Course Syllabus and Grading Policy

Advanced Placement Music Theory 2001-2002

Instructor:  Mr. Jones             

Room: Fine Arts Bldg. Choral Room

Office Telephone:

Course Description:

AP Music Theory is a full-year course that meets five times a week, for 50 minutes. Students may take AP Music Theory with no prior knowledge. Each session begins with ear training, either from the piano or recorded literature.  Homework and tests are frequent.  Keyboard exercises are evaluated, while sight singing is a “kinder, gentler” study involving less frequent evaluation. Every student must take the AP Music Theory Exam given in the spring semester.

Resource Materials

Fish, and Lloyd.  Fundamentals of Sight-Singing and Ear Training.  Dodd, Mead,  &             Company, Inc.  1964

Kostka, Stefan, and Dorothy Payne. Tonal Harmony with an Introduction to Twentieth-Century Music.  2^nd ed. New York: Knopf, 1989

 Workbook for Tonal Harmony.  2^nd Ed. New York: Knopf, 1989.

Course Outline

First Trimester

Reading                           Tonal Harmony. Chapters 1-5. Major and minor scales, key signatures, intervals, triads and inversions, 7^th chords, inversions, fiqured bass symbols, diatonic triads. Roman numerals, simple and compound meters.

Written Skills           Workbook materials, other similar exersices.

Ear-Training Skills           Rhythmic dictation, melodic dictation (conjunct motion),

Some smaller skips with emphasis on strategies for dictation, interval identification, triads seventh chord identification.

Sight-Singing          Melodies selected from Fish. Strategies for sight-singing, conjunct melodies with smaller intervallic leap, melodies in major and minor modes, treble and bass clefs.

Keyboard Skills          Major and minor scales, triads and inversions, seventh chords and inversions.

Second Trimester

Reading                           Tonal Harmony. Chapters 6-10. Voice-leading, part-writing, harmonic progression, triads in 1^st and 2^nd inversions, cadences phrases.

Written Skills          Workbook materials, original melody, and harmonization.

Ear-Training Skills          Continue interval, triad, and seventh chord identification, melodic diction (longer diatonic melodies with larger leaps), harmonic dictation (strategies, soprano/bass lines, simple progressions), error dictation.

Sight-Singing          Simple melodic progressions.

Other Activities          Take released 1990 AP Music Theory Exam and discuss results in class.

Third Trimester

Reading                           Tonal Harmony. Chapters 11-17. (Nonchord tones diatonic seventh chords). Secondary dominant and secondary leading tone chords.

Written Skills          Workbook materials, original composition using nonchord tones and diatonic seventh chords. Workbook materials, short compositions using secondary dominant and leading tone chords.

Ear-Training Skills          Continue applying strategies to original melodies and those selected from Fundamentals of Sight-Singing and Ear-Training.

Keyboard Skills          Harmonic progressions using diatonic seventh chords and nonchord tones. Harmonic progressions using secondary dominant chords.

Other Activities          Take released 1994 AP Music Theory Exam and discuss results in class

Review                                           Intensive review and preparation for the AP Music Theory Exam; exploration of careers in music (after exam in May).

Throughout the course, written and aural musical examples are analyzed and discussed with relation to concepts covered in class.

Grading Policy

Quizzes on written skills will be given on most Fridays. Ear-Training and aural quizzes will be given frequently.  A project will be assigned for each six-weeks. “Daily Grade” includes both written homework and in-class assignments.

Tests: 40%                              Daily Grade: 20%

Quizzes: 30%                          Project: 10%

Conduct checks will be recorded for unacceptable behavior, e.g., excessive tardies (more than 2), talking while teacher is talking, uncooperative attitude, working on other homework assignments. Each check will lower the student’s conduct grade by one point.

Extra help is always available before and after school.