Last Updated on 1 November 2026 by Victoria Williams
In the Trinity Grade 3 Music Theory Exam, you might be given a short piece of music with about 5 deliberate mistakes in it. You need to rewrite the whole melody correctly on the given stave.
In the ABRSM Grade 3 Music Theory Exam, you will need to pay attention to notation when selecting your answers. Often an answer is incorrect because the notation is incorrect.
View the Complete Grade 3 Music Theory Video CoursesThe kinds of mistake you need to look for include:
- Wrongly placed clef
- Wrongly placed sharps/flats in the key signature
- Upside down time signature
- Symbols, (e.g. pause mark) on the wrong side of a note
- Accidentals placed on the wrong side of the note
- Accidentals placed on the wrong line/space
- Stems pointing in the wrong direction
The following passage contains five deliberate mistakes. Can you find them all?
The five mistakes in this passage are:
- The clef is in the wrong position (the curly middle bit needs to circle the G line)
- The time signature is upside down
- In bar 1, the sharp is on the space for A, instead of on the line for B.
- In bar 2, the quaver G should have its stem pointing upwards (because it’s below the middle line of the stave).
- In bar 4, the pause symbol is upside down. (Pauses are written that way up if they are written under the stave.
If you are going to re-write the music with the errors corrected, here are some tips:
- Find all the mistakes BEFORE you start writing out the melody!
- Write the notes directly underneath the originals, so that you don’t run out of space.
- Use a ruler to draw note stems and beams.
Here is the same melody, rewritten with the mistakes corrected:
Spotting Errors Exercises
Hover your mouse over the questions (tap on mobiles) to reveal the answers.
Each passage below contains 4 deliberate mistakes. Rewrite the melody correctly on the given stave.
a)
b)
c)
