My 8-week Australian Music Examinations Board Grade 2 Theory study schedule (free resources only)

Great breakdown. One thing I'd add to Week 1: look at the score breakdown from your baseline practice test — not just the overall score. Most Australian Music Examinations Board Grade 2 Theory exams are weighted by domain, and knowing which domains carry more weight changes how you allocate study time.

The Anki flashcard tip is something more people need to hear. I have a Australian Music Examinations Board Grade 2 Theory deck with about 200 cards covering all the key terms and formulas. Doing 20 cards/day during my lunch break added up faster than I expected.

What do you think about condensing this to 4-5 weeks if I can do 2-3 hours per day? I have a test date that's sooner than I'd like and trying to figure out if I can make it work.

This is gold. Saving and sharing with my study group. The "stop studying 24 hours before" advice is underrated — I bombed an exam once because I crammed until midnight and couldn't think straight in the morning.

Honestly I almost quit around week 4 when the notation stuff just wasn't clicking and I started wondering if I was too old for this. But I found the free ameb grade 2 theory exam content and topics and doing those practice questions every night actually helped things stick in a way just reading didn't.

If you're feeling like it's not working, give it one more week before you bail. I'm glad I did. Passed with a credit and I'm not a naturally musical person at all.

Honestly I almost quit after week 3. The intervals section had me completely lost and I was convinced I'd never get it, like what even is a diminished fifth and why does it matter. But I kept showing up even when the sessions were only 20 minutes because I was too tired. That consistency thing is real even if it doesn't feel like it's working.

Ended up passing with a decent mark and I'm still kind of shocked. If you're at that point where you're thinking it's not worth continuing, just know that week 5 is where it started clicking for me. Didn't happen all at once, just slowly stopped feeling like a foreign language.

Quick update for anyone following this thread — I'm at the end of week 5 and just did a full practice run last night. Scored 78%, which honestly surprised me because I've been really struggling with intervals. The free ameb grade 2 theory exam content and topics page has been super helpful for making sure I wasn't missing anything weird that shows up in the actual test.

Planning to sit the real exam in about 3 weeks. I didn't think I'd feel ready this fast but the schedule in this thread is genuinely solid. My weak spot is still time signatures so I'm spending most of week 6 on that before I start doing timed mock exams. Fingers crossed it holds together on the day!