AP Music Theory Tutoring for the May Exam
AP Music Theory is two subjects examined together: written theory, where part-writing and harmonic analysis follow strict conventions, and aural skills, where students notate melodies and chord progressions they hear and sing a melody at sight. Many students are strong on one side and weak on the other, and the aural side cannot be crammed in the last month.
Short answer
AP Music Theory is offered online, one-to-one or in a group class.
A private lesson runs 90 minutes and starts at USD 65 per lesson; the group course runs 50 lessons of 90 minutes for USD 1,755, and a class never takes more than 6 students.
No group class runs for this exam.
From USD 65 per lesson
- 3 scored components, from AP Central
- Live online lessons of 90 minutes
- From USD 65 per lesson
How AP Music Theory is assessed
Set and scored by College Board and reported on the 1–5 AP scale. Each university sets its own rule on which scores earn credit or placement. Component names are as College Board prints them.
College Board
AP Music Theory · AP Central exam page
| Component | Share of score | Length | What it involves |
|---|---|---|---|
| Section I: Multiple Choice | 45% | 1 hour 20 min | 75 questions in about 1 hour 20 minutes: roughly 13 sets of 4–6 questions plus 10–12 individual questions on performed and notated music, including spotting pitch and rhythm differences between a score and a recording. Audio, scores and answers are all in Bluebook. |
| Section IIA: Free Response: Written | 45% | 1 hour 10 min | 7 questions in about 1 hour 10 minutes: 2 melodic dictations, 2 harmonic dictations, part writing from figured bass, part writing from Roman numerals, and composing a bass line to harmonise a given melody. Audio plays in Bluebook; answers are handwritten in a paper booklet. |
| Section IIB: Free Response: Sight Singing | 10% | 10 min | 2 questions in about 10 minutes: you sing at sight two short, mainly diatonic melodies of about 4–8 bars, read from the paper booklet, and record them in Bluebook. |
- Hybrid exam: answers are entered in Bluebook for multiple choice and handwritten in a paper booklet for free response.
- 2027 exam date: 10 May 2027.
Checked on 8 October 2026
College Board revises individual exams between years. The exam page linked above is the authority for your sitting.
The AP Music Theory syllabus
Topic names are left in English, as they appear on the paper and in the mark scheme.
Unit 1: Music Fundamentals I: Pitch, Major Scales and Key Signatures, Rhythm, Meter, and Expressive Elements
Pitch and pitch notation · Notes and rests · Major scales · Major keys · Beat division and meter type · Tempo and dynamics
Unit 2: Music Fundamentals II: Minor Scales and Key Signatures, Melody, Timbre, and Texture
Natural, harmonic, and melodic forms of the minor scale · Key relationships · Intervals · Melodic features such as contour, register, and range · Texture types such as monophony, homophony, and heterophony · Rhythmic devices such as syncopation and cross-rhythm
Unit 3: Music Fundamentals III: Triads and Seventh Chords
Diatonic chords · Chord inversions · The qualities of 7th chords
Unit 4: Harmony and Voice Leading I: Chord Function, Cadence, and Phrase
Soprano–bass counterpoint · 4-part (soprano, alto, tenor, and bass) voice leading · The conventions of 18th-century chord spelling, doubling, voicing, and spacing · Harmonic progression, functional harmony, and cadences · Voice leading with 7th chords
Unit 5: Harmony and Voice Leading II: Chord Progressions and Predominant Function
The use of predominant chords in a harmonic progression · Specific predominant chords and their uses · Cadences and predominant function
Unit 6: Harmony and Voice Leading III: Embellishments, Motives, and Melodic Devices
Types of embellishing tones and their use in a chordal framework · Motives and motivic transformation · Melodic sequence · Harmonic sequence
Unit 7: Harmony and Voice Leading IV: Secondary Function
Tonicization and the ways to achieve it · Part writing secondary dominant chords · Part writing secondary leading-tone chords
Unit 8: Modes and Form
The seven types of modes · Melodic relationships between phrases · Commonly used sections of music such as introduction, interlude, bridge, verse, refrain, chorus, coda, and codetta
Where AP Music Theory marks are usually lost
Dictation abandoned after one mistake
In melodic and harmonic dictation, students often lose the thread after one wrong note or chord and leave the rest blank. Credit is given piece by piece — by segment in melodic dictation, by note and chord symbol in harmonic dictation — so a student who keeps going, anchors on the tonic and the cadence, and writes the rhythm even when a pitch is uncertain collects marks that a perfectionist throws away.
Voice-leading errors in part-writing
The part-writing questions, from figured bass and from Roman numerals, are scored for chord spelling and for voice leading. Parallel fifths and octaves, a doubled leading tone, an unresolved seventh, crossed voices and wide spacing each cost points. Most students know the rules; they lose marks because they do not check every pair of voices systematically before moving on to the next chord.
Sight-singing into a microphone
On exam day the student sings each melody alone and records it. Each short segment earns credit only if pitch, rhythm and tempo are all right, and a student who hesitates or starts again loses the point for an uninterrupted performance; after a restart, only the last complete attempt is scored. Singing confidently into a recording is a skill in itself, and many students never practise it before May.
How we teach AP Music Theory
Lessons split the time deliberately between theory and ear training, because aural skills improve with short, frequent practice rather than a burst before the exam. A typical session includes a dictation, a part-writing exercise corrected voice by voice, and a sight-singing melody the student records and plays back. The tutor works with the student’s own singing system — solfège, scale-degree numbers or letter names — rather than replacing it, and uses recordings as well as live playing so the student hears music in different timbres and textures. For students without keyboard skills, the tutor also builds the habit of hearing a progression internally, which is what harmonic dictation really tests.
There is no separate diagnostic, because there is no single test that stands in for two years of a school syllabus. The first lesson is the assessment: the tutor works through your recent marked work, past-paper questions from your own specification, and the units your school has already covered, and reads current level, gaps, exam technique and where school work stands. It is a normal paid lesson and it teaches as it assesses.
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