Lesson 13: Questions about a Score

Question 8 in the grade three exam paper is about a musical score. You’ll be given some music to look at – usually about 8 bars of a single line of music. It could be in treble or bass clef.

You’ll be asked several questions about the score. The kinds of question you might see include:

• Explain Italian terms
• Explain symbols
• Give the time name of notes or rests
• Say how many notes are equivalent of each other (e.g. how many semiquavers in a minim)
• Describe the time signature
• Add the time signature
• Find bars which contain the notes of the tonic triad
• Say which degree of the scale certain notes are
• Name the relative minor/major key
• Find notes which are/aren’t in the key of the piece
• Find notes which are an octave apart
• Describe intervals marked with a bracket
• Find similarities and differences
• Count the number of times a certain pattern occurs
• Mark the phrases with a curved phrase mark

Many of these topics are covered in other lessons in this grade three course.
In this lesson we’ll look at the rest of them:

Finding Similarities and Differences

You might be asked to describe the similarities or differences between two sections of the music. You need to look at:

• The melody
• The rhythm
• The dynamics and phrasing

For example, you might see two bars which have the same rhythm, but a different melody:

the same melody notes, but a different rhythm:

the same melody and rhythm, but different dynamics:

You should try to describe with a little bit of detail what the similarities and differences are.

For example:

Bars 1-2
Similarity: Both bars use a rhythm of dotted quaver, semiquaver, quaver.
Difference: In bar 2 the melody is a scale step lower.

Bars 3-4
Similarity: Both bars use a leap of a perfect 5th D-A as the melody notes.
Difference: The rhythm is reversed in bar 2.

Bars 5-6
Similarity: Both bars have the same melody and rhythm.
Difference: The dynamics change from fortissimo in bar 5 to pianissimo in bar 6.

Counting Patterns

You might have to count the number of times you see:

• a certain rhythm
• bars which contain all the notes of the tonic triad
• a certain note (e.g. 3rd degree of the scale)

This is a very easy question! Just make sure you don’t rush it and miss something.

Marking Phrases

You might have to mark out the phrases in the score with a square bracket. The first one will be done for you.

• Phrases will normally be the same number of bars in length (often four times two-bar phrases in an 8 bar piece).
• Phrase marks don’t include rests.
• Use a ruler to draw the brackets.