(SINGING) Welcome to AP Daily--
Practice Sessions.
AKIRA SATO: Welcome AP Daily--
Practice Sessions.
So, in this video, I'd like to practice with you some
of the question types you might encounter in the AP Music
Theory exam in multiple choice part
A portion, the listening portion.
So let's go.
My name is Mr. Sato.
I teach at Plano West Senior High School in Plano, Texas.
Here is an overview, an outline of what the AP exam looks like.
If you're not familiar with it, you might just pause this video
or take a screenshot and look at this.
It's in sequential order this way.
So the first thing that happens when
you start the AP exam is you get a set
of 40 some odd multiple choice questions.
These are oral questions.
You listen to things and you respond.
OK.
So today, I have two sets of questions
that I like to practice with you.
Every year, somewhere on the exam,
you get a set of four questions that look like this.
It says here, questions 9 through 12
are based on an excerpt that will be played four times.
The score is printed correctly below.
But in the version you will hear,
several measures contain errors in either pitch or rhythm.
Before listening to the music for the first time,
please read question 9 through 12 and look at the score.
So there is a score to look at, right?
Treble clef, bass clef.
This is piano music.
What key are we in?
D Major.
Are we OK with D Major?
D Major.
Here's the thing.
If you try to do this, like on the fly,
it's kind of overwhelming sometimes.
But with a little strategy, for example,
you know you're going to hear it four times.
You know where the errors are because it tells you
where the errors are.
Measure 2 has an error, 4 has an error, 5 has an error,
6 has a error, right?
Which means what?
When I listen to this, eh, those are the important ones.
And this is a very amusical thing to say.
I would not really want to-- this is exam prep time, right?
I wouldn't talk to you musician to musician this way.
But these measures, not they don't matter.
I don't want to say they don't matter,
they're not part of the question.
OK.
Now, in the time they give us, I would
try to sing this in my head or count out the rhythms.
Get as much build as much as you can and expectation of what
you're going to encounter.
And then, when you hear a mistake, something
you're not expecting, you know that's where it is.
I would recommend spending two of the hearings on one clef
and then two of the hearing on one clef.
And just trace the music until you find an error.
For example, if I find a pitch error here, I'll just write p.
Or a rhythm error here, I'll just put r.
And then I don't even worry about what the multiple choice
corresponding answers are.
We can do that later.
OK.
Now, if you watch some of my AP Classroom videos,
you might have met DJ Kitty, DJ Kitty.
He's going to help us with any time we have audio.
So here's audio to this.
We're trying to find errors.
[PLAYING NOTES]
OK.
So, on the AP exam, you're going to hear that four times.
For the purpose of this video, I'm
going to ask you to rewind it and listen to it four times.
More, if you need to, because we're practicing,
or less if you don't need to.
But I want to talk about what I heard.
OK.
What I heard was, let's see.
Right here, in the treble clef, this was not a scale wise run,
I heard a skip.
So there was a pitch error there.
Here, I also heard a pitch error.
I heard a rhythm error there.
And I heard a rhythm here, what they did was they dotted
and they played two sixteenths like that.
Maybe you can compare it and we can listen to it again.
Here we go.
[PLAYING NOTES]
There you have it.
I hope you got those.
So how does that translate into multiple choice talk?
Measure 2 had a trouble clef pitch error.
Measure 4 had a bass clef pitch error.
Measure 5 bass clef rhythm error, treble clef rhythm.
Usually one of each, but I wouldn't necessarily
count on it.
If you're not sure of one, you might just make it one of each,
but you never know.
OK.
So that's one set.
Every year, there are a set of four questions.
Remember, there are 40 some odd questions totals
and that's one tenth of what you're looking at.
All right.
Here's an example set from an old, old, old exam.
Probably before most of you were born,
if you're watching this to take the exam this year.
Question-- here, on these--
well, let's listen to the directions.
[AUDIO PLAYBACK]
- Questions 28 through 31 are based on an excerpt
from a work for wind band.
The excerpt will be played three times.
Before listening to the music for the first time,
please read Questions 28 through 31.
[END PLAYBACK]
OK.
Here's an important point I want to make about this.
If you've been practicing multiple choice questions in AP
Classrooms, there are a lot of great questions there,
it's a great resource.
AP Classroom has you look at one question at a time, right?
When you hear an audio clip, you get one question.
Not only that, you get to control
when you hit press play.
On the AP exam, these appear as sets.
And there's a little strategy, yoga.
OK.
I'm good at meters, I'm going to go for that one first.
Or that might be hard.
You don't have to go necessarily in order.
You could say, OK, I'm going to hear this how many times?
Three times.
So the first time I'm going to try
to get this while I'm kind of trying to figure out
this at the same time.
One of the hardest things about this part of the test
is to locate the spot that they're talking about.
So the second part of the excerpt
after the role of the snare.
So the first time I hear this, I might just be listening,
OK, I'm going to answer this and I'm
going to listen to where that spot is.
There is strategy like that when you're
working in a question set.
That unfortunately, you don't get when you're
doing one question at a time.
OK.
So those are the directions.
Now, in free response, not multiple choice.
In free response, the directions are pretty much the same
every year.
But in multiple choice, every word of every question
was very carefully placed.
I would read every word of this.
OK.
You're going to get time to read.
Don't stare at the wall, read this.
OK.
I'm going to go ahead and play the audio.
You might pause the video right now before hearing it
and just read the questions.
All right.
So here's DJ Kitty helping us.
[PLAYING NOTES]
There you have it.
You'll hear three times.
So you might just rewind this video
and get two more hearings or more.
We're practicing, more is fine.
But we're going to go one question at a time.
The first question.
The first four pitches of the excerpt are.
Again, you don't need to go in order.
We're going to go in order because we're
going to go in order.
I don't know what your strengths are, right, or weaknesses.
We're just going to go in order.
What are they talking about?
The first four pitches.
[PLAYING NOTES]
I shouldn't have played that.
Before I listen to this, when I'm reading,
I'm going to try to sound these out.
I'm just going to pick a key, like, I don't know.
(SINGING) Do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do--
or something, right?
(SINGING) Do, do, re, mi, fa.
So this one would be (SINGING) do fa, so, fa.
This one would be (SINGING) do, so, la, so.
Like twinkle, twinkle.
(SINGING) So, ti, do, ti.
If I heard that, scale degree seven is ti, right?
It's just going to feel like unfinished.
(SINGING) Ti, so, do, re, do--
would be that one.
Now, what do we hear?
We heard this.
[PLAYING NOTES]
(SINGING) Bom, bom, bom, bom, bom.
That's a fourth.
(SINGING) Bom, bom.
So we can eliminate those because those aren't fourth.
Now this is a little mean.
Because this is up a fourth, up a step, down a step.
This is up a fourth, step, step.
The interval relationship between those two are the same.
Intuitively, did it feel like we ended on like home, tonic,
or did we feel like we're somewhere else?
We really don't know this answer until you
hear that big chord near the middle where
it goes, oh, that's home.
But intuitively, I thought it was--
[PLAYING NOTES]
(SINGING) So, do, re, do.
So the answer was D. Now this is an old, old exam.
About a fifth of the students got that correct.
OK.
Again, on the AP test, I don't want you to obsess
about getting every question correct.
That's not the point.
They give you this, on that day of the AP exam,
your job is to show them how much you can get.
OK.
Your standard is I don't want you to compare yourself
to a perfect score.
Those things are-- it's not how these are written.
OK.
The opening four-note motive is repeated immediately
at what interval?
So we just heard,
(SINGING) bom, bom, bom, bom.
Those are played by trombones.
[PLAYING NOTES]
And then you hear it again.
Some of you might hear that and go, oh, that's the same thing.
It kind of is, it went up an octave.
It went from trumpet to--
[PLAYING NOTES]
Or sorry, it went from trombone to trumpet.
Trumpets play higher than trombones, or they try.
So it was an octave.
That one was friendlier.
A lot of people got that correct.
The meter type.
Now this is wind band literature and asymmetrical is really not,
you know, out of the window.
It's not out of the running.
These things happen quite a bit in wind band.
Simple, triple, quadruple.
On a meter question, I like for my students to conduct along.
Now, on the exam, you can't do one of these conductings
because you're given--
that's exam security violation.
But, in your head, just teeny little conducting.
So is it triple?
Is it quadruple?
And within a beat?
Are the division simple or compound, right?
So DJ Kitty, where is my DJ Kitty?
There.
[PLAYING NOTES]
So that's my conducting pattern for three.
So I heard it in triple.
And I heard the division (SINGING)
tat, tat, tat, tat, tat, tat-- which is simple triple.
Simple triple.
All right.
The final question of the set, I think.
Yeah.
The second part of the excerpt, after the role
of the snare drum, differs from the first part
in texture only, texture and mode, meter,
and meter and mode.
So here's the-- I think I get the role.
[PLAYING NOTES]
First of all, did the meter change?
If you can conduct in three all the way along,
the meter did not change.
OK.
So those are out.
Texture only.
Texture and mode.
Mode, in this context, is not like Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian.
That kind of mode is saying, did it
change from major to minor or minor to major?
That, for me, was tough because I heard this. (SINGING) So, do,
re, do.
So, do, re, do--
in the first part.
There was no (SINGING) so, do, mi, re, do or so, do--
[VOCALIZING]
--to make it major or minor.
But when I heard it, it didn't sound like it changed.
And then when we finally landed on that--
[PLAYING NOTES]
--chord, it sounded major to me.
So the only thing that changed was,
what started monophony and then this counter melody,
sort of polyphonic texture change
to everybody locked into a chord, a chordal homophony
or homophony.
So the answer was texture only.
That too was a tough question.
Again, it's OK if you're not getting all of these.
We just want to do the best we can.
All right.
So these appear in sets, which is a huge, huge difference
from what you might be used to.
There's no substitute for practice.
We practiced eight questions today, but just
practice questions every day.
Your teacher has access to past released exams.
He or she could print them out and you can work in sets.
AP Classroom is great for individual question practice.
Hard copies, I think, are better for practicing in sets, OK?
So I hope that helped.
With that, I'm going to say thank you and bye.
(SINGING) Thank you, bye.
[PLAYING NOTES]
Bye, bye.