Longer extracts

A longer extract

The music in context section of the online exam prints one longer extract, often eight bars or more, and asks about five things in it. Each question uses a skill from an earlier section, so nothing is new; what is new is finding the answer in a page of real music.

Read the whole extract before the first question, the way a player reads a new piece:

1. The key. Count the sharps or flats in the key signature, then look at the last note and for a raised 7th that keeps coming back.
2. The time. Read the time signature: how many beats in a bar, and of what kind.
3. The words and signs. The speed word over the start, the dynamics under the notes, the signs on them, any word over a later bar.
4. The shape. Bar numbers count from the start; a number at the start of each new line tells you where you are. Many extracts are built in phrases of four bars, and a later phrase often begins like the first.

Worked example: five questions and more on that extract

• The key: one flat, B flat, and the extract ends on F: F major.
• The time: 3/4, so every bar has three crotchet beats.
• The speed: moderato, at a moderate speed. Near the end, rit. (ritardando) asks for the music to get gradually slower.
• The dynamics: mf at the start, moderately loud; p in bar 5, quiet. Bar 5 starts the second phrase, an echo of the first.
• The signs: the dots on the notes of bar 3 are staccato marks: short and detached.
• Rhythm: bar 6 repeats the rhythm of bar 2 exactly. Bar 4 ends with a crotchet rest, one beat of silence to fill the bar.
• An interval: from the A in bar 1 up to the C after it is a 3rd (A, B, C: count both notes).
• A degree: the E in bar 7 is the 7th degree of F major, and it leads up to the F at the end.

How to answer

• Answer from the music in front of you, not from memory of another piece.
• When a question names a bar, count to it from the start (or from the bar number at the start of the line).
• When a question marks notes with letters, find every letter first, then read each note with the key signature and any accidental earlier in its bar.
• The questions are linked: the key you found in the first answer helps with a degree or an interval later.

Tip: if two answers seem possible, look again at the music. Only one of them fits what is printed.