Placement Tests and Resources

New Music Major and Prospective Double Major Info

Welcome to the UCI Department of Music! Below are some links to important information that will help set you up for success in your studies here.

Welcome Week and Placement Tests

“Welcome Week” refers to the 3 days in fall quarter prior to the first day of classes. Please refer to this page for the schedule of meetings, auditions and placement exams. This week is also called “week 0” because each quarter has 10 full weeks of classes, and in fall the first full week of classes (“week 1”) begins on the following Monday.

CTSA and the Music Department hold many activities during Welcome Week and some are required, therefore please be sure to review the Welcome Week Schedule.

Two of the most important required activities for all new music majors in Welcome Week are the Music Theory and Musicianship Placement Exams. The Theory test will determine whether you are able to begin the first-year theory sequence (MUS 16A) in your first quarter, whether you should take Fundamentals (MUS 25A) first and begin MUS 16A in your second year, or, if you are near the passing cutoff, whether you may take MUS 25A and MUS 16A concurrently. Because of this, we strongly recommend that you study theory basics over the summer to help you achieve the skill level needed to place into MUS 16A in your first quarter in the music major. To help with this, we provide you with details on the content of our Music Theory and Musicianship Placement Exams, and we also offer a page listing Resources for studying Music Theory and Musicianship, including free, online textbooks.

• Welcome Week Schedule
• Details on Music Theory and Musicianship Placement Exams
• Resources for studying Music Theory and Musicianship

Ensemble Auditions

Most of our ensemble classes are open by audition to all UCI students. For some classes, auditions take place in fall during Welcome Week, and for others, they are handled differently. For more information about each ensemble/area, please see the Ensembles page.

Degree Requirements and Course Advising

Please note that B.A. and B.Mus. degrees changed starting in Fall 2025. Our programs page provides lists of the requirements for all degrees, including for new music majors who entered in Fall 2025.

The CTSA Student Affairs and Academic Advising office has a wonderful team of staff and peer mentors who can help you with questions about degree requirements and course advice, including how to ensure that you are moving efficiently through the degree requirements and other questions such as how to pursue a double major. You can contact the CTSA Academic Advisors in various ways including a live chat.

• CTSA Student Affairs and Academic Advising
• Degree requirement checklists for all undergraduate degrees

Music Theory and Musicianship

Music Theory and Musicianship Placement Exams

All incoming Freshman music majors and transfer students must take placement exams in music theory and musicianship.

For each academic year, please refer to this page for the dates of the theory placement test and the musicianship placement exam.

The theory placement test will indicate whether a student needs to take a remedial fundamentals of music course or can be placed into one of the four required quarters of music theory (16A-D). All students must take the brief fundamentals section of the theory placement test, which includes pitch notation and naming, rests, staves, the piano keyboard, simple and compound meters, minor and major scales, key signatures, and diatonic and chromatic intervals. Qualified students are welcome to take further exams in the sequence. Below is a summary of topics covered by each successive quarter of Music 16.

The musicianship placement exam, comprised of melodic and harmonic dictations, will similarly indicate a student’s approximate skill level for placement within the MUS 15 curriculum. Other than rare cases in which a student places out of MUS 15 entirely during that placement exam, all students will be instructed to enroll in MUS 15 in either the Fall, Winter, or Spring quarter, and continue to enroll in that course each quarter, up to a maximum of six quarters, until they have satisfied the department’s musicianship requirement.

Online resources to prepare for both the theory and musicianship placement exams can be found here.

Music 16A (Fall)

• Seventh chords
• Chord spacing
• Part-writing in four voices
• Melodic figuration and embellishing tones
• Harmonic function
• Proper use of the dominant seventh chord
• First inversion chords
• Species counterpoint
• Cadences
• Elementary phrase construction

Music 16B (Winter)

• Thematic analysis (period and sentence)
• Linear chords (64, dominants, and others)
• Pre-dominant part-writing
• Advanced melodic figuration and rhythmic devices
• Secondary triad function
• Secondary dominants and leading-tone chords
• Modulation to I and III
• Diatonic sequence

Music 16C (Spring)

• Seventh-chord sequences
• Binary, ternary, variation and compound classical forms
• Modulations to related keys
• Introduction to chromatic harmony (modal mixture, the Neapolitan and the augmented sixth chord)
• Analysis of extended excerpts

Music 16D (Fall)

• Introduction to sonata form
• Augmented triads
• Altered dominants
• Common-tone sevenths
• Extended harmonies (9th, 11th, 13th and added-note)
• Chromatic sequence
• Dominant prolongation
• Foreign modulations

Musicianship

As noted in the UCI Catalogue, MUSIC 15 (Musicianship) is a repeatable course students must take at or near the start of their major studies. At the end of the course, there is a Musicianship Proficiency Exam, which students must pass within six quarters of entering the major.

Music 15 (Fall)

• Intervals: Any ascending or descending interval through octave
• Sonorities: major, minor, diminished, augmented. All inversions.
• Melodic Dictation: Major and minor modes, C clefs, ornamental chromaticism and/or syncopation
• Rhythmic Dictation: Transcribing triplets and tuplets, quadruple division of the beat in simple meter or sextuple division in compound meter

Music 15 (Winter)

• Sonorities: Seventh chords (M7, m7, ø7, o7) in all inversions
• Melodic Dictation: Chromatic passing tones, leaps to chromatic prefix neighbors, tonicization of V
• Rhythmic Dictation: Advanced Triplets
• Harmonic Dictation: Soprano, Bass, and roman numerals. Other seventh chords and/or tonicization of V or IV

Music 15 (Spring)

• Intervals: Any ascending or descending interval through M10
• Sonorities: All sonorities (i.e., M, m, o, +, M7, m7, Mm7. mM7, ø7, o7, quartal, quintal, split third)
• Listening: Identify asymmetrical meters (5/4, 7/8)
• Melodic Dictation: Common non-diatonic collections
• Rhythmic Dictation: Advanced subdivisions

• Harmonic Dictation: Soprano, Bass, and roman numerals in successive modulations

   

After the Welcome Week exams, await an email from the Music Dept. with the results of your Musicianship and Theory placements.

Resources

Music Theory

Open Textbooks and Study Guides

• Gotham, M. et al. Open Music Theory, Vol.2. E-book, Viva Open Publishing, 2022
• Mount, A. Fundamentals, Function, and Form. E-book, Milne Open Textbooks, 2009.
• Murphy, B. Music Theory Materials: Musical Examples, Handouts, and Videos. Music Theory Materials website, University of Tennessee School of Music, 2018.
• Hutchinson, R. Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom, E-Book.

Video Tutorials

• Ito, John. Theory Fundamentals. John Paul Ito’s Music Theory Website, 2012

Interactive Exercises and Applications

• Musictheory.net
• Teoria.com tutorials and exercises
• Picardy (free demos)
• UTheory (free demos)
• Artusi (online demos)
• Theta Music Trainer

Basic Musicianship and Ear Training

Interactive Exercises and Applications

• Musictheory.net (Ear Training)
• Teoria.com (Ear Training)
• Toned Ear

Applications

• Picardy (free demos)
• UTheory (free demos)