36-Week WAEC Revision Programme — Music
September to the May WAEC sitting. SS3 is not a year of new material so much as a year of pressure on material already met, so this is not a course to work through from the beginning — it is a testing programme. Each week you answer cold, work the ones you got wrong, and have the AI explain why you got them wrong. Anything you turn out never to have been taught, you learn there and then, and meet again three weeks later.
A week is one block of the syllabus and the prompts that cover it. You are not meant to do all of them: answer the questions first, and let what you get wrong decide which of the rest you need. Fifteen or twenty minutes a subject is a real week's work — nine subjects do not fit any other way.
Every week, in this order
Start with the questions, not the explanation. The first two steps are in every week; a purpose-written mistake or pitfalls prompt appears in about half of them, and where it does not, your own wrong answers are the material for step three.
- 1. Retrieve — Answer cold, with nothing in front of you. Wrong answers are the point — they show you where the week's work is.
- 2. Drill — Work the ones you missed properly, showing every step, so you and the AI can both see where it went wrong.
- 3. Explain my error — Ask why your answer was wrong, not just what the right one is. Where the week offers a Spot My Mistake or WAEC Pitfalls prompt, use it.
- 4. Teach me — Only if the error turns out to be something you were never taught. Then come back and retrieve it again.
Music Theory Foundations
↑ Jump to week- Week 1
- Quiz: The treble and bass clefs and the notes they fix
- WAEC prep: Note values and rest values
- Practice set: Writing a short passage in correct notation
- Spot my mistake: Assuming a note head in the same position on the treble and bass staves names the same pitch
- Let me explain: The C clef and where it is used
- Teach me: The staff and how pitch is written on it
- Week 2
- Quiz: The natural minor scale
- WAEC prep: The chromatic scale and how it is written
- Practice set: Writing named scales with correct accidentals
- Spot my mistake: Assuming the melodic minor scale uses the same notes going up and coming down
- Let me explain: Harmonic and melodic minor scales compared
- Teach me: The major scale and the pattern of tones and semitones
- Week 3
- Quiz: The hexatonic mode
- WAEC prep: How African modes differ from Western scales
- Practice set: Composing a short melody in a pentatonic mode
- Spot my mistake: Treating a pentatonic mode as a major scale with two notes left out at random
- Let me explain: The heptatonic mode and its use
- Teach me: The pentatonic mode and where it is heard in African music
- Week 4
- Quiz: Identifying a key from its signature
- WAEC prep: Compound time signatures
- Practice set: Barring an unbarred melody correctly
- Spot my mistake: Reading the lower figure of a time signature as the number of beats in a bar
- Let me explain: Simple time signatures and how beats group
- Teach me: Key signatures and the circle of fifths
Revisit from three weeks ago
Harmony
↑ Jump to week- Week 5
- Quiz: Inverting an interval
- WAEC prep: Writing for transposing instruments
- Practice set: Transposing a given passage up a stated interval
- Spot my mistake: Assuming a transposing instrument sounds the pitch that is written for it
- Let me explain: Transposing a melody to a new key
- Teach me: Naming intervals by number and quality
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 6
- Quiz: Major, minor, augmented and diminished triads
- WAEC prep: Secondary triads and the dominant seventh
- Practice set: Writing triads and their inversions
- Spot my mistake: Treating a triad in first inversion as a different chord from the same triad in root position
- Let me explain: Primary triads I, IV and V
- Teach me: How a triad is built from a scale degree
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 7
- Quiz: The plagal cadence
- WAEC prep: Cadences in minor keys
- Practice set: Completing a progression with a named cadence
- Spot my mistake: Treating an interrupted cadence as an incomplete perfect cadence
- Let me explain: Imperfect and interrupted cadences
- Teach me: The perfect cadence and its effect
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 8
- Quiz: Passing notes and auxiliary notes
- WAEC prep: The six-four chord and its correct use
- Practice set: Harmonising a given melody in four parts
- Spot my mistake: Treating a passing note as a chord note that must be harmonised
- Let me explain: Suspensions and how they resolve
- Teach me: Choosing chords to harmonise a simple melody
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 9
- Quiz: Modulating to the dominant
- WAEC prep: Modulating to the relative major or minor
- Practice set: Writing a passage that modulates and returns
- Spot my mistake: Treating any accidental in a passage as a sign that the music has modulated
- Let me explain: Modulating to the subdominant
- Teach me: What modulation is and how it is heard
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 10
- Quiz: Consecutive fifths and octaves and why they are avoided
- WAEC prep: Free two-part counterpoint above a given melody
- Practice set: Correcting faults in a given four-part passage
- Spot my mistake: Assuming consecutive fifths are acceptable where the parts move in contrary motion
- Let me explain: Part-writing rules for smooth voice leading
- Teach me: The SATB voice ranges and spacing
Revisit from three weeks ago
Composition and Form
↑ Jump to week- Week 11
- Quiz: Phrase structure and balanced answering phrases
- WAEC prep: Setting an English text to an original melody
- Practice set: Continuing a given opening phrase to a full melody
- Spot my mistake: Setting a weak syllable of a text on the strong beat of the bar
- Let me explain: Matching word stress to musical accent
- Teach me: Shaping a melody with a clear climax
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 12
- Quiz: Rondo form and its pattern
- Quiz: Antiphony and its variants
- WAEC prep: Extended forms: sonata, suite, opera and symphony
- Practice set: Identifying the form of a described piece
- WAEC prep: Compositional techniques in contemporary African art music
- Practice set: Composing a call and response chorus
- Spot my mistake: Treating binary and ternary form as one structure under two names
- Spot my mistake: Treating call and response as a chorus repeating the leader's words exactly
- Let me explain: Theme and variation form
- Let me explain: Cyclic form in African music
- Teach me: Binary and ternary form
- Teach me: Call and response as an African formal principle
Revisit from three weeks ago
Musicians and Composers
↑ Jump to week- Week 13
- Quiz: Haruna Ishola and his contribution
- Quiz: Juju music and its leading figures
- WAEC prep: Vinoko Akpalu and Ewe song composition
- Practice set: Describing a traditional musician's style and media
- WAEC prep: Ghanaian Highlife and its major artists
- Spot my mistake: Treating the traditional musician as an entertainer with no other social role
- Spot my mistake: Confusing the popular genres by their instrumentation
- Let me explain: Dan Maraya Jos and the Hausa tradition
- Let me explain: Fuji music and its origins
- Teach me: The role of the traditional musician in his society
- Teach me: The rise of Highlife in West Africa
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 14
- Quiz: Ayo Bankole and his compositions
- WAEC prep: Ephraim Amu and Ghanaian art music
- Practice set: Analysing how art composers blend African and Western idioms
- Spot my mistake: Assuming an African art composer writing for piano or choir has abandoned African idiom
- Let me explain: Akin Euba and African pianism
- Teach me: Fela Sowande and Nigerian art music
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 15
- Quiz: Handel and Vivaldi
- Quiz: Mozart and his output
- WAEC prep: Schubert, Chopin and the Romantic style
- Practice set: Placing a described work in its period
- WAEC prep: Stravinsky, Bartok and 20th century innovation
- Spot my mistake: Assuming one style period ended in the year the next began
- Spot my mistake: Dating a work wrongly from its texture
- Let me explain: The transition from Baroque to Classical
- Let me explain: Beethoven as a bridge between periods
- Teach me: Bach and the Baroque style
- Teach me: Haydn and the Classical symphony
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 16
- Quiz: The blues and its structure
- WAEC prep: Reggae, gospel and their key figures
- Practice set: Tracing an African musical trait into a diaspora genre
- Spot my mistake: Treating the spiritual, the blues and gospel as one tradition under three names
- Let me explain: Jazz and its development
- Teach me: The spiritual and its origins
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 17
- Quiz: Music in worship and ritual
- Quiz: Schubert and the art song
- WAEC prep: Music as history and social commentary
- Practice set: Documenting the music of an occasion in your community
- WAEC prep: Tchaikovsky and the ballet
- Practice set: Describing Romantic expression in a named work
- Spot my mistake: Treating traditional music as performance for an audience rather than as part of an occasion
- Spot my mistake: Assuming Romantic composers abandoned classical forms entirely
- Let me explain: Music in work and in recreation
- Let me explain: Chopin and the piano miniature
- Teach me: Music in birth, marriage and funeral rites
- Teach me: The features of the Romantic style
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 18
- Quiz: Ayo Bankole's choral works
- WAEC prep: Laz Ekwueme and Nigerian choral music
- Practice set: Analysing African elements in an art composition
- Spot my mistake: Assuming a choral work in four parts cannot carry African rhythmic features
- Let me explain: Akin Euba's intercultural composition
- Teach me: Fela Sowande's orchestral writing
Revisit from three weeks ago
African Music Traditions
↑ Jump to week- Week 19
- Quiz: Idiophones and membranophones
- Quiz: Syncopation and hemiola
- WAEC prep: The musical and non-musical functions of instruments
- Practice set: Describing a named Nigerian instrument fully
- WAEC prep: Polyphony and texture in African music
- Practice set: Clapping and notating a cross-rhythm
- Spot my mistake: Classifying an African instrument by the material it is made from rather than by what vibrates
- Spot my mistake: Treating syncopation and cross-rhythm as the same device
- Let me explain: Aerophones and chordophones
- Let me explain: Polyrhythm in ensemble drumming
- Teach me: The classification of African instruments
- Teach me: Cross-rhythm and how it is produced
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 20
- Quiz: Dirges and lullabies
- Quiz: Atilogwu and its occasions
- WAEC prep: Work songs and their function
- WAEC prep: Agbadza and its social setting
- Practice set: Matching dances to ethnic groups and occasions
- Spot my mistake: Classifying a song by melody alone rather than function
- Spot my mistake: Assuming a traditional dance may be performed on any occasion
- Let me explain: Ritual and praise songs
- Let me explain: Adowa and Kete of Ghana
- Teach me: Recitative, yodelling and ululation
- Teach me: Bata dance and the people it belongs to
Revisit from three weeks ago
Aural Skills
↑ Jump to week- Week 21
- Quiz: Notating a rhythm played on one note
- WAEC prep: Identifying intervals by ear
- Practice set: A graded dictation exercise
- Spot my mistake: Beginning a melodic dictation by writing pitches before the pulse and time are fixed
- Let me explain: Writing down a short melody by ear
- Teach me: How to hold a rhythm in memory while writing it
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 22
- Quiz: The solo writing in the Trumpet Concerto
- WAEC prep: Comparing a Western and an African set-work
- Practice set: Answering set-work questions with musical evidence
- Spot my mistake: Answering a set-work question from general impressions without citing the music
- Let me explain: Pappoe-Thompson's Ahekoo and its African idiom
- Teach me: Haydn's Trumpet Concerto second movement and its form
Revisit from three weeks ago
Mixed WAEC Practice
↑ Jump to week- Week 23
- Quiz: Dvorak's orchestration in the Largo
- Quiz: The dance character of the Gavotte
- WAEC prep: The folk influence in both set-works
- Practice set: Writing a comparative answer on the two works
- WAEC prep: The treatment of melody in both set-works
- Spot my mistake: Assuming a theme that sounds folk-like must be a quoted folk tune
- Spot my mistake: Describing a set-work without citing the music
- Let me explain: Akin Euba's Ore Meta and its structure
- Let me explain: Laz Ekwueme's Nne Bia Nyerem Aka
- Teach me: The Largo from the New World Symphony and its theme
- Teach me: Bach's Gavotte from French Suite No. 5
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 24
- Quiz: Dictation in simple time
- WAEC prep: Common errors in rhythmic dictation
- Practice set: A timed rhythmic dictation drill
- Spot my mistake: Notating a dictated rhythm without first deciding whether the time is simple or compound
- Let me explain: Dictation in compound time
- Teach me: The technique for taking rhythmic dictation
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 25
- Quiz: Hearing the lower part
- Quiz: Identifying chords in a short progression
- WAEC prep: Two-part dictation in a minor key
- Practice set: A graded two-part dictation exercise
- WAEC prep: Describing chords in technical terms
- Practice set: A chord identification drill
- Spot my mistake: Trying to write both parts of a two-part dictation at once rather than one at a time
- Spot my mistake: Assuming a chord is in root position because its lowest sound is the one heard most clearly
- Let me explain: Using the harmony to check what you have written
- Let me explain: Hearing inversions
- Teach me: Hearing the upper part of a two-part phrase
- Teach me: Hearing tonic, subdominant and dominant chords
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 26
- Quiz: Hearing the amen cadence and placing it in a hymn
- Quiz: Hearing a modulation to the subdominant
- WAEC prep: Cadence recognition in a minor key
- Practice set: A cadence recognition drill
- WAEC prep: Naming the key reached in a played passage
- Spot my mistake: Treating any cadence that sounds finished as a perfect cadence
- Spot my mistake: Mistaking a chromatic chord for a modulation
- Let me explain: Why an interrupted cadence surprises the ear where an imperfect one does not
- Let me explain: Hearing a modulation to the relative key
- Teach me: Recognising a perfect cadence by ear
- Teach me: Hearing a modulation to the dominant
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 27
- Quiz: Identifying the instruments in a played extract
- WAEC prep: Identifying the scale or mode of a theme
- Practice set: Writing a full description of a played extract
- Spot my mistake: Naming the instruments in a played extract where the question asks about its form
- Let me explain: Describing style and period from listening
- Teach me: Describing the form of a played theme
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 28
- Quiz: Arpeggios and how they are examined
- Quiz: Scanning a piece before playing it
- WAEC prep: Practising scales for accuracy and evenness
- Practice set: Building a daily technical routine
- WAEC prep: The standard expected in sight-reading
- Practice set: A graded sight-reading exercise
- Spot my mistake: Practising scales for speed before they are even and accurate
- Spot my mistake: Stopping to correct a wrong note during a sight-reading test
- Let me explain: Technical exercises and what they demonstrate
- Let me explain: Keeping the pulse when a note goes wrong
- Teach me: The scale requirements for the performance test
- Teach me: What the sight-reading test asks of a candidate
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 29
- Quiz: Machaut and the Medieval style
- WAEC prep: Byrd and the English Renaissance
- Practice set: Describing the texture of a Renaissance work
- Spot my mistake: Treating plainsong as an early form of polyphony
- Let me explain: Palestrina and Renaissance sacred music
- Teach me: Medieval plainsong and early polyphony
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 30
- Quiz: Bach's contrapuntal writing
- Quiz: Haydn and the string quartet
- WAEC prep: Vivaldi and the concerto
- Practice set: Identifying a Baroque work from its features
- WAEC prep: Beethoven's symphonies and their innovations
- Spot my mistake: Treating counterpoint and harmony as opposites in Baroque writing
- Spot my mistake: Confusing Classical clarity with Baroque ornamentation
- Let me explain: Handel's oratorios
- Let me explain: Mozart's operas and concertos
- Teach me: The features of the Baroque style
- Teach me: The features of the Classical style
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 31
- Quiz: Nationalism in Russian music
- WAEC prep: Bartok and folk material in art music
- Practice set: Identifying 20th century devices in a described work
- Spot my mistake: Assuming every twentieth century work is atonal
- Let me explain: Stravinsky and rhythmic innovation
- Teach me: Who the Russian Five were and what they wanted
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 32
- Quiz: Victor Olaiya and his contribution
- Quiz: Ebenezer Obey and Sunny Ade
- WAEC prep: Fela Anikulapo Kuti and his musical language
- Practice set: Analysing the instrumentation of an Afrobeat piece
- WAEC prep: Sikiru Ayinde Barrister and Fuji's development
- Spot my mistake: Treating Highlife and Afrobeat as one style under two names
- Spot my mistake: Confusing Juju and Fuji by their percussion
- Let me explain: How Afrobeat was formed
- Let me explain: How were music of Ramadan grew into Fuji
- Teach me: The features of Nigerian Highlife
- Teach me: The instrumentation of Juju music
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 33
- Quiz: The dance bands of Ghana
- Quiz: Amu's use of Ghanaian language and rhythm
- WAEC prep: The exchange between Ghanaian and Nigerian popular music
- Practice set: Comparing Ghanaian and Nigerian Highlife
- WAEC prep: The contribution of Ghanaian art composers
- Spot my mistake: Assuming Highlife began in Nigeria and spread from there to Ghana
- Spot my mistake: Treating art music as separate from traditional roots
- Let me explain: Ghanaian traditional musicians and their repertoire
- Let me explain: J.H.K. Nketia as composer and scholar
- Teach me: E.T. Mensah and Ghanaian Highlife
- Teach me: Ephraim Amu and his choral style
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 34
- Quiz: Matching a voice to its part
- WAEC prep: What the performance test requires of a singer
- Practice set: Preparing a song for examination
- Spot my mistake: Assigning a singer to a voice part by age or sex rather than by range
- Let me explain: Breath control and vocal production
- Teach me: Soprano, alto, tenor and bass ranges
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 35
- Quiz: The wind instruments accepted
- Quiz: Articulation signs and what they ask for
- WAEC prep: The standard expected on a chosen instrument
- Practice set: Choosing repertoire for the performance test
- WAEC prep: Abbreviations used in scores
- Practice set: Reading a score aloud with all its markings
- Spot my mistake: Choosing the hardest piece available for a performance test
- Spot my mistake: Reading a dynamic mark as an instruction about tempo
- Let me explain: The care and tuning of an instrument
- Let me explain: Ornaments: trill, mordent, turn and grace note
- Teach me: The string instruments accepted for the test
- Teach me: Tempo and dynamic terms
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 36
- Quiz: Transcribing staff notation into solfa
- WAEC prep: Handling accidentals and modulation in solfa
- Practice set: A graded transcription exercise
- Spot my mistake: Assuming doh is always C when transcribing between solfa and staff notation
- Let me explain: Transcribing solfa into staff notation
- Teach me: The tonic solfa system
Revisit from three weeks ago