QCAA Music Extension common mistakes
QCAA Music Extension · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Stating a research question like "The history of jazz" or "Music and emotion" and then writing a broad survey that touches many topics without ever answering a focused question.
Candidates pick a topic area rather than a genuinely investigable question, often because they choose something they already know a lot about and assume breadth will read as depth. The investigation then drifts into a summary of secondary sources.
What to do instead
Draft the question as a single sentence that implies a contestable answer (for example, how a specific harmonic device functions across three named works). Test it by writing the one-paragraph answer you expect to reach; if you cannot, sharpen the question until a defensible claim emerges, then structure every section to build toward that claim.
Presenting a narrative of the composer's life or the work's premiere instead of musical analysis, so the response reads as biography with no engagement with pitch, rhythm, texture, or form.
Biographical material is easy to find and easy to paraphrase, while close analytical claims require the candidate to commit to an interpretation and risk being wrong. Under time pressure, description feels safer than argument.
What to do instead
Impose a rule that every paragraph must contain at least one specific musical observation tied to a notated or aurally identified event, with bar or timestamp references. Delete any sentence that would survive unchanged if the piece were different, and replace it with an analytical claim about how a musical element creates an effect.
Making evaluative statements ("the modulation is effective", "the texture is beautiful") without stating the criteria by which effectiveness is judged or the evidence that supports the judgement.
Candidates conflate personal reaction with musical evaluation and have not been taught to make the criteria explicit. The result is assertion that cannot be assessed against the syllabus's demand for justified conclusions.
What to do instead
Adopt a three-part sentence pattern: observation, criterion, judgement. Name the musical feature, state what it is being judged against (coherence with the established motive, contrast with the preceding section, idiomatic writing for the instrument), then give the verdict. Aim for at least one fully evidenced evaluative paragraph per major section.
Citing sources only in a bibliography, with no in-text attribution for specific claims, quotations, or analytical ideas borrowed from a writer or teacher.
Candidates treat referencing as a formatting task completed at the end rather than a practice performed while writing. Paraphrased analytical ideas are especially likely to go unattributed because they no longer look like quotations.
What to do instead
Reference as you draft: every time you use a source, insert the citation in the same sentence. Keep a running source log with page or bar numbers as you read. Before submission, audit each paragraph and ask which idea is yours and which came from a source; anything borrowed gets an in-text citation.
Choosing a performance program that repeats the same stylistic and technical demands, or that includes a work clearly beyond the candidate's current technical control, with no coherent rationale linking the pieces.
Programs are often assembled from pieces the candidate already plays or enjoys, or chosen to look ambitious, rather than designed to demonstrate range and mastery. The rationale is written after the fact to justify the list.
What to do instead
Build the program against explicit criteria: contrast in era, texture, and technical demand, plus at least one work that stretches a named skill. Write the rationale first as a hypothesis about what the program demonstrates, then select repertoire that tests it, and record a short justification for each work's inclusion.
Submitting a composition that is technically tidy but structurally static, with no clear contrast, development, or sense of arrival, and no accompanying statement explaining compositional decisions.
Candidates focus on notational correctness and local detail because those are easy to check, and underestimate how much structural planning and reflective commentary the project requires.
What to do instead
Produce a one-page structural plan before notation: sections, timing, the moment of greatest tension, and the closing gesture. Annotate the score with rehearsal marks that map to the plan. Write the statement as a decision log covering at least three choices (instrumentation, form, harmonic language) with the alternatives considered and rejected.
Describing what is heard ("a loud chord", "a fast section") without naming the specific element, interval, chord quality, cadence type, or texture that produces the effect.
Candidates lack automated vocabulary for the elements and default to impressionistic language, or they hear the effect correctly but cannot translate it into terminology quickly enough under listening conditions.
What to do instead
Practise dictation and identification drills with a fixed vocabulary sheet covering intervals, chord qualities, cadences, texture types, and formal functions. In practice responses, force yourself to name one precise element per sentence and to justify each label with a feature you can point to, such as the bass motion or the voice leading.
Misidentifying the style or likely period of an excerpt, then describing it using features that belong to a different tradition, such as calling a Baroque passage Romantic because of its intensity.
Candidates respond to emotional character rather than to structural and notational markers, and they have limited listening breadth, so unfamiliar repertoire gets mapped onto the nearest familiar category.
What to do instead
Build a comparative listening log organised by era and genre, listing diagnostic markers (instrumentation, ornamentation practice, cadential formulae, texture, phrasing) for each. When identifying an excerpt, list the markers you actually hear first, then assign the style from the evidence rather than from overall mood.
Writing about a style using only generic descriptors, without reference to specific practitioners, representative works, or the social and technological conditions that shaped the style.
Candidates rely on broad summaries and streaming-service playlist knowledge rather than study of named recordings and scores, so their stylistic claims cannot be anchored to evidence.
What to do instead
For each style studied, prepare a fact sheet naming at least three representative works with performers or composers, two defining musical traits with examples, and the key technological or social conditions. Cite a specific recording in every stylistic claim you make in an essay.
Treating the investigation and the project as separate tasks, so the written response never informs the performance or composition and the project has no articulated link to the research question.
Candidates manage the two components as independent assignments with separate deadlines, and the syllabus's expectation of an integrated inquiry is not built into their planning.
What to do instead
Write the research question before starting the project and revisit it at each project milestone, recording in a journal how a finding changed a performance interpretation or a compositional choice. In the final response, include an explicit section tracing at least two research findings to specific decisions in the project.