How to get your best mark in HSC Music

All three HSC Music courses give students the freedom to explore their musical interests and skills – and experience a subject that is collaborative, creative and rigorous – and take these much-needed attributes into further education or the workforce.

Jodie Spooner-Ryan, Meriden School, Head of Music and HSC marker

Meriden School’s Jodie Spooner-Ryan.Credit:

Top dos and don’ts for Music

• Become familiar with a variety of musical styles and genres and use musical terminology to describe specific features with depth and detail.
• Use the reading time well – connect the title of pieces, composers and questions/score attachments to styles, genres and instrumentation you are familiar with and imagine what the excerpt might feature.
• Actively respond to the question and use the most appropriate examples from throughout the aural excerpt and/or score to support your answer. Listen astutely to the given example with the question in mind as you listen.
• Provide a response that is structured and coherent, using the order of musical events in the aural excerpt as a guide, or the concept of music you are referencing.
• Don’t retell what you hear – instead, use the question to guide your listening and describe the most appropriate features of the music to answer with purpose.
• Don’t write a "shopping list" of observations if the question is asking you to “describe/analyse”. Provide detail in analysing the music with examples using descriptions, notation and/or quotes.