How to revise for music Instruments, terms, theory, typical features of rhythm, harmony, structure and melody

General theory questions http://www. educationquizzes Examples of how to study a specific bit of theory: To revise key signatures, spend 10 minutes writing them out and labelling the major and minor keys. Then test yourself by looking at some key signatures and working out what the keys are. http://musictheoryfundamentals.com/Quiz/keySignaturesQuiz.php To revise time signatures, you need to be able to tell how many beats are in a bar by listening AND by looking. Test yourself on any piece of music to see if you can count it correctly. You can also use this as a basic quiz about note values and different types of time signature. Another good way to test yourself is to write out 4 bars in any time signature, and then copy it into Sibelius to see if you have grouped it correctly. http://www.proprofs.com/quiz-school/story.php?title=time-signatures-counting-note-values Use websites for aural training, e.g. http://www.e-musicmaestro.com/auraltests/free

Instruments The best way to test your recognition of instruments is to use available tracks on the internet, where you can see them played at the same time as hearing them. You can also use this to see what kind of instruments are typical of a style, such as Tango (below right).

Key terms You can use the “flipper” to test yourself on definitions and examples This could also be used for writing a term and having underneath it which styles typically use that (for example, “polyrhythm” might be a feature of both Latin American and African music, and “close harmony” might be typical of singing in gospel music and the horn section in Latin music)

Features of a style The foldable diamond works well for this, in a similar way to mindmaps (but you have to reduce the information, so it’s a good way to consolidate) You can also make a tick-list of features and then find any track on YouTube and tick off what you can hear