General education, also known as general education, general education, and general education, refers to the teaching content aimed at all college students. The general education curriculum, abbreviated as general education curriculum, is opposite to the concept of professional courses and generally refers to courses used outside of professional courses, with universality, universality, and practical value. Music courses have the effect of pleasing the body and mind, enhancing cultivation, and are also popular general education elective courses among students in major universities. As an elective course in general education, most registered students do not possess strong music cultivation, and the difficulty of course design is not high. This situation leads to the teaching effect of music general education courses being far from what teachers expected. To improve the teaching effectiveness of the course, teachers can use exploratory teaching models to improve the quality of the classroom. This article combines the design characteristics of general education elective courses to discuss the application value, application difficulties, and application strategies of exploratory music teaching mode in general education elective courses.