Educerie · IB Diploma · Music
Assessment guide
Why there is no practice paper for this subject. Music is assessed entirely by coursework — written portfolios, recorded performance and submitted composition. There is no written examination in any session, so there is nothing for Educerie to mock. This guide and the accompanying checklist let you assess your own submissions against what the components reward.
The components, and what each is really testing
Exploring music in context (SL and HL)
Research into music from the areas of inquiry, together with your own creating and performing in response to what you found.
The word doing the work is response. This is not an essay with a recording attached. The assessment is looking for the research to have changed what you made — a rhythmic framework you found and then used, a texture you analysed and then imitated, a constraint from one tradition applied to your own material.
State the connection explicitly. "The 7/8 grouping of 2+2+3 in the piece I analysed is the metre of my own experiment, and the accent placement is copied deliberately to test whether it still functions when the instrumentation changes." Assessors cannot infer a link you have not made.
Experimenting with music (SL and HL)
A portfolio of experiments, not finished pieces, with written reflection.
The mistake is submitting polished work. The component is called experimenting: an unresolved attempt that tested something specific is stronger evidence than a completed piece that tested nothing. Include experiments that failed, with the reasoning that followed.
Experiments should span the three roles — researching, performing, creating — and the areas of inquiry. A portfolio of five compositional sketches in one style is narrow on both counts.
Presenting music (SL and HL)
A presentation of your performing and your creating, with programme notes.
Two things are assessed that students underweight. First, the coherence of what you present: pieces should relate to each other and to the areas of inquiry, not simply be your best available recordings. Second, the programme notes, which are where you demonstrate that you understand what you performed — and where musical evidence, not impressions, is required.
The contemporary music maker (HL only)
A project realised for a real-world audience, with a stated purpose and evaluation against it.
The distinguishing requirement is that the project meets a genuine external brief — a real occasion, a real audience, a real constraint — and that you evaluate the outcome against the purpose you set, honestly. A project that did not fully succeed, evaluated accurately, scores better than a claimed triumph.
What separates strong work from adequate work
Musical evidence throughout. Bar numbers, timings, pitches, intervals, instruments. If a paragraph of your writing contains no locatable musical fact, rewrite it.
Breadth that is real. All four areas of inquiry, and more than one tradition, engaged on their own terms.
The roles connected. Research informing performance, experiment becoming composition, and both said out loud.
Reflection that decides. Every reflective passage should end in a change.
Recorded early and often. Development can only be shown if the early state was captured. A portfolio recorded in the final term has no trajectory in it.
How to audit your own submission
- Cover every adjective in your writing. If removing the adjectives leaves nothing, you have described rather than analysed.
- Count your locations. Timings and bar numbers per page. Fewer than two or three is thin.
- Map your material against the four areas. Any area with nothing in it is a gap an assessor will see.
- Check the traditions. If everything comes from the music you already played before this course, the breadth requirement is not met.
- Trace one experiment to a finished piece. If you cannot follow the path in the portfolio, neither can an assessor.
Educerie · written from the published IB Diploma Programme structure for Music, first assessment 2022. Original text. This subject has no written examination. Last reviewed 5 September 2026.