Please Note: The course is getting a reboot, so all the    following tips should be taken with a grain of salt.

 

• No units, barely any in-class work, there’s no resources really

• He gives you a huge packet at the beginning of the year and everything you will do in the class is somewhere in those 80 pages

• We spent the entire year on the MLI, but that isn’t how the class is supposed to function. Word of wisdom, do your MLI early and use your resources (Mr. Hill). It’s not an easy paper in the slightest. Mimic the examples for the format, pick topics with the most information available possible, and repeatedly seek Mr. Hill’s assistance and guidance.

• Make your MLI a music journal article. It’s the easiest format to do.

• The only way to prepare for Music Paper 1 is to practice, practice, practice. Learn DR SMITH and do it ALL THE TIME. If you’re listening to tunes in your car in the parking lot, do a DR SMITH in your head. There’s nothing you can do to prepare besides listening to all kinds of music, learning vocabulary, and practicing application.

• That being said, pick topics that you can bear to listen to and that you can listen to well. My only saving grace on the goddamn hip-hop paper is that I knew all of my tracks like the back of my hand and I could pick out every single tidbit of the music with my eyes closed. If you can’t listen repeatedly and learn the music well, you’re gonna struggle.

• Also, for Music Paper 1, you get a score in advance that you’ll be asked to evaluate on the paper. LEARN THE SCORE. You don’t get to listen to it on the exam and you might get asked some difficult shit about it (May 2017 was to evaluate “fugue elements in the third movement”) and if you don’t already know what you’re talking about, you could get a bad score.