not fit the bill.
Go ahead regardless, if you want. I would go with Barron’s.
Music theory is legitimately worth taking with a teacher.
If you’re adamant, work through Spencer’s The Practice of Harmony, every single exercise. Everything up to and including secondary diminished seventh chords is on the exam, if I remember correctly… And practice the ever-loving crap out of your dictations and sight-singing.
I wouldn’t try to prep book this one, in my opinion. If you know music, it is entirely possible to get a perfect score on this exam, given that you legitimately learn this material. It’s just not an exam you can cram for; it’s more akin to an AP foreign language.
AP Music theory would have been nightmare-ish for me if I hadn’t taken it with a teacher. It was way harder than I expected, and I’ve played intense piano for 12 years and sang in choir for 4 (though admittedly I had a rather poor background in music theory). I’m not sure how in-depth your five years of theory were, but there is a lot of vocab and analysis you have to do, and you will have to know all the harmonic rules. Though, if you have good relative pitch you will probably have an easier time on the melodic and harmonic dictations, but you still need to practice the crap out of those.
And yeah, there’s no way you’re going to get a 5 if you cram, unless you were already a whiz in music theory. Your success (and test taking speed) is all based on learning the material and spending a lot of time practicing it over and over again.
I self-studied for this exam and compose my own music. Look online for the AP Music Theory Cirriculum, which has all the terms, voice-leading restrictions, and harmonies you need to know. This is actually an incredibly fun test.
Since you have playing piano for 10 years, the aural stuff should come easily for you. There are plenty of previous FRQs on the AP website; use those for practice.
I self-studied this test, but I wouldn’t recommend anyone to do it unless they already have a really good understanding of the material and a near-perfect ear for dictation. I put a ridiculous amount of energy into it, such as reading an entire textbook/workbook on the subject over the summer previous to the test, using dozens of websites to prepare, and overall putting more effort into Theory than all my other classes combined. And got a 4 (my only non-5 out of all of my APs). Ear training was really difficult for me and it took me forever to get anywhere with intervals, let alone full dictation. I wouldn’t encourage anyone to go the route I did, although it’s awesome that you take such interest in music; try a casual learning of theory, like through hooktheory.com or music theory.net. As for the self-studying “experience,” read about it in other threads and see people’s opinions; ones like Psych and Econ seem pretty easy to do.