AP Music Theory

AP Music Theory is a full-year Advanced Placement class on basic college level music theory and ear training. This course focuses mainly on classical music before the 20th century, though some portions of the course do include other music, such as jazz and contemporary music. Topics include scales, intervals, style, rhythm, form, analysis, seventh chords, figured bass, counterpoint, dictations (melodic and harmonic), and sightsinging. Starting from the 2009-2010 school year, this class is taught first period, as opposed to second period in previous years. Mr. Joseph Tamosaitis is the only teacher of AP Music Theory, of which there is only one class.

Curriculum
The course begins with a review of writing, identifying, and hearing scales, intervals, and triads. After a week of review, the course moves onto basic composition. This includes four-part voice leading and composition of a bass line using figured bass and Roman numerals. Meanwhile, students will also start practice with melodic and two-part dictation and sightsinging.

After basic composition, students will analyze scores, which include cadences, motives, modulation, texture, form, and rhythmic and meter organization. At this point in the curriculum, students will also be broadening their aural skills. They will be asked to sightsing more complicated melodies, write out four-part dictations, identify errors in rhythm and pitch, recognize instrumentation, and describe melodic, harmonic, and tonal organization.

Teaching style
Mr. Tamosaitis is flexible when teaching the AP Music Theory curriculum. He moves at the pace that is comfortable for the class; consequently, the time it takes to teach the curriculum changes every year. Sometimes, a slow pace will result in less time for a later topic. Also, he may teach the curriculum in an order different from what is recommended by College Board depending on the strengths and weaknesses of the class in each topic.

If he teaches a lesson that is more related to ear training, such as sightsinging or dictations, he usually works with the class on a practice sightsinging exercise or dictation. Then, if it is sightsinging, he asks each student to sing an example alone. If it is a dictation, he plays another dictation after the example, but each student works alone to write out this second dictation. He then collects the work at the end of the period and grades all the dictations by the next day.

If he teaches a lesson that is more related to theory, he introduces the new topic, writing any crucial points on the board, and then gives students practice problems (often old AP problems) to apply the new material. These include identifying chords, completing chord resolutions, and analyzing musical works. Like dictations, he may collect these problems at the end of the class and grade them by the next day.

Mr. Tamosaitis wants students to go beyond an AP level. He is willing to work with more advanced students on material past the AP exam, such as sightsinging in alto clef and identifying and resolving augmented sixth chords. However, he asks that all students attempt to sightsing in solfege, which is not an AP requirement.

After the AP exam, Mr. Tamosaitis encourages students to put the material they have just learned over the past year to use. He splits up the class into several groups of four or five people and allows them to compose their own music and perform it on the last day of classes. Students may compose whatever kind of music they want to, so even this final composition allows students to go beyond AP material.

Grading policy
Though there are no set percentages used to calculate a student's final grade, the grade is based mainly upon effort, attendance, and a few practice AP exams during the second term.

AP exam
Though students taking the AP Music Theory course are expected to take the AP exam, many students each year choose not to take it. This may be due to Mr. Tamosaitis's pace in the curriculum. Even though he does cover most of the course, he does not spend much time on vocabulary used in the exam, which can be a major part of the multiple choice section. While the percentage of students in the class taking the exam varies every year, it is not uncommon to see less than half the students take the exam. Each type of question is weighed as follows: Though students tend to have mixed responses about the multiple choice and free response sections, most students agree that the sightsinging section is the easiest since both melodies are mainly diatonic.
 * Multiple choice (75 questions)&mdash;45%
 * Free response (7 questions)&mdash;45%
 * Sightsinging (2 melodies of about four to eight bars)&mdash;10%

The final grade is broken up into two subscores: an aural and a nonaural grade. The aural grade involves questions with aural stimulus, when a excerpt of music is played on a CD player and questions relating to that excerpt are to be answered. The nonaural grade involves all other test questions. When students receive their AP results over the summer, they receive the aural grade, the nonaural grade, and the overall grade. Stuyvesant students tend to receive a 4 on one part, a 5 on the other part, and a 5 on the overall grade.