ATARMAxxing · Music
QCE Music Practice Exams with Worked Solutions
20 full-length papers · worked solutions for every question
The 20 practice exams inside the QCE Music Mastery Pack, each set out like the real paper with a separate worked-solution guide. Open any paper to see what it covers.
- Isolation as the shared concept
- Low register and sparse texture as meaning-makers
- Dissonant suspensions and delayed cadences
- Specified key moments (2025 format)
- Referencing bars and time codes in every judgment
- Original stimuli: film cue, ambient electronic track, musical-theatre ballad
- Treating production effects (filtering, sidechain, reverb) as timbre and texture
- Celebration and communal joy
- Syncopation, cross-rhythm and driving tempo
- Bright major tonality and plagal colour
- Brass and percussion timbres
- Connecting duration with texture
- Original stimuli: Afro-Cuban big band, ceremonial brass fanfare, second-line brass band
- Antiphony, stop-time and modulation as structural devices
- Transformation of a motif across a work
- Student-selected key moments (2022–2024 format)
- Augmentation, fragmentation and reharmonisation
- Choosing moments that allow depth
- Discrete analysis of each moment, no comparison
- Original stimuli: minimalist phasing piece, fantasy video-game cue
- Stating chosen key moments with bars and time codes at the start
- Depicting the natural environment
- Texture and timbre as word painting in sound
- Wave-like melodic contour and dynamics
- Modal colour and unresolved harmony
- Aural evidence of unscored sounds
- Original stimuli: orchestral tone poem, alternative-rock song, didgeridoo with strings and fixed media
- Canon and retrograde as structural images
- Rebellion and defiance
- Accent, syncopation and irregular metre
- Distortion and timbral aggression
- Chromatic and modal harmony
- Making insightful, not literal, judgments
- Original stimuli: musical-theatre ensemble, punk-influenced song, expressionist twelve-tone chamber work
- Parody of convention as a source of meaning
- Memory and nostalgia
- Motif recall and thematic transformation
- Rubato and expressive devices
- Added-note harmony and suspensions
- Structuring paragraphs by key moment
- Q1 'Grandmother's Kitchen' (solo piano film cue): nostalgia through augmentation and an unresolved added ninth
- Q2 'Faded Photograph' (indie-folk song): tape effects, borrowed iv and a slowed bridge
- Q3 'Remembrance' (art song): lament bass, Neapolitan sixth and Picardy third
- Urban setting in time and place
- Student-selected key moments
- Ostinato, layering and dense texture
- Jazz harmony and syncopation
- Technology and sampled sound
- Q1 'Rush Hour' (post-minimalist ensemble with car-horn samples): mixed metre, phasing and polychord
- Q2 'Neon Avenue' (smooth jazz and synthwave fusion): extended chords, filter sweeps and semitone lift
- Both questions ask students to choose and justify their own two key moments
- Fear and suspense
- Tension through pedal, cluster and dissonance
- Silence, rests and unpredictable rhythm
- Extended string techniques
- Analysing relationships between elements
- Q1 'The Cellar Door' (horror film cue): harmonics, col legno, aleatoric swarm and a widening cluster
- Q2 'Something Follows' (adaptive survival-game cue): layered threat, 7/8 chase and Phrygian ostinato
- Q3 'Nightwalk' (operatic scena): parlando, diminished-seventh harmony and a chromatic melisma
- Hope and optimism
- Rising contour and widening range
- Modulation and harmonic lift
- Crescendo and thickening texture
- Evaluating purpose, not just describing
- Q1 'First Light' (choral anthem): imitative entries, augmentation, Lydian colour and plagal cadence
- Q2 'Rebuild' (pop-rock power ballad): rising pre-chorus, dominant build and whole-tone modulation
- Q3 'After the Storm' (orchestral finale): oboe to tutti, sequential modulation and minor-to-major arrival
- Journey and travel
- Driving rhythm and tempo change
- Shifting tonal centres and modulation
- Instrumentation evoking places
- Credible examples at precise bar numbers
- Q1 'Overland' (orchestral road-movie title): spiccato ostinato, open fifths, third-related keys and a flat-seven cadence
- Q2 'The Long Way North' (bluegrass-influenced song): roll, chop, whole-tone modulation and an a cappella tag
- Q3 'Caravan of Stars' (fusion): Hijaz scale form, 10/8 grouping and heterophony
- Conflict and opposition
- Student-selected key moments
- Contrasting themes and polytonality
- Cross-rhythm and polymetre
- Choosing the most relevant elements for each moment
- Wonder and awe
- Extended harmony and parallel chords
- Shimmering texture and celesta/harp timbres
- Slow harmonic rhythm
- Unpacking subtle layers of meaning
- Grief and loss
- Descending contour and lament bass
- Minor mode, suspension and appoggiatura
- Rallentando and fading dynamics
- Judgments about despair settling into resignation
- Power and authority
- Low brass, unison and doubling
- Strong metre, accents and march rhythm
- Modal and chromatic harmony for menace
- Leitmotif for a powerful character
- Play and childhood
- Student-selected key moments
- Pizzicato, woodwind and toy-like timbres
- Simple metre disrupted by syncopation
- Whole-tone and pentatonic colour
- Freedom and release
- Free rhythm and rubato
- Improvisation and extended technique in jazz
- Open voicings and quartal harmony
- Linking innovation to meaning
- Three original stimuli: modal jazz, contemporary dance track, film cue
- Extended techniques and technology as innovation
- The passing of time
- Ostinato and clock-like rhythm
- Additive and looping structures
- Gradual process and phasing
- Specified key moments
- Three original stimuli: minimalist work, folk-pop song, game cue
- Technology and sampled sound as timbre
- Home and belonging
- Folk-like melody and diatonic harmony
- Warm timbre and close voicing
- Return of the opening theme
- Characterisation through a home theme
- Three original stimuli: film theme, country song, musical-theatre finale
- Plagal cadence and added-sixth endings
- Mystery and the unknown
- Student-selected key moments
- Whole-tone, chromatic and atonal pitch
- Ambiguous metre and pulse
- Electronic timbre and reverb
- Two original stimuli: detective-series theme and electroacoustic work
- Choosing and stating your own key moments
- Resilience and strength
- Ostinato and steady pulse under pressure
- Modulation and harmonic arrival
- Contrast between fragile and full textures
- Synthesising a sustained viewpoint
- Three original stimuli: anthemic pop song, documentary cue, work for didgeridoo, piano and string quartet
- Parallel-major transformation and augmentation
Included in the QCE Music Mastery Pack
20 full-length practice exams with worked solutions, 20 revision notes, 64 practice questions and 200 flashcards.
Preview a sample note and question free on the QCE Music hub →