JC Music common mistakes
JC Music · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Naming a chord by its root and quality only (e.g. 'C major') when the inversion or added/extended tone is what the question tests, so a second-inversion dominant seventh is reported as a plain V7.
Candidates drill chord quality in isolation and stop reading once the root and triad quality are identified; figured-bass or bass-note cues are skimmed rather than used to fix the inversion and extension.
What to do instead
Adopt a fixed labelling routine: identify bass note, stack thirds to find the root, name quality, then add inversion (figured bass or slash notation) and any 7th/9th/11th plus alterations. Practise by labelling 20 chords per session where at least half are inversions or extended chords, and always state the bass note in your working.
Describing a modulation as 'it just feels like it moves to the relative minor' without identifying the pivot chord, the cadence that confirms the new key, and the exact bar where the tonicisation begins.
Analysis is done by ear-impression and key-signature spotting rather than by tracing bass motion, accidentals, and cadential confirmation; candidates also forget that a new key is only established once a confirming cadence arrives.
What to do instead
Write a three-line modulation log for every passage: (1) last chord diatonic to the old key, (2) first chord containing the new key's leading accidental, (3) the cadence that confirms. Verify by singing the new tonic. Do this on short 8–16 bar excerpts from Bach chorales and Classical sonata expositions until the routine is automatic.
Attributing a work to the wrong era or composer because the candidate matches on a single surface feature (e.g. 'has a harpsichord, so Baroque') and ignores scoring, form, phrase structure, and harmonic language.
Revision is done via playlists and trivia rather than through stylistic fingerprints; candidates learn dates but not the compositional traits that distinguish, say, a Classical symphony from an early Romantic one.
What to do instead
Build a personal 'style fingerprint' table for each era and genre: typical forces, phrase lengths, cadence types, harmonic vocabulary, texture, and tempo conventions. For each work on your list, write two sentences on what would change if it were by a composer one generation earlier or later.
Listing a work's form (e.g. 'sonata form') without mapping its sections to bar numbers, including the transition, secondary theme area, development tonal plan, and recapitulation adjustment.
Form is memorised as a diagram rather than heard as a tonal process; candidates cannot locate the medial caesura or the essential structural closure under exam pressure.
What to do instead
Annotate scores with bar numbers at every formal boundary and mark the key at each boundary. Practise identifying the secondary theme and the point of essential structural closure in three sonata movements per week, then reproduce the map from memory before checking.
In melodic dictation, writing the rhythm accurately but placing the melody in the wrong register or clef, or notating intervals by contour only so that a leap of a fourth is written as a third.
Candidates fixate on rhythm first and never establish a tonic or a reference pitch; they hear contour rather than scale degrees, so step-versus-leap errors accumulate.
What to do instead
Before writing, hum and notate the tonic, then notate the first and last notes and the highest and lowest pitches to fix the range and clef. Transcribe by scale degree relative to the tonic rather than by raw interval, and check every leap by singing it back against the tonic.
In harmonic dictation, writing only the bass line and guessing chord qualities, so cadential 6/4s, inversions, and secondary dominants are all reduced to root-position triads.
Candidates listen vertically for bass motion but do not track the soprano line or the tendency tones (leading tone, sevenths) that reveal quality and inversion.
What to do instead
Use a two-voice skeleton: notate bass and soprano first, then infer inner voices from tendency-tone resolution. Practise with short four-part progressions, singing the bass while hearing the soprano, and explicitly label every cadence and any applied chord before filling in qualities.
Writing an arrangement that doubles the melody in every instrument at the same octave, producing a thick unison with no register spacing, and ignoring the playable range of each instrument.
Candidates transcribe rather than arrange: they distribute existing parts without deciding on texture, voicing, and the ensemble's actual ranges and transpositions.
What to do instead
Before writing a note, produce a one-page plan: melody instrument, countermelody, harmonic pad voicing (with register spread), bass, and percussion. Check every part against a written range chart for the specific instruments, and test spacing by playing the voicing at the keyboard.
In part-writing, allowing parallel fifths and octaves and unresolved leading tones because the candidate fills in the nearest available note rather than checking voice-leading rules at each motion.
Candidates work chord-by-chord horizontally and never scan adjacent voice pairs vertically; they also treat the leading tone as freely leapable in inner voices.
What to do instead
After each exercise, run a systematic check: for every pair of adjacent voices, compare consecutive intervals and circle any perfect fifth or octave reached by similar motion. Then verify the leading tone resolves up and the seventh resolves down. Do the check on your own work before comparing to a model.
In a performance or technique question, describing what a passage should sound like rather than the physical mechanism (breath support, embouchure, bow distribution, hand position) that produces it.
Candidates prepare technique from recordings and adjectives; they lack the vocabulary of mechanism and cannot connect a fault (e.g. flat high notes) to its cause (insufficient air speed, jaw tension).
What to do instead
For each common fault on your instrument, write a cause-and-cure card naming the specific physical adjustment and a diagnostic exercise. Practise describing a passage in mechanism terms aloud, then record yourself and check whether the description matches what actually happens.
Confusing gain staging and signal flow: boosting input gain to fix a quiet monitor, or placing a compressor before the EQ that should correct the problem, and then reporting the wrong cause of distortion or noise.
Candidates learn plugin names without a signal-flow model; they cannot distinguish clipping at the interface from clipping in the mix bus or a feedback loop in the monitor path.
What to do instead
Draw the full signal chain from source to monitor and from source to master, labelling every gain stage. Practise setting levels so the interface peaks around −12 dBFS, then diagnose deliberately introduced faults (clipping, ground hum, feedback) by tracing the chain in order.
Answering music-business questions with generalities ('get a manager', 'protect your rights') instead of naming the specific right, contract term, or collection society involved (e.g. mechanical versus performance royalties, publishing split, sync licence).
Candidates revise business topics as background reading rather than as terminology to be used precisely; they do not distinguish the rights bundled in copyright or who collects which royalty.
What to do instead
Build a one-page royalty map: for each use (recording, broadcast, live performance, sync, streaming), note the right involved, who licenses it, and who collects. Learn the standard contract terms (term, territory, advance, recoupment, exclusivity) with a one-line definition each, and answer practice questions using those exact terms.