Mus 354 Exam 1

What You Actually Need to Know for the First Test

Mus 354 Exam 1 typically covers the foundational material from the first four to six weeks of the semester, and at UT Austin it usually focuses on sight-singing, harmonic analysis, and the first set of species counterpoint exercises. The curve isn't brutal, but students who treat it like a memorization test tend to underperform. The exam rewards pattern recognition and applied ear work over rote definition regurgitation. The sections you should be preparing for include multiple-choice questions on harmonic function, short-answer items asking you to identify chord progressions in figured bass, and at least one practical component where you either sing a prepared melody or analyze a short bass line on the spot. The sight-singing portion varies by instructor, but most semesters include two to three lines requiring you to render a melody in C major, A minor, and F major without prior rehearsal time. You get maybe forty-five seconds to look before you start singing. I had a student last spring who failed the sight-singing section because he kept trying to sing every interval starting from the tonic instead of anchoring to the nearest stable tone. He'd sing a descending minor third from C when the note was actually right above him in the melody. We spent one practice session having him just point at notes and say whether they were above or below the current pitch, no singing required. He passed the next week's quiz. The test itself is rarely cruel, it just exposes the gaps you've been ignoring.

The harmonic analysis questions are where most of the points live. You'll see a four- or six-measure progression in common-practice notation and be asked to label each chord with Roman numerals including inversion figures. Know your I–IV–V–I in every major key. That's the skeleton. Then layer in vii°7, ii°, and the German, French, and Italian sixth chords. If your professor follows the standard repertoire selections, you will likely see at least one phrase that hinges on recognizing a German augmented sixth resolving to a dominant seventh. Write the chord out as G–B–D–Eon scrap paper before you decide whether to label it as an augmented sixth or misread it as a dominant seventh with a raised fifth. I've seen that mistake cost people eight points on one question. For the species counterpoint section, expect a two-part writing exercise in first species against a given cantus firmus. The prompt will specify the mode and the number of notes to write. You need to follow the standard intervals: perfect consonances on strong beats, passing tones and neighbor tones on weak beats, avoid parallel fifths and octaves, and keep the final measure ending on a perfect consonance. The edge case that trips people up is the double suspension on weak beats when the cantus has two long tones in a row. You can write appoggiaturas there, but only if they resolve stepwise downward. I once watched someone write a 4–3 suspension over a bass that moved by leap, and the resolution created a hidden fifth with the soprano. It was marked wrong, and he had no idea why until we walked through voice leading rules again. Practice materials are the real bottleneck. The textbook by Kostka and Payne remains the standard, and the appendix solutions only cover even-numbered problems. The online workbooks tied to the Savant listening system are helpful for the ear-training portion, but they don't replicate the written analysis pressure of the actual exam. I recommend doing timed sets of analysis without looking at the answer key, then grading yourself harshly. Missing three out of ten progressions is fine during practice. It's not fine on the test.

One thing nobody tells you going in: the exam assumes fluency in key signatures with sharps and flats up to four alterations. If you're still counting ledger lines to find every pitch, you're going to lose time you can't afford. Drill D major, B minor, E major, Cminor, Fmajor, and D flat major until you can see the scale degrees instantly. That alone usually lifts the score by five to eight percent. If you need sheet music or analysis examples, the university library reserves hold the full Kostka anthology and the Tovey collections. The music department website also posts past midterm outlines from previous years, though they change topic weight slightly each semester. Check the syllabus first, then use old exams for format practice rather than content guessing. The main downside of this exam structure is that it blends aural, written, and analytical skills into a single sitting, which means weakness in one area doesn't disappear just because you're strong in another. A solid analyst who can't sing will still drop points on the sight-singing portion. A good singer who rushes through analysis will mislabel a borrowed chord and lose the follow-up points. The workaround is mixed practice: do one set of analysis questions, immediately sing a melody in the same key, then switch to species counterpoint for twenty minutes. The switching forces your brain to treat these as separate competencies instead of a single vague "music class" blur.

Resources you can actually use include the MIT OpenCourseWare music theory lectures for harmonic analysis, the free MuseScore community libraries for practice melodies, and the UT Music Library's own online score database. The Savant platform at savant.music.ucsb.edu or the institution-specific mirror your university provides is worth the login hassle because the ear training sequences align closely with what the exam expects. Use them daily, not the night before. There's no shortcut around putting in the repetitions. The material is coherent, the expectations are clear, and the exam is predictable if you treat it like a skills assessment rather than a trivia quiz.