department of music - Casper College

Preparation for Placement Exams
Do not go to college an extra year! Among the classes required of music majors is a
core of three related courses: Written Theory, Aural Theory, and Keyboard Skills. Each
of these classes is a four-semester sequence, so it takes two full years to complete them.
If you fail any one of them, you will have to wait one year to resume the sequence. Since
these courses are also prerequisite for most junior and senior music classes, you could
end up being in college an extra year if you have a problem in any of them.
Statistically, most people who fail do so in the first semester. Often the reason for this is
an inadequate background in reading music (pitch or rhythm) and in recognizing basic
structures of scales and intervals. To prepare you for these classes, the Casper College
Music Department has prepared a set of online instruction modules in pitch notation,
rhythm, scales, chords, and intervals. It is available on the Internet though the Casper
College Distance Education site (see below).
You will not be assigned a grade for this class nor will you receive credit. It will not be
part of your college record. It is simply an opportunity for you to get a running start on
your college classes.
Maybe you already read music on your instrument or voice. Recognizing pitches and
rhythms is only a beginning. You need to be able to see and name them quickly. You also
need to recognize different scales, chords, and intervals quickly. There is only one way to
do this: repeated practice over a long period of time. It’s worth the effort. This is the
language you will be speaking in all your college music classes.
This opportunity is presented as an online ‘course’ called Music Major Preparation. This
course is free. The tutorials and quizzes in this course are drill-and-practice exercises,
which you can repeat as many times as you like. (You will need to have the free
QuickTime plug-in for playing music installed on your computer.
http://www.apple.com/quicktime) To find this tutorial, start at the following link
(https://community4me.caspercollege.edu). Click Login, then create a New Account by
following the instructions under “Is this your first time here?” The password is
Pythagoras.
We hope you’ll take advantage of this opportunity!
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