AP Music Theory

How do the elements of pitch and rhythm work together to create music, and how do they provide opportunities for individual interpretation and expression?

In this unit, students develop a foundational understanding of pitch and rhythm and introduce them to the basics of major scales and keys, meter, tempo, and dynamics. Students build skills working with materials, processes, and relationships based on the tradition known as Western music. They establish the essential learning routines of listening to and notating music, reading and analyzing scores, singing from scores, and composing. These activities are complementary: students achieve musical understanding by experiencing musical concepts in a variety of contexts and applying and extending their learning to discover connections across the diversity of musical expression. In subsequent units, students build their knowledge of pitch and rhythm, developing skills with more complex and sophisticated musical ideas and examples.

In Unit 1, students will: 

1. Identify pitches, scales, key signatures, rhythms, and expressive elements (tempo, dynamics, articulation) in both notated and performed music.

2. Sight-sing melodies using correct pitch and rhythm in treble and bass clefs, demonstrating an understanding of meter and tonal function.

3. Notate performed melodies and rhythms accurately, recognizing discrepancies between what is heard and what is written.

How do relationships between major and minor keys and rhythmic patterns shape and develop musical ideas throughout a composition?

In this unit, students connect their learning from Unit 1 about major scales with learning about pitch patterns and relationships in minor keys. Students investigate major/minor key relationships and are introduced to additional scale types. They also focus on distances between pitches, known as intervals, which underpin later work with chords and harmonic progressions. Features of melody are identified, and students begin to recognize relationships between musical notation and performance, specifically with respect to transposition. They learn to identify instruments played in performed music and hear how musical lines interact to produce texture, while expanding their knowledge of rhythm and meter. In the next unit, students begin to engage with harmonic ideas, learning about triads and seventh chords.

In Unit 2, students will: 

1. Identify and describe various scales (minor, chromatic, whole-tone, pentatonic) and key relationships, including relative keys and key signatures, in both performed and notated music.

2. Recognize and analyze melodic features, intervals (including inversions and compound intervals), and rhythmic devices, demonstrating understanding of their structure and transformation.

How are chord qualities described, and how do the pitches within chords function to create harmony?

In this unit, students further strengthen their foundational understanding of pitch relationships in performed and notated music. Having learned how to recognize and relate pitch patterns and rhythmic structures in performances and in scores, students now begin to engage with harmony, recognizing and relating groupings of pitches presented simultaneously. They use notation to identify chord qualities and to indicate harmonic progressions, with a focus on seventh chords. Although skills and concepts of rhythm, meter, and melody aren’t specifically addressed in this unit, students should continue practicing and applying them in creative exercises in preparation for further development in Unit 4, which introduces harmony and voice leading.

In Unit 3, students will: 

1. Describe the quality of chords and seventh chords in both performed and notated music.

2. Identify chords and seventh chords using letters and Roman/Arabic numerals, recognizing scale degree, root, quality, and bass note.

3. Use Roman numerals to analyze and indicate harmonic progressions, including those implied by figured bass notation.

How do melody, harmony, rhythm, and the interaction of voices work together to shape the structure and expression of music?

In this unit, students expand on the harmonic materials and processes introduced in Unit 3 and are introduced to the procedures of 18th-century style voice leading. Students begin by learning and applying conventions of soprano–bass line relationships through score analysis, error detection, writing exercises, and contextual listening. They then learn conventions of chord spelling, spacing, and doubling, in order to form harmonies from the combination of independent-sounding melodic lines. Through their study of cadences, students learn to identify and describe phrases as structural units of musical form. In Unit 5, students will continue to study voice-leading conventions and procedures in four-voice (SATB) harmonic progressions.

In Unit 4, students will: 

1. Compose bass lines using 18th-century harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic rules.

2. Identify chord functions, qualities, cadences, and use Roman and Arabic numerals for analysis.

3. Apply 18th-century voice leading techniques and analyze phrase structures and musical textures

How can the development and transformation of motives work together to shape the harmony and expression of a composition?

In this unit, students will analyze, describe, and create more complex harmonic progressions in the form of four-part (SATB) voice leading. Attention is focused on learning additional chord types and functions, with an emphasis on cadential and 6 4 chords. The goal is for students to expand their knowledge of voice-leading conventions and procedures to build confidence with part writing, score analysis, and harmonic dictation. It is also important for students to continue practicing and receiving formative feedback to further develop and hone skills in sight-singing and error detection. 

In Unit 5, students will: 

1. Identify and describe harmonic functions, progression, and cadence types in both performed and notated music.

2. Apply 18th-century voice-leading procedures through score analysis, error detection, writing exercises, part-writing, and contextual listening.

How do non-chord tones, melodic and rhythmic procedures, and motivic development work together to shape the structure, flow, and expressive quality of music?

In this unit, students work with skills and concepts of harmony and voice leading. Embellishing tones add variety and expressive possibility to harmonic progressions. Students learn to identify motives—short melodic or rhythmic ideas that form the basic units of phrases—and understand how variations are created through motivic transformation. They also learn to identify melodic and harmonic sequences. Students’ understanding of pitch and rhythm must be continually reinforced in this unit through ongoing practice and support with ear training, sight-singing, error detection, harmonic and melodic dictation, score analysis, and part writing.

In Unit 6, students will: 

1. Identify and notate embellishing tones, including nonharmonic tones, in both performed and notated music.

2. Compose bass lines that incorporate passing and neighbor tones following 18th-century harmonic and voice-leading conventions.

3. Analyze the structure of musical phrases by identifying motives and related melodic and rhythmic procedures.

How can musicians use secondary harmony to create and understand more elaborate, complex harmonic progressions?

In this unit, students further study harmonic elements, relationships, and procedures introduced and developed in earlier units. Students deepen their understanding of keys, scale degrees, and chords as they focus on the process of tonicization. They analyze the effects of secondary dominant chords and secondary leading-tone chords and learn how these particular harmonic events are treated in the context of part writing. Students practice describing key relationships in musical compositions in which a non-tonic chord is momentarily emphasized using chords borrowed from its tonic key.

In Unit 7: students will: 

1. Compose bass lines that complement given soprano melodies using 18th-century harmonic practices.

2. Identify and describe instances of tonicization in both performed and written music.

3. Analyze scores, detect errors, and apply voice leading rules through writing exercises and focused listening.

How do modes' unique characteristics, along with the hierarchical structure and phrase relationships within a composition, shape the overall musical form and expression?

Throughout the course, students have been working to construct a strong foundational understanding of pitch, rhythm and meter, melody, harmony, and voice leading. This unit covers the use of conventions that affect the character of music, ranging from identifying the different tonal qualities of modes, to describing phrase relationships within a score or performance, to recognizing common sections of a musical composition. By working with many diverse musical examples throughout the course, students can apply understanding of musical components, relationships, and conventions to confidently predict patterns and effects of myriad combinations within a performance or score. This fluency enables them to respond to complex musical problems and encourages continued discovery of the communicative and expressive possibilities of musical forms.

In Unit 8, students will: 

1. Identify and analyze modes in both performed and notated music.

2. Describe melodic relationships between phrases and recognize periods within musical pieces.

3. Identify common sections of compositions in both performance and notation to understand musical form.