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Now that we’ve built a framework for understanding and feeling the experience of timekeeping in music, it’s helpful to practice creating this experience yourself. We’ll start by deciding on a tempo and meter type, and then use physical motion to start “feeling” it even in the absence of actual sounding music. As you get more and more comfortable with this, we’ll work to see how we might “feel” the meter internally by imagining those same actions. Setting up an internal sense of meter without externally sounding music in this way is often a useful preparatory step for making music. When you’re leading an ensemble, feeling the meter internally will help you get the group off to a solid and coordinated start. When you’re reading notated music, the ability to construct this internal sense helps you make sure that you are ready to match the “correct” sense of time indicated in the music. And when you’re listening, internalized models of what different meters feel like will give you something internal to compare to what you hear in the music to see how they match up (or not). Here’s the process in full: We’ll continue to practice building our internal sense of meter in future chapters on rhythmic cells, sight-reading skills, and improvisation skills, and whenever we do, we’ll re-embed these instructions.

Goal: Use physical motion or imagined physical motion to “feel” a meter without sounding music. Instructions: Decide on a meter (duple, triple, or quadruple and simple, compound, or swung) and, optionally, a tempo/speed. Then work through the steps in the text above to feel this meter internally. It may be helpful at first to use the suggested physical motions, but as you get more comfortable, see if you can feel them internally.

Goal: Develop an understanding of how your internal sense of meter relates to sound. Before you start: You are encouraged to use any instrument that is comfortable to you, including voice. Though it is not absolutely necessary, we encourage you to work with someone else so they can give you feedback about how clear your meter was (step 6). Instructions: Choose a meter type or receive an assigned meter type: simple duple, simple triple, simple quadruple, compound duple, compound triple, or compound quadruple. Your goal is to come up with some music that clearly conveys this sense to a listener. Decide how long your rhythm will be; a length of 4–8 measures is often nice. Note that most melodies end on a relatively long note in that last measure. Decide whether you want to start with a pickup or on the downbeat. Decide how you want to make the downbeats clear. In melodies, downbeats are often marked with relatively longer notes or repeating rhythmic patterns that last about a measure. Consider how you will communicate the beat division. You don’t need to have a note on every beat division; just make sure that events happen on beat divisions at least some of the time. Perform your rhythm. (You may decide whether or not to use pitches as well.) Optional: ask a listener to identify the meter that you intend to convey, choosing from the list in step #1. Keep in mind that duple and quadruple meters are often aurally equivalent. If they do not hear what you intended, workshop with them on how you might more clearly convey the meter.

As we’ve already explored, when you’re listening to music, you likely instinctively move your body—or even just imagine doing so. That’s a very useful instinct that, when further developed, can help you determine what metric sense is intended in a piece of music without looking at its notation. Determining meter by ear in this way will be helpful when we want to translate it into notation or respond to it through playback or improvisation. This process has many similarities with the skill of setting up a meter internally, described in the previous section. The primary difference is that before we started with a goal for a meter and worked toward creating it; here, we start with an already-sounding metric sense and figure out how to describe it. Once you’ve followed these steps, you’ve found the beat, determined the length of the cycle, and specified the divisions as either simple or compound. When we get to notating music in the transcription and dictation chapters, we’ll need to take it one more step and identify a possible time signature to use.

Goal: Use physical motion or imagined physical motion to find a beat, measure, and division in sounding music, and describe their relationships. Instructions: Listen to the following songs. Then work through the steps in the text above to identify the beat, measure, and division. Once you have found these and determined their relationships to each other, describe the meter (duple/quadruple or triple, and simple or compound) and use the table

The standard model for meter in aural skills instruction is the system of time signatures. Time signatures are a culturally-situated system of describing cycles of beats, measures, and divisions. Unlike some other culturally-situated systems of understanding time in music around the world, time signatures are usually described as an “abstract” representation: while conducting comes close, no one action is associated with beats, or downbeats, or beat divisions. This can make them seem universally applicable, but it does not. Time signatures embed a series of assumptions or defaults, including a default that cycles will repeat consistently for significant spans of time and a common association between chord changes and downbeats. Because time signatures embed these cultural assumptions, it is important to make a distinction between time signatures and how we experience music. Sometimes we’ll listen to music and decide things like “this music is in 4/4.” There’s no problem with such language in most situations, but it’d probably be more accurate to say “4/4 would offer a useful model for this music” or “I think whoever made this music was using a framework associated with 4/4.” The top number of a time signature is used to communicate about how many divisions are within each beat, and how many beats are contained in each measure. The table below interprets these numbers as if they were always clear and unambiguous, but that’s not always true. 2 and 4 nearly always have the meaning described here. 3 does most of the time, but occasionally it is interpreted as a single compound beat per measure. 6, 9, and 12 are nearly always interpreted as described, but occasionally indicate 6, 9, or 12 beats. In short, learn the “facts” in this table as a default, but be prepared for a messy world.

One useful way to think of this information: in simple meter, the top number tells us the number of beats in a measure; in compound meter, the top number tells us the number of beat divisions in a measure. Other numbers, like 5, 7, and 11, are also possible on the top of a meter sign. Most of the time, these numbers tell us the number of divisions in a measure. For example, 5 often means a beat of 3 divisions followed by a beat of 2 divisions or vice versa, where all the divisions are the same length and the beats vary in length. However, sometimes these numbers indicate the number of beats in the measure. This is messy; you’ll have to use clues like beaming and tempo to determine whether these numbers refer to beats (usually slower tempos) or divisions (usually medium or fast tempos). The bottom number of a time signature tells us what note value represents a beat (simple meter) or a beat division (compound meter). This number will always be a power of 2. Because note values can occur at any speed, you can’t technically hear the difference between 4/4 and 4/8. Nevertheless, in contemporary music-making, there is an assumption that: simple meters usually have 4 on the bottom, meaning the beat is represented by the quarter note, and that compound meters usually have 8 on the bottom, meaning the beat division is represented by the eighth note (and the beat by the dotted quarter, since that is the length of three eighth notes). This assumption, by the way, can help you interpret those complicated 5s, 7s, and 11s on the tops of time signatures. Most often, if 4 is on the bottom, the top number tells you the number of beats in a measure. Most often, if 8 is on the bottom, the top number tells you the number of divisions in a measure. Still, any power of 2 is technically possible on the bottom of the time signature for any meter type. So when we present rhythmic cells, we’ll do so with different time-signature- bottom-number reference points to promote flexibility.

While there seems to be something universal about associating music and movement, this connection manifests differently in different cultures. Whenever you interact with a specific musical culture or subculture, you can bring these skills to bear, but it’s also important to be cognizant and respectful of the ways people talk about musical time (and everything else, for that matter). We’ll give a few examples here of culturally-specific knowledge and expectations within so-called “Western” popular and classical music. Within European-American popular music, there is often an expectation that the default meter is “4/4.” There’s typically no reason the same music couldn’t be described as 2/4 or 2/16, but because of this cultural expectation, if we can say a piece of popular music is in 4/4, we usually will. There’s also a specific drum pattern associated with that popular-music meter. While it is often varied, the most common elements are a bass/kick drum hit on beats 1 and 3, snare drum on beats 2 and 4 (the “backbeat”), and closed hi- hat cymbals on every eighth note:

When we hear some form of this pattern, we will typically associate its various parts with these specific beats. This is true even when the music is in compound meter, an increasingly common variant: the bass drum is still associated with beats 1 and 3, and the snare or claps with beats 2 and 4. One more note about this pattern: particularly if you’re listening on a laptop or phone without the ability to bring out the bass, the snare “backbeat” on beats 2 and 4 may sound like the loudest part of this pattern. In addition, many (though not all) culturally-aware people often clap along with such music on beats 2 and 4, along with this snare. As a result, students are sometimes misled into thinking that one of these is the downbeat. But remember, downbeats are associated with chord changes, stressed syllables of text, bass drums, and other very low notes, while snares and claps are associated with beats 2 and 4. Within European-influenced “classical” music, waltzes are specifically associated with being “in 3” (that is, as notated, their cycle is three beats long), and specifically in 3/4. Some waltzes, particularly slow, American waltzes, are easy to feel in this way. However, many (especially European) waltzes are extremely fast—too fast for that “cycle” of 3 to be easily felt as three individual beats. While such waltzes are still almost always notated in ¾ or sometimes 3/8, ensemble conductors typically conduct them with a single wave of the hand per measure/cycle, treating the cycles more like beats. Listeners, too, often gravitate to the notated measure/cycle as the beat; often, measures feel like they group in pairs, giving a sense of a compound duple/quadruple meter.

Goal: Identify metric conventions in sounding music. Instructions: There are two playlists below: one for waltzes, the other for popular music. As you listen to each song, draw on what you have learned above to identify the time signature that would most likely be used to represent the music and figure out how it aligns with what you are hearing. Optionally, transcribe the first 2–4 measures of the melody to demonstrate your understanding.

We’ve focused here on beats, measures, and divisions. We’ve talked about these three layers in part because they are the three layers most clearly indicated by time signatures. Other systems of discussing and representing time in music around the world also often focus on or imply a small number of layers. Nevertheless, music may imply even faster or even slower layers of motion. Unless the tempo is very slow, faster layers very quickly exceed our capacity to measure and distinguish them, so we won’t worry about them too much here. Of course, if the tempo is indeed really slow, keeping track of divisions of the beat may be useful in keeping a steady tempo—just because the beat is too long to predict with accuracy. It may, however, be more useful to pay attention to slower layers of motion. In certain styles of popular and classical music, for example, phrases are often four measures/cycles long, and tracking these groups of measures as if they were beats in a slower “hypermeter” helps us focus on this sense of larger-scale pacing. When we’re listening, paying attention to hypermeter can help us determine whether and when it is regular or irregular. When we’re making music, either in improvisation or performance of notated music, paying attention to hypermeter can help us have a larger sense of overall shape, rather than getting stuck in the choppy, repetitive nature of the repeating basic cycle/meter. This is, in a way, the message of Benjamin Xander’s popular TED Talk, though he incorrectly implies that this perspective is only relevant to classical music:

Start one of the songs in the playlist below. As you listen, find the measure. Once you are consistently able to track where the measure starts over, start the track over, this time counting how many measures are in each phrase. Once you’ve listened to 45–60 seconds of the song, answer the following questions. Are the phrase lengths consistent or inconsistent? What is the effect of this consistency/ inconsistency?

Goal: Develop sensitivity to phrase lengths and phrase shaping in your own repertoire. Before you start: Find a piece of music for your primary instrument. (We are assuming it is notated, but you may also work aurally with the music without a score.) It may be helpful to choose something that is relatively sustained and legato at first, though the principles can apply to most anything. Instructions: Study the first phrase, considering it as a whole. Where is its climax? Should what comes before and after be louder or quieter? Plan out a gesture that would show the shape of the phrase as a whole. Arm gestures are often particularly useful here. One gesture that is often particularly appropriate is starting with an arm across your body, and gradually drawing it out to its own side and then away from your body as it goes up and down as necessary to reflect the melody. Carry out that gesture as you hear the first phrase in your head or sing it aloud, making sure to feel the sustained, goal-directed motion of the gesture. Optionally, perform the phrase on your primary instrument, imagining the feeling of that gesture as you play. Repeat these steps with additional phrases, being sure to consider how they relate to each other.

Most music has some culturally agreed-upon frame of reference for its pitches. This frame of reference is like a map: it shows the possible locations one could go to and also indicates how these locations are connected. There are many different ways this musical map is constructed within different cultures and subcultures, but the one we’ll focus on is typically called a key. (Most of our discussion will also be relevant to the .) Some of the principles we’ll work with here can be translated to different musical cultures, but it’s important to note that different systems often have different fundamental assumptions: for example, in a key or diatonic mode, we often describe notes as “locations” within a scale, but some cultures associate them with gestures, tunings, and decorations, and they may be thought of differently depending on where they “go” next. It’s useful to think of a key as a combination of two things: a collection of notes, and a tonic, or the most important note. For example, the keys C major and A minor have the same collection of notes defined by their key signatures, but they have different tonics (C vs. A). C major and C minor have different collections of notes, but they have the same tonic. Many, perhaps most, people, are reasonably accurate at listening to music and figuring out its general contour: whether it’s going “up” or “down,” and whether the size of that motion is small or large. But to figure out exact pitches, many people without absolute pitch benefit from using an internalized model of key to compare to the music to “measure” exactly what’s going on. Those with absolute pitch can also benefit from internalizing models of key because this is a significant element that imbues music with “meaning” and helps to define harmony (chord progressions). The situation is similar when making music, particularly when sight-reading. If we get started at the right point in the scale and can follow up-and-down motion in the score, we’ll often perform most of the pitches accurately. But when leaps are large or awkward, that internalized model of key becomes important. And paying attention to where we are within that model helps us “shape” the music because certain notes and contexts have more “tension” than others. Fortunately, if you’ve listened to and/or performed lots of music in a key, you have already started to internalize this map. We’ll simply work on making it more detailed and conscious, and making sure you know how to use it. One final note: Several sections of this chapter draw on recommendations by pedagogue Gary Karpinski, author of the textbook and the pedagogy manual . We are grateful to Karpinski’s pioneering work.

Internalized maps are funny. You likely have paths or roads you follow every day, perhaps without even needing to think about them—and yet you may have trouble describing them to someone because they are so automatic for you. We guarantee, if you have listened to and/or made much music in a key, that you have internalized certain musical paths through major and minor keys. Sometimes we want to follow our automatic routes along those paths. But as musicians, it will be helpful if we have some conscious control over our internalized maps—calling them to mind when necessary, imagining them from different perspectives, starting in different places, and even sometimes shifting the map around us to create a new geography through which to move. This section will help you develop ways to set up your musical map internally before you start making music. This is particularly helpful when sight reading music that you’ve never heard before, but building internal models will help us do almost all more-complex skills more accurately and confidently. At first, as we’re building our internal models, our methods will be out-loud and conscious, but with time your internal models will strengthen and you will be able to assume a key context more quickly and silently. You’re encouraged to use your voice to follow the procedures below. Using an instrument can also be effective, but we don’t always have instruments with us, and for a lot of people, the voice has (requires!) a more direct relationship with imagined sound in the brain. Since we want to internalize the patterns, getting at the brain is crucial. Of course, if your voice-brain connection is problematic, and especially if you are so familiar with an instrument that it feels like an extension of your body, imagining motions related to that instrument may be just as useful. A lot of music starts on notes of the tonic triad (scale degrees 1/do, 3/me/mi, and 5/sol). Here’s how those notes relate to the half steps within a major key: And here’s how those notes relate to the half steps within a minor key. Notice the added note, raised scale degree 7 (#7)/ti : while this note is not in a minor key signature, it is so commonly used that many people hear it as part of the key. If we accept that, then there are three potential half steps in a minor key: scale degrees raised7–1/ti-do, 2–3/re-me, and 5–6/sol-le. If you want to find all three, great, but in our

As you may know, historically, one important method of establishing a tonic note is a chord progression known as the “five-one” or “authentic cadence.” While there’s plenty of triad-based music, especially more recent popular music, that does not rely heavily on this relationship, we have found that it is still familiar enough to most of our students that using it to establish a tonic is typically effective. Since we’ve urged you to use your voice, we’ll need to rely on melodies associated with that chord progression to establish the key, rather than the chords themselves. The two that we find most effective are scale degrees 5-1/sol-do and scale degrees raised7-1/ti-do. (In a minor key, the latter uses the raised scale degree 7.) Here are some patterns that we have found helpful in establishing a map of key around different scale degrees. Major key:

Choose a mode (major or minor) and a starting scale degree (scale degree 1/do, 3/me/ mi, or 5/sol ) and play yourself a starting pitch. Identify the appropriate pattern to establish the selected key around that pitch, treating it as the selected scale degree. Sing or imagine the appropriate pattern. At first, you may wish to sing aloud and have a partner or instructor give you feedback When repeating these steps, you may choose a new starting pitch, but it is also useful to use the same starting pitch and see if you can treat it as a different scale degree—shifting the map around you to create a new geography. Before you start: Decide whether to do this activity vocally or on another instrument. Working vocally exercises your internal sense of key more; using another instrument gives you more pitch security, which may allow you to focus more on how to communicate through pitch choice. Instructions: Choose a mode (major or minor) and a starting scale degree (scale degree 1/do, 3/me/ mi, or 5/sol ). Your goal is to come up with some music that clearly conveys your chosen key to a listener. Plan out a melody that will convey the collection (by incorporating at least one half- step from the scale) and the tonic (by using gestures such as scale degrees 7–1/ti-do, arpeggios of the tonic triad, cadence patterns such as ending on scale degree 2/re or 1/do, etc.). Consider also how you will “shape” your melody to have a clear high point and a sense of coming to a rest at the end. Choose a starting pitch, either from your head or from an instrument, and set up the key silently.

Goal: Develop the habit of establishing a sense of key before reading music Before you start: Find some notated music. Sight- reading anthologies are useful because they have lots of short melodies—just make sure you work from a chapter that mixes different keys, including major and minor if appropriate. You may

Identify the intended key by inspecting the key signature and the emphasized notes. (Recall that scale degrees 1/do and 5/sol are often emphasized.) Identify the scale degree of the starting note of the melody. Play yourself a starting pitch. Singing or imagining the appropriate pattern specified above, establish the key from that starting pitch. If the starting scale degree is not a member of the tonic triad, you may have to adapt the patterns. Optionally, sing the opening several notes. As we’re trying to develop the habit of establishing a key before making music, it’s helpful to repeat these steps over and over with additional melodies.

So far we’ve worked on activating our internal models of key by making sounds ourselves. It’s also useful to activate these models when listening to music. Our internal “map” gives us a tool to figure out what’s going on in the music, allowing us to play the music back, transcribe it into notation, and make music along to it. Of the steps below, determining tonic is the more difficult one for most people. Tonic is really complicated. Many melodies start or end on the tonic, but not all. Bass (lowest) lines very often emphasize the tonic at the beginning and/or end, but not always, and bass lines can be more difficult to track than the melody. The tonic might be the most common, longest, or most emphasized note in the melody, but it might not. What factors, then, lead us to hear something as a tonic? Here are a few:

Chord progressions that are associated with establishing the key, especially authentic cadences Common melodic patterns—these differ by the repertoire you’re listening to Mere emphasis—but where the other factors are prominent, they will usually outweigh this one With something so complex, it’s nice if we can rely on and refine our intuition rather than ponder each of these factors one by one. That’s why we start by describing a method to tap into your intuition, drawn from suggestions by pedagogue ; additional methods are presented in the next section. Just like in the section on setting up a key, you’re encouraged to use your voice at first, but should eventually be able to figure out the key without using your voice.

Choose a song from the playlist below and listen to it for a while. (We recommend at least one phrase of melody, and/or about 30 seconds.) Hum or sing a note you remember from the song. Move around by step, exploring the sounds you’ve been hearing both up and down. If this is hard, or you consistently find yourself making sounds that aren’t in the key, this is a good sign you should work with someone one-on-one. This isn’t absolutely necessary for determining the key, but optionally, see if you can find all seven different notes of the scale. (No need to worry, yet, about which one is the tonic.)

seconds.) Optionally (but recommended, at least at first), hum a pitch that you remember from the song, and move around by step up and down to explore the notes that you were hearing. If this is a challenge, revisit the previous activity on determining collection. Choose a high note from the collection and hum or sing it. It’s often helpful if it’s a prominent note in the song, but this is not necessary. “Walk” down the scale step by step until you feel like you’ve “arrived” on tonic. Keep in mind that scale degree 5/sol and scale degree 1/do are often confused, at least at first. If this is difficult, work with a tutor or instructor.

If the “intuitive method” of identifying a key doesn’t work for you, a nice complementary method is to use playback on a non-voice instrument to work out the pitch relationships. After hearing the music, use your best intuition and trial and error to work out how to play it back. Once you’ve done so, pay attention to the notes used, particularly where there are half steps and whole steps. These factors can help you intuit where the tonic is. If finding tonic is still difficult with this method, note that many people find that extensive practice with some system of pitch solfège—described in the next section—can help build your intuition. One final note: it is possible, even in music mostly based on a key, to have passages of music where there is no clear tonic or where there is legitimate ambiguity among several possibilities. This is common in transitional passages, as well as in loop- based music without clear key-establishing progressions.

Goal: Use instrument playback as a tool to work out collection and tonic from a piece of heard music. Before you start: You will need a non-voice instrument for this activity. The more intuitive you find this instrument, the better. Instructions: Choose a song from the playlist below and listen to the first phrase of the melody as often as you need to lodge it in your memory. Using trial and error as necessary, work out how to play that phrase back on your chosen instrument. If you need to, you can replay the melody, but do as much as you can from memory. Once you can play the melody back, think about the pitches you used and how they relate to each other. You may wish to rearrange them into a scale. Thinking of them in stepwise relationships, where are the half

One time-tested model for internalizing a model of key is solfège, also known as “solfeggio” and “tonic sol-fa.” There are several systems that people use, and they have different advantages. Two systems, “moveable-do (do-based minor)” and “scale degree numbers,” always associate the same syllable with the same scale degree. These systems are applied to the notes of C major and A minor scales below.

The last major system, “,” uses the syllables do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-si/ti-do to represent the names of specific notes rather than scale degrees (C = do, D = re, etc.). We prioritize scale degree identity and finding tonic in this text, so we will use moveable-do (do-based minor) and scale degree numbers. Nevertheless, you may wish to use a different system. We will refer to all of them with the term “solfège.” Merely memorizing major and minor scales using the system of your choice is a great start, but is not yet enough to make a solfège system as useful as it can be. Music is complicated, and the richer the models of solfège you internalize, the more powerful the system will be. In particular, it can be useful to practice the most common leaps within the scale. To maximize the power of your internalized system of solfège, however, you should simply learn as much music on solfège as you can.

Sing a scale (major or minor) using your preferred system of solfège. Come up with a short pitch pattern (several examples are below). Sing it on each successive degree of the scale going up (see example image below). Figure out how that pitch pattern would sound if all the generic intervals remained the same size but went the opposite direction (up vs. down). Sing the “upside-down” pattern on each successive degree of the scale going down (see example image below). Possible models: do-re-mi (shown below), do-mi, do-ti-re-do, do-re-mi-fa, do-mi-fa-mi, etc.

Goal: Enrich your solfège-based model of key by working with songs that do not simply repeat the same pattern. Instructions: Choose a song that is very familiar to you. Work at first with relatively simple songs such as Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star and Row, Row, Row Your Boat; as you get comfortable, move to more complicated songs. Sing the song on syllables appropriate to your preferred system of solfège. Choose a piece of music for your primary instrument. Working with both familiar songs and songs you’ve never heard or played are useful in different ways. Choose a melodic passage in the song that uses no, or relatively few, accidentals and is of manageable length (likely 4–8 measures). Make sure you know what key the passage is in (this may be different from the key of the song as a whole). Look over the passage, working out how to sing it in your preferred system of solfège. Sing through the passage using the appropriate solfège syllables. Sing/play through the passage as you normally would, without the solfège. Finally, sing/play through again, this time imagining the syllables.

Solfège focuses our attention on the primary notes of a key (“diatonicism” or “diatonic notes”), but most music uses at least some notes outside of the key (“chromaticism” or “chromatic notes”). Those notes are typically assumed to relate to the notes within the key: this is why, in notation, they’re represented with the same notes, simply altered with a sharp, natural, or flat. Of course, there’s also music where notes altered with a sharp or flat seem just as “structurally” important as the other notes. Where this is the case, the music may not be based on a major or minor key or mode, and solfège may no longer be very useful. For that reason, we’re not talking about that music here. People address chromaticism through solfège in different ways, but most often they preserve the idea that chromatic notes relate to diatonic notes. Here is one way that solfège can be used to represent chromatic notes: Anytime that chromaticism is making things more complicated, remember the importance of the relationship between diatonic and chromatic notes. The more we can make this connection—emphasize the “place” of chromaticism within our “map”—the more logical and the less disorienting chromaticism will be. We’ll do some activities here to start to build these connections, and we’ll follow up with more in the sections on transcription, dictation, sight reading, and improvisation skills. Goal: Get used to using chromatic solfège, and common ways that chromatic notes relate to diatonic notes Instructions: In the section on , we introduced an activity called “sequentials” where you repeat a pitch pattern on every scale degree going up, and then the same pattern upside-down on every scale degree going down. Practice the sequential patterns below to develop your ability to use chromaticism. Chromatic passing tones: do-di-re (alter the pattern on mi and ti to mi-mi-fa and ti-ti-do) Chromatic neighbor tones do-ti-do, re-di-re, mi-ri-mi, etc. diatonic framework to improve tuning, key stability, and musicality. Before you start: Locate some music that includes occasional chromatic notes. Sight-reading anthologies can be helpful because there are often chapters on chromaticism. If you practice with chapters on specific types of chromatic tones (“chromatic neighbor tones,” for example), you may wish to also find a later chapter that mixes different types. Instructions: Scan the music for chromatic tones. For each chromatic tone, identify its function as a chromatic neighbor, chromatic passing tone, or other. Establish the key if necessary. Sing through the music, ignoring the chromatic tones. (You may either lengthen the note preceding each chromatic note or simply ignore the accidentals on the chromatic notes to sing them as diatonic.) Repeat as necessary to establish a clear diatonic framework. Once you’ve established this diatonic framework, re-introduce the chromatic notes

At this point, we come full circle. We started our discussion of tonic/collection and solfège with the skill of setting up a model of key internally; now we end the section by returning to that skill, using it to establish multiple keys in succession. This skill can be useful anytime you’re performing music and there’s a change of key. In later study, we’ll apply this skill to the domains of improvisation and sight reading, including how to determine if the music you’re reading has changed keys. Here, we simply work on the foundational skill of changing your internally-set-up key. Remember that key typically has two components: collection and tonic. When you’re seeking to transition to a new key, these are still the important aspects to focus on. Of course, the most reliable way to change keys would probably be to stop the music and repeat the methods from the previous “setting up a key” section. But in most situations, this isn’t appropriate—the music needs to keep going! And while stopping and re-starting in this way may help us set up each key accurately in and of itself, it makes it difficult for us to feel the connections between the keys—an important element of a lot of music. It would be really useful to have quicker, “short-cut” methods that help us make a quick change—and such methods will be our focus here. Just note that they may not be reliable at first until the skills developed earlier in the chapter are more solid. The primary method we’ll introduce is simply to focus on changing the half/whole-step context of the melody at the moment of modulation. Often, music works in such a way as to facilitate this: the melody comes to a certain scale degree in the first key, and then the melody continues from this same note, reinterpreted in a new key. Perhaps that note had a whole step above it in the first key but a half step above it in the second key: if so, then especially if we’ve really internalized the patterns in the “Setting Up a Key” section, we may be able to quickly visualize/hear that changed interval as we perform that note, helping us to lock in to the new key. Note that this method focuses on changing the collection, leaving the tonic implicit. If the “Setting Up a Key” methods are well- internalized, we can often still intuit the tonic from this change of collection; if not, we may need to strengthen those methods first. Where this method doesn’t work (say, there’s no shared melody note across the two keys, or there’s a transitional section where neither key is clearly primary) or we just want to use a different method, we may need to rely on moment- to-moment strategies until the new key is established. We have all internalized a certain number of short, key-independent musical models, such as important intervals or triads or the ability to imagine playing something on our primary instrument. Whatever they are, we will need to apply them until the new key becomes clearly apparent. As we do so, we simply need to focus on how these models contribute to our sense of collection and tonic.

Goal: Get used to intentionally changing key context. Before you Start: This works well as a group or pair activity, with one student choosing from the lists in step 1 and another student or other students doing the resulting exercise. Instructions: Choose one item from each of the following lists. List 1: root, third, fifth. List 2: root, third, fifth. List 3: major, minor. Set up whatever key you like however you wish, then sing its tonic triad. Sing the note of that triad indicated by your choice from List 1. Then reinterpret that note as the note indicated by your choice from List 2 in the type of triad indicated by your choice from List 3, and set up the key of that new triad’s root vocally. For example, if you started in C major and chose third, fifth, major, you’d sing the note E (the third of the triad), then reinterpret E as the fifth of a major triad and set up the key of A major. As you get more confident, see if you can sing the new triad without setting up the new key vocally. For example, you might try to hear the key-establishing progression in your head, or even leap right into singing the new triad without preparation.

Choose a starting key and an ending key. You could base this on the keys written in an excerpt you wish to sight read, keys you want to establish in an improvisation, or however you would like. Decide where you will need to change your key context. For example, if you’re reading a notated excerpt, determine where changing your context to a new key will help you read it more easily. If you’re improvising, decide on a method to modulate: for example, perhaps you will come to a rest on a note shared between the keys and modulate there. Perform the music, making the modulation in a manner appropriate to your level of comfort. At first, you may need to stop the music and set up the new key at some length. As you get more comfortable, see if you can simply sing or imagine a single new note of the key or two to “lock in.”

So far, we have focused on strategies for identifying and internalizing the tonic pitch and the pitch collection. These elements provide the foundation for many of the musical relationships found in tonal music as well as how we perceive those relationships. As listeners, our expectation that scale degree 7/ti resolve to scale degree 1/do, that a melody will return to the tonic, or that harmonies within a key will be a particular quality every time they occur are all based on our perception of the tonic pitch and the pitch collection. Given their foundational importance, it is always significant when the tonic note and pitch collection shift. Modulations are like musical earthquakes: they shift the tonal foundations established earlier in the piece, shaking every tonal relationship built upon them. Modulations occur frequently in some genres and infrequently in others. No matter the context, modulations provide delightful challenges to listeners that invite them to explore the meaning of the music’s change. Modulations occur when either the tonic or pitch collection changes. Modulations can occur only once in a long section, as is common in sonata-form expositions or operatic arias, or very frequently, as is typical of sonata developments and operatic recitatives. Knowing something about the genre can help you predict whether or not, and where, a modulation is likely to occur. Likewise, knowing where you are in the musical form can help you anticipate whether a modulation is likely to occur in the middle of a phrase or between phrases. As you listen, always be on the ready for both! In this section, we will focus on developing the ability to hear that a modulation has occurred. In addition, we will learn some strategies for identifying the new (destination) key of a modulation. As earth-shaking as modulations may be, they are surprisingly easy to miss when listening to pieces from the repertoire. In many cases, composers change only a single note to create a modulation, and modulations are common enough in certain styles that they may seem to blend in to the context. Keep all this in mind: when we listen for modulations, we have to know precisely what to focus on in the music to perceive that it has changed. Let’s dive in! You may find that you have a decent intuition as to when the key changes. But if not, or to refine that intuition a bit, try simply extending your perception of tonic into the listening process. Early in this chapter, you developed some tools for finding the tonic. As you listen, try singing or audiating scale degree 1/do loudly in your voice and inner ear, and maintain an awareness of the collection of notes that surround scale degree 1/do. Also listen for those elements that reinforce scale degree 1/do, including the presence of do/1 in the bass, at the end of melodies, at many cadences, and as the stable note to which scale degreee 7/ti and scale degree 2/re resolve. When a piece of music modulates, almost all of those elements will change, causing the pitch that used to be scale degree 1/do to feel like a different scale degree. Remember: the pitch that was scale degree 1/do may still feel quite “at home” in the new key, but its scale degree identity, and all the tonal relationships that surround it, will have suddenly changed.

Goal: Develop a sensitivity to when sounding music modulates to a new key. Instructions: Listen to songs from the playlist below. For each, identify the location (in minutes:seconds) at which you feel that the piece has modulated. As you start, you should aim to identify the modulation by ear within 15 seconds of its occurrence in the music. As you progress, aim to hear the modulation

This chapter focuses on five musical elements that profoundly shape our experience of sounds: timbre (pronunciation: ˈtam-bər), envelope, dynamics, register, and texture. These elements (especially the first three) are harder to quantify than elements like pitch, duration, or harmony, for which musicians have conventional symbolic notation. Not surprisingly, these elements often do not receive significant focus in aural skills curricula. The activities in this chapter are designed to help you develop better attentional awareness as a listener and auditory/expressive control as a performer. Why include an entire chapter on these musical elements? It’s been said that one of the most powerful aspects of a text is not what is said, but what is assumed. Similarly, musical elements like timbre, envelope, dynamics, and register have an immediate, visceral impact that seems to bypass the need for critical inquiry. By analogy, if a random stranger were to suddenly yell in your face (as once happened to an author in a metropolitan center), you might pause to consider why the event is happening (or how to escape it), but you would likely not take time to analyze the intensity or grain of the voice. You just feel its brute force. The same goes for timbre, envelope, dynamics, and register. We call these features the “materiality” of sound, given their analog to the feeling or touch of different materials used in textiles or plastic arts. Thinking about the materiality of sound also invites listeners to consider the relationship between these sonic elements and the instruments, voices, performers, and actions that create them. Notably, elements such as timbre, dynamics, and register lend themselves well to scientific visualizations that rely on graphic representation rather than staff notation. Unfortunately, such visualizations—which include spectrograms and waveforms—are complicated and not commonly used in music education, so they are not ideal as source material. Instead, we will use descriptions and metaphorical language. This chapter is currently much shorter than it would be if we ourselves had better training in these elements of music. We hope in future work to expand the chapter, particularly to include materials related to sound processing and effects.

Identify instruments by ear. Describe timbres using metaphorical language. Describe the envelope of a musical sound. Describe the dynamic range used within a particular passage or texture. Describe the registers used in a piece of music and how they change throughout the song. Identify common textures by ear. Create and manipulate sounds by simultaneously morphing two “material” elements (timbre, dynamics, register).

Timbre refers to a sound’s unique sonic properties or characteristics. We might use words like bright, grainy, mellow, dark, rich, or brash to describe the sound of a particular instrument or voice. In each case, we are describing the timbre of the sound. Timbre is created in part by the combination of overtones that naturally reverberate above the base sound, called the “fundamental.” The intensity of each overtone is dependent on numerous factors, including the shape and material of the instrument, the ways in which resonance is created and sustained by the instrument, and external factors such as how the instrument is held, the recording technologies used to process sounds, and the space in which it is played. (Recording technologies and performance spaces function as secondary instruments, as they shape the way a sound reverberates and is perceived.) The first two activities below invite you to explore and

Sing a steady pitch for 10 seconds using one single breadth. As you sing, enunciate the following long vowel sounds, slowly morphing from one sound to the next: A – E – I – O – U. (As you manipulate the sounds, be sure not to change the pitch or dynamic.) Describe the timbres that you created while singing each vowel. Describe any salient hybrid timbres that you noticed as you were transitioning between vowels.

Choose an instrument that you know how to play. Play what you would consider a “normal” sound on the instrument and describe its timbre. In some cases, it may be appropriate to describe the “attack” of the note differently than its “sustain.” Explore the timbral range of the instrument (including extending techniques) by creating as many unique sounds as you can. The challenges below might help: How many timbres can you create on a single pitch? How does the instrument’s timbre change when increasing or decreasing the volume/intensity of the sound? After completing one or both of the activities above, we encourage you to reflect on your experience by considering how you might create and manipulate timbres more intentionally as you perform. How often do you use timbre to help color or express the musical idea? Are there pieces that you are currently playing that invite you to use widely different timbres? How often do you audiate the timbre of the sound before you play in addition to the pitch, dynamic, etc.? As you prepare a piece for performance, how might you use timbre to add greater dimension to the sound of your performance? One way that musicians regularly exercise their ability to distinguish timbre is by aurally identifying the sounds of different instruments. The better one can identify instruments or voice types in a band, orchestra, or choir by ear, the better one’s sensitivity to subtle but impactful timbral differences.

Goal: Identify instruments and instrument families by ear, and develop descriptive vocabulary for timbre. Instructions: Listen to Benjamin Britten’s A Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. Describe the timbral qualities of each of the instrument groups (woodwinds, brass, strings, percussion) and individual instruments that are used during the presentation of the theme and variations. Goal: Compare timbres by ear Before you start: Download some sampled sounds from an open-access sound library such as or sample them from real pieces. The sounds can be produced either with acoustic or electronic instruments. Instructions: Listen to the various sounds, compare their timbres (sound qualities) independent of other parameters like pitch, and create two collections: the first collection should contain three samples that have highly similar timbres, and the second should contain three sounds with highly distinct timbres. Optionally, explain your choices to a friend.

The “” of a particular sound is defined by four distinct qualities: attack, sustain, decay, and release. Within each of these qualities is a spectrum of possibilities, all of which can combine into a seemingly infinite array of sound articulations. While this framework is primarily used to create electronic sounds, the terminology is also useful in describing acoustic sounds. The attack refers to the beginning of the sound. Attacks can be hard and percussive, soft or nearly silent (e.g. a sound that fades in), or anywhere in between. The attack spans from the onset of the sound to its “peak” (the point of highest intensity), after which the decay begins. This span often happens quickly, but it can also be stretched over time. Decay refers to a rapid decrease in the sound intensity that occurs immediately after the peak of the attack. Sounds created on percussive or plucked instruments (e.g., piano, harp, xylophone, cymbals, gong) feature a natural decay. For wind instruments, the decay of a sound can occur due to the changes in air support or availability. Sustain refers to the portion of the sound following the delay. The sustain features a relatively constant intensity and may be characterized by different qualities and effects, such as fluctuations of dynamics/intensity, vibrato, or timbral change. Percussive or plucked instruments do not allow for any sustain, while others (e.g. stringed and electronic instruments) can sustain notes seemingly indefinitely. Finally, the release refers to the end of the sound. Releases can range from hard stops to slow fade outs with soft or near-silent endings.

Sound waves have two distinct qualities: their frequency, which determines pitch, and amplitude, which determines the intensity of the sound. Musicians typically call the intensity of the sound its dynamic, and like other elements discussed in this chapter, it is easy for musicians to take dynamics for granted. After all, many musicians have been learning to plan piano and forte since their very first lesson. Nevertheless, dynamics are an impactful element of sounds. Sudden changes in dynamics can startle and scare, and the combination of different dynamics can create a unique sense of spatiality within a piece, even if all the parts are played by the same performers (such as in a solo piano piece). In the 20th century, composers applied serial techniques (a specific kind of musical ordering) to dynamics, such that specific sounds would be performed along a broad dynamic spectrum from ppppp to fffff. Although we may sometimes take the dynamics of a piece for granted, they are nevertheless an iconic element of some pieces. Imagine, for instance, Johannes Brahms’s Lullaby or John Williams’s Jaws motive performed at ff, or Led Zepplin’s “Black Dog” sung at a mellow mp. In fact, it is difficult to imagine almost any piece of music for which its dynamics are not an integral part of its expressive content. Listening carefully to dynamic contrasts is critical for both performers and conductors. Performers can use dynamics to shape phrases, delineate musical sections, and create express effects (e.g., surprise, quietude, intensification). Conductors and performers alike must shape dynamic levels across multiple parts to create balance, textural clarity, and effective voicing. In addition to the activities below, we encourage you to be mindful of dynamic usage, shaping, and contrast as you perform and listen to music, whether in solo or ensemble settings. Developing an aural awareness and expressive control with regard to dynamic range can enhance your skills as a performer and listener. Choose a piece of music that you are currently learning. Study the dynamics on the score, but also make note of how you are already using dynamics to shape musical phrases, sections, or the piece as a whole. Also note any areas where you are using dynamics to balance musical parts within the texture, voice harmonies, and create contrast (or similarity) between sections. Create and record three unique renditions of your piece by changing the way you are using dynamics with respect to one or more elements noted in step #2. Listen to the recordings and describe the differences between each of them. List any moments that were particularly effective and note how you used dynamics to create that performance.

How does the use of dynamics create or obscure textural clarity? How does the use of dynamics create a sense of space (with some instruments being closer or farther from the performer)? How does the use of dynamics enable you to hear more or fewer lines at the same time? In cases where multiple melodies occur simultaneously, how do the dynamic contours of each melody relate to and align with one another? For example, are the melodies all shaped in similar ways? Do the dynamic contours overlap, or are they offset in expressive ways? Playlist notes: The second movement of Charles Ives’s Piano Trio is titled TSIAJ, which stands for “This Scherzo is a Joke.” The movement quotes around fifty tunes popular in New England in the early 20th century; many of these tunes are often performed simultaneously. When listening to Strauss’s Don Quixote, variation III, focus on the music that comes shortly after the 3:36 mark. At this point, Don Quixote’s loyal sidekick, Sancho Panza, is finishing giving the main character some friendly, practical advice. Don Quixote interrupts, reminding Panza that their adventures are motivated by chivalric ideals and ultimately, by the lovely Dulcinea, who

Register can be described in general terms as the “highness” or “lowness” of a particular sound or figure (motive, theme, pattern). These terms, of course, reflect a particular culturally- defined conception of sounds as mapping to a vertical space in which sounds move “up and down” to “higher and lower” sounds; other metaphors for mapping sound relationships exist in other cultures. Register can also be defined using the particular octave in which a pitch or figure occurs. When appropriate, we’ll use a system called which has become commonplace in music theory classrooms. In this system, middle C is labeled C4, and the notes above middle C retain the label “4” until the C an octave higher is reached (D4, E4…B4, C5). These labels can be used somewhat flexibly to identify the register of specific pitches or musical figures. For example, a musical motive that occurs throughout the piece might be tagged by the register of its starting pitch. Noting the register in which certain musical elements occur within a piece can help you discover significant processes at work in a composition.

In what register does important material occur and reoccur? Are there important locations where new registral high (or low) points are achieved? Are these points significant or “hard earned”? What is the registral space implied by a piece at its opening? Is there a registral “ceiling” or “floor” suggested by the piece, and does the piece work within those limits or move beyond them? How is register influenced by the instruments for which the music is composed? What is the range of each instrument, and which registers within that range does the composer employ?

Goal: Develop a sensitivity to register in music. Instructions: Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 3 in C major (Op. 2, no. 3) begins with a primary theme that seems constricted primarily to the C4–C5 register throughout (mm. 1–12). How does the rest of the piece unfold with respect to registers?

Like timbre, musical texture is often described qualitatively with terms like thick or thin, transparent, heavy, busy, solo, and so on. Each of these terms is useful in so far as it describes a salient feature of the music. Musicians sometimes use a set of technical terms to identify common textures. These terms are not perfect, particularly because they were defined by people with a certain cultural worldview, but they are common in discourse on music and worth learning. Below, each of these terms is defined and exemplified with a sound library. (We are grateful to the authors of Open Music Theory for some of the examples below.) Homophony (Melody + Accompaniment): One of the most common textures used in classical, folk, jazz, and popular music alike, this texture is often simply referred to as “homophony.” Homophonic music features a clearly distinguishable melody along with accompanimental layers. While the accompanimental layers may have some interesting musical lines of their own (such as the bass line), these lines do not rival the melodic independence and ornamentation of the primary melodic line. Homophony (Chordal): Often referred to as “chordal homophony,” this texture features melody and accompanying lines that move mostly in the same rhythm, creating a hymn- like texture. Even in these cases, most listeners are conditioned to hear (and sing) the top line as the melody, and it is understood that the lower musical lines provide harmonic and contrapuntal support to the top melodic line. Despite that all of the lines are moving in a similar rhythm, the middle and bass voices play a supporting role and do not have the same melodic force as the top voice. (Bohemian Rhapsody: 0–0:16 only) Polyphony: Polyphonic music features multiple lines of similar melodic content, quality, interest, and/or elaboration that are layered (often at different registers) within the texture. Each line of music moves autonomously and independently from the other voices, with no line serving a subordinate role to other voices. Monophony (simple): Simple monophonic textures feature straightforward melodic lines, either performed by a single voice (here, a real singer) or instrument, or by multiple voices in unison. Sometimes, multiple instruments play the same melody at different octaves or registers. Even so, the texture is still considered to be monophonic (simple). Below are some examples of simple homophony. Monophony (compound melody): Often in the Baroque style, composers would write music for a single instrument, but despite that only one note is playing at most times, multiple lines (melody, bass, and sometimes harmonies) are suggested. Here are some examples: Heterophony: Heterophony is very closely related to monophony, especially those simple monophonic textures in which multiple instruments play the same melodic line. The difference is that in heterophonic textures, the instruments play approximately the same melody line, but some parts might add embellishments, rhythmic changes, or other minor changes. In heterophony, the parts sound alike and identifiable with one another, but they are not exactly the same (register differences aside). When identifying textures in music, keep in mind that pieces can freely move between textures both between and within musical sections. Rarely will music limit itself strictly to a single texture, though “textbook” examples of each type do exist. When asked to identify the texture of a particular excerpt in class or during assessments, focus on the texture that is exemplified by a majority of an excerpt.

Experts typically think of memory as two interconnected systems. On the one hand, there’s working memory, which is focused on what you’re doing right now. Scientists used to talk about “short-term memory,” but then they noticed that when you’re (for example) trying to focus on remembering a phone number while also doing a math problem, the memory and the math will interfere with each other. This suggests that whatever brain mechanisms are required for short-term memory are also required to work with information and transform it. Music relies on our working memory constantly, as we process sounds we’ve just heard, written notes we are reading, the signals of our ensemble-mates and/or conductor, and more. On the other hand, there’s long-term memory. This is most obviously relevant when we memorize a piece of music and can still perform it from memory two weeks later. But long-term memory is also an important support for working memory. Working memory is limited: evidence suggests that our working memory can store and work with about 3–4 items at a time. If you could only work with 3–4 notes at a time, that would be very limiting! But your long-term memory stores the many patterns that you’ve gotten used to throughout your musical life—common chord progressions, cadence patterns, types of melodic decorations, the feeling of different meters, and more. Once something like this is defined as a “chunk” in your long-term memory, your working memory can work much more efficiently: instead of each note or chord or whatever filling an entire “item” in your working memory, you can now consider the entire chunk as a single “item” and thereby fit a lot more information into your working memory. Believe it or not, “chunking” is an official, technical term that people who focus on the brain use. It may sound silly, but it is incredibly useful in helping us work with more stuff at a time in our working memory. Fitting more stuff in our working memory allows us to process music more efficiently, but it also can help us be more musical, as it can help us focus on the relationships between notes rather than seeing them each as a thing in and of itself. So in this section we will be working a lot with this most unofficial-sounding technical term: “chunking.”

Describe heard or notated music in “chunks.” Define some of the most common chunk types: contour-based, harmony-based, NCTs, rhythmic cells, etc. Describe how to reinforce musical memory through different ways of conceptualizing music (sound, solfege, physical motion, etc.) Remember and sing back a pre-planned portion of a heard melody (“extractive listening”). Describe how to improve one’s long-term memory of music.

In the introduction to this chapter, we explained the importance of “chunks.” Anytime you’re thinking of music in groups of notes, rhythms, articulations, etc., you’re chunking. Chunking is relevant anytime we think about music, whether we are improvising, reading from notation, or listening. Whatever you’re paying attention to as you decide what groups together is likely useful! But in this section, we’ll define some common specific chunk types that many musicians find helpful. You may or may not find these easy to spot/hear at first, and that’s ok—as we work with the various parameters of music throughout the text, this should get easier. One more note before we get into the chunk types: there is always more than one way to describe/think about a passage of music. Sometimes we may focus on a repeated rhythmic chunk; the next time through the music we may be drawn to a melodic pattern; then later, we may notice how harmonies are implied in the melody in standard ways. Embrace, and experiment with, different ways of understanding music. A proposed short list of common important chunk types:

common than others. Whenever we notice common/ familiar rhythms, we can understand them as “chunks.” We’ll focus explicitly on these most common rhythms in . In addition, you might find that a given piece of music has a rhythmic pattern, likely short (2–4 beats), that comes back over and over (often called a “rhythmic motive”). This, too, is a great opportunity to understand that as a chunk whenever it returns. Scale fragments. Passages of music that move by step through the scale, particularly if they only move in a single direction, can be understood as chunks. For example, such a chunk might be “a stepwise run from scale degree 1/do up to scale degree 5/sol.” Non-chord tone formulas. If you’ve studied such as neighbor tones, double-neighbor tones, and suspensions, you can use your knowledge to group these as chunks, too. (Passing tones can be useful too, but they also fit into the larger category of “scale fragments.”) Harmony-based chunks. If you’re able to identify chords, you’ll notice that there are certain ways that they tend to be reflected in a melody. This is true whether there is an accompaniment that clearly defines chords or whether the harmonies are merely implied by the melody. For example, some melodies are actually simple arpeggiations of chords. Others may require some interpretation (say, noticing non-chord tone formulas and how they relate to the implied chords). Regardless, seeing a large group of notes as tied together by a single harmony or common harmonic progression can be a very powerful way of chunking music.

Come up with a series of chunks based on the types listed above (in a group, have one student do this). You do not need to be able to hear them in your head yet (though that’d be great), just list them: for example, “Scalar fragment from scale degree 5/sol up to 1/do; repeat a rhythmic motive a few times; then arpeggio down the dominant triad to create a half cadence.” Sing or play the resulting melody, focusing on these chunks (in a group, have a different student do this). Any description in chunks will likely leave some room for interpretation; note that the example in step 1 sometimes leaves rhythm undefined and sometimes leaves open different pitch interpretations. You may fill in any gaps with your own ideas. In a group of more than two students, have another student play the melody as well. They can either try to play it the same as the previous student (using their knowledge of chunks to help them remember exactly what was done) or interpret it slightly differently. Goal: Get used to using chunks to improve your memory of heard melodies. Before you start: You’ll need a source of melody. It can be improvised by a classmate, played from a recording, or some other source. Instructions: Listen to a short melody (ideally 1–2 phrases). Describe the melody in chunks as best you can. You can either try to draw on the list of chunk types defined above, or more informally ask yourself, “How would I describe what the music did, in as few words as possible?” Listen to the melody again, doing your best to note anything you may have missed the first time around. Describe in chunks again. See if you can sing back the melody. As you get more comfortable with this task, you can challenge yourself by working with longer and longer melodies. But don’t worry if you seem to hit a limit; perceptually meaningful chunks cannot be infinitely long.

Goal: Get used to seeing chunks in notated music, improving both our memory and our musicality when performing. Before you start: Find a manageable excerpt of notated melody. “Manageable” likely means 1–2 phrases/4–8 measures, without many accidentals, but you can scale to your level of comfort. The excerpt can be chosen from a , most of which are pretty good at isolating manageable amounts of music, or from “real music.” Instructions: Look over the excerpt, scanning for chunks. If you have a partner/groupmate, describe the chunks aloud. You can either rely on the chunk types defined above, or more informally answer the question, “How would I describe what the music does in as few words as possible?” If you have a partner/groupmate,

In the previous section, we drew your attention to some particularly common types of musical chunks. But musical patterns go well beyond this list, and many of them are too nuanced to capture in a short, descriptive list. The best way to create an internal library of “chunks” to use and notice in future music-making is simply to learn lots and lots of patterns that are common in music. And, in fact, not just to learn them, but to deeply internalize them, and to associate them with instrument-based kinesthetic imagery and solfège to reinforce and enrich them. Many traditional aural skills classes ask you to learn lots of music (often called “prepared singing”) to build your internal auditory imagery vocabulary in this way. Unfortunately, many such common patterns are specific to different kinds of music: classical music has contrapuntal sequences and galant schemata, popular music has common chord loops, jazz has “the lick” and other stock phrases, and more. Different teachers will have different priorities. But regardless of any given teacher’s instructions here, anyone can build their vocabulary by simply learning as much of the music they are interested in as possible.

Goal: Integrate thinking about chunks into your broader musical life to build your awareness of chunks in the music you work with regularly. Instructions: As you go about your musical life, identify opportunities to notice chunks. These might include practice time on your primary instrument, ensemble rehearsals, and even (if you feel like it) recreational listening. At least at first, it’ll be helpful if you have time to think when the music isn’t sounding, such as during portions of ensemble rehearsal when some other section is working out an issue. During this time, think about the music you heard most recently, and try to describe it in chunks. You might take either an informal (“describe what the music does in as few words as possible”) or a systematic (“find all the non-chord tone patterns”) approach.

Goal: To increase exposure to many songs in a certain genre so that one can start to pick up on common melodic and/or harmonic patterns. This will also help with one’s ability to “predict what might come next” in a piece of music. Before you start: Find a recording of music that you are unfamiliar with; maybe a new piece of repertoire or a song suggested by a friend. Instructions: Listen to just the first line or two of the music. Try to sing back the melody of the first two lines (or as far as you can remember). This may be challenging after just one exposure to the piece. Do not be discouraged! Now, listen to the same passage again, but pay attention to either the contour of the melody or certain intervals between pitches. Do certain intervals or chunks of the melody remind you of another piece of music? Maybe there is a popular song or favorite symphony that uses the same interval or stretch of 3 notes? Try to sing/play the melody again keeping in mind the associations and intervallic relationships you listened for in the previous step. Continue this process of chunking the piece and playing/singing back, Perhaps repeat these steps but instead of listening to the melody, pay attention to the harmonic speed (the pace at which chords change). Find another unfamiliar piece of a similar genre and complete the same process. After listening to a couple different pieces of music from similar genres in this manner, what patterns are you noticing? Are these patterns helping you “predict” what will come next in the piece? Were there moments in the piece where you were surprised by what came next? Has your capacity to memorize certain passages become any easier from noticing patterns? Questions to ponder. (Can

Goal: To practice predicting the harmonic or melodic contour of a piece in real time for many different pieces in a genre of choice. Before you start: Find a recording of a piece of music that you are unfamiliar with; maybe a new piece of repertoire, a new song in your ensemble, or a song suggested by a friend. Instructions: While the song is playing, listen for one or two lines and then begin humming along with the piece. You can take an approach focused on melody or focused on harmony. Melody: Even if it sounds messy, try humming the melody with the piece as it is playing. Or, for an added challenge if this is an ensemble piece, try tuning in to your voice part or instrumental line and humming the pitches with your part (in an octave that is comfortable for you. Harmony/Chords: Try humming notes that fit in each chord. Often, you will be able to hum the same pitch in successive chords; see if you can predict, however, where you will need to move to a new pitch in order to fit. In review, how challenging was this exercise for you? Which was harder: following the melody or following the harmony/chords? Would you do this exercise differently next time?

Our memories are most robust and reliable when they are reinforced and enriched, over and over, in different ways. This is for two reasons. First, reinforced and enriched memories have more ways to be cued and connect to more kinds of meaning. Second, having different but associated ways of understanding music gives us different ways of thinking about it at different times. Your brain has several mechanisms for working with information and planning action in the moment, but they are all limited; if one mechanism is overloaded, a musician with multiple ways of thinking about music can rely on another. For example, if you are in an ensemble and preparing for your next entrance, your ability to imagine sound may be overwhelmed by the other sounds people are performing all around you, but you may be able to feel more ready for the entrance by imagining it through physical motion or solfège/scale degrees. If you have played some instrument for many years, you may be able to make your internal image of sound more robust by either playing an “air” version of the instrument (for example, forming your fingers to hit the right keys on your saxophone or piano) or even just imagining playing the instrument. This type of reinforcement, called Instrument-based kinesthetic imagery, helps your sound-image connect with physical motion, giving you two different ways of understanding and encoding in memory. One more method that can be useful is getting really familiar with solfège and scale degrees (as recommended in Chapter 3). The more you practice solfège, the more it will help you store, and think about, music in different, mutually- reinforcing ways. In the end, if you have these ways of thinking about music, they can be just as powerful as the ability to hear realistic sounds in your head.

Goal: To hear a sound and quickly be able to map it to physical motions on an instrument and solfège. Before you start: You’ll ideally want a group for this activity. It can work with voices or instruments or any combination, but will work best if everyone has access to an instrument on which they can track whole and half steps.

Each member of the group silently comes up with a string of 3–5 notes that they can either sing or play on their instrument. The string of notes should all fit and make sense in a single key. One person performs their string of notes (twice if the string is hard to remember). Then the rest of the group takes a silent 30 seconds to do the next two steps. (If those steps are not working well, it may help to do them aloud with trial-and-error at first, but our goal is to eventually make them silent.) First, figure out how to play it back. If working on relative pitch, you may do so at any pitch level. If there are multiple people in the group, it may be useful for the first person to indicate the starting concert pitch so that everyone can work it out at the same pitch level. Then figure out how to describe it in solfège. There may be multiple different solutions: for example, scale degrees 3-2-1 (mi-re-do) could also be heard, without any other context, as scale degrees 6-5-4 (la-sol-fa). Everyone then plays the string of notes aloud

Goal: Build strong connections between your conception of key on your primary instrument and solfège. Before you start: This is a group activity. It will work, and has different benefits, with both voices and instruments. Working vocally will exercise your internal “map” of key, while working on an external instrument will integrate a clearer understanding of half and whole steps into this map. Instructions:

the vocal patterns suggested in chapter 3. Someone in the group calls out a short (3–6-note) string of solfège syllables/scale degrees. Everyone else plays/sings back the requested notes. (If necessary, it’s ok to take a few seconds to work this out before playing.) Repeat steps 2–3 several times, but if you’re practicing this for very long, make sure to change keys every once in a while and go back to step #1. Suggestion: also try the inverse of this activity. That is, after establishing a key, someone plays a short string of notes in the key, and everyone else figures out how those notes would be represented in solfège/scale degrees. Goal: From notation, generate a robust internal concept of the intended sound using solfège and instrument-based kinesthetic imagery Before you start: Select a piece of notated music that you are currently studying on your primary instrument. The piece should be one you haven’t memorized, and it’s great if you are only just starting to work on it. We’re going to use solfège, so double- check that it at least starts in a clear key, with a level of chromaticism (sharps/flats/naturals outside the key signature) that you are comfortable with. Choose a phrase to work with; in many cases, the first theme/phrase will work. Instructions: Solfège: determine the solfège syllable/scale degree of each note in the melody. Ideally, it’d be great to imagine singing the whole thing on solfège in rhythm, but we haven’t worked on sight-reading skills yet, so it’s fine if you just do this out-of-time. Then either sing or subvocalize through the melody on solfège; if subvocalizing, try to hear it in your head. Instrument-based imagery: go through the melody again, this time using instrument- based kinesthetic imagery. Depending on your level of comfort, you may either imagine playing your instrument, play an “air” version of your instrument, or actually use the instrument itself without making sound. (If your primary instrument is the voice, you may either use another comfortable instrument or subvocalize, making sure to use good technique.) As you do so, try to hear the melody in your head. Finally, play the melody normally. As you do so, can you hear solfège syllables in your head?

It’s never possible to pay attention to everything. Instead, most of the time, we pay attention to a few things (that we are hearing, seeing, feeling, etc.), and our brains fill in the rest of what’s going on with their best guess. Certain cognitive principles affect what our brains most naturally pay attention to: for example, in sound, we’re more likely to pay attention to something loud, high, or unusual rather than something quiet, low, or common. But as musicians, there are times when we want to pay attention to something in particular whether or not it’s what our brains default to. For example, when leading an ensemble in rehearsal, we might hear that there’s a mistake in an inner part near the beginning of a phrase and want to listen closely to that part rather than the melody to figure out what’s going on. The ability to control our attention and manage what we remember in this way is called extractive listening. We’ve already talked about the attentional skills needed for extractive listening, in . But we need our memory skills, too, because we want to retain whatever we’re listening for so that we can act on it. This is a challenge, though, because sometimes there’s a lot of memory interference. For example, if we’re listening for something that happens near the beginning of a melody, our brains will be tempted to forget it as we hear the rest of the melody. The best way to preserve our memory of something in the face of interference is to build as robust a representation of that thing in our memory as possible. That means not just paying attention to raw sound (though it is important), but pairing that inner sound image with other representations: an understanding of how that portion of the music might be chunked, its solfège syllables or scale degrees, how it would feel to play it on an instrument or sing it, etc.

Goal: Practice using instrument-based kinesthetic imagery, solfège, chunking, and attentional focus to retain a portion of a melody in memory despite interference. Before you start: Choose some excerpt of music (at least melody; accompaniment/harmony optional) that is too long to remember as a whole. If you are working with a group, this could be a song that another student knows that you are unfamiliar with. If you are working alone, it might be a recorded song

Before you listen, set an intention to listen to the first phrase or sub-phrase of the melody. Keeping in mind that you will need to retain this music in memory despite listening through the rest of the music, plan how you will reinforce your memory in the face of this interference. Will you focus on paying attention to chunks? Imagining what it would feel like to play the music on an instrument? Describing it on solfège? Listen through, doing your best to remember that first phrase or sub-phrase, then see if you can sing it back. If you have difficulty, think about whether other methods might have been more helpful, then repeat this step. If you are having difficulty, you can scaffold this activity by making the interference more or less prominent. For example, if you cannot seem to retain the music in memory, try turning the music

If working memory only allows us to store and work with 3–4 bits of information at a time, how in the world can people memorize a several-minute-long piece of music and perform it without notation? Honestly, it’s a pretty impressive feat. But the basic answer is that this ability develops from complex interactions between working memory and long-term memory. Those interactions are complex enough that we only have a limited understanding of the process, but we can give some advice. First, as with chunking, the more that you can think of the music in larger groups rather than individual notes, the less taxing it will be on your memory. Many of the chunks we’ve described here are still fairly short, on the order of 3–5 notes. But there are ways of focusing on larger units of music: in particular, focusing on how it feels to perform the music may help us group entire phrases into physical gestures. Second, there are techniques proven to reinforce long-term learning in fields outside of music that are likely helpful in music memorization as well. Most prominently, these include , mixed , and . Finally, remember that memories need to be cued: we typically think of something stored in long-term memory when we are presented with something associated with that memory. At any point in a piece of music where you think memory may falter, think about what might cue your memory of what’s supposed to happen next. Breaks between sections of a piece of music are one location where memory often fails: you might think about what in the ending of the first section will call forth your memory of the second. Sections that are similar but with slight differences are also tricky. What will trigger/cue your memory of the differences, and how will those triggers/cues differ between the two similar sections? Practice these methods with music you are learning. Some of them are difficult and may not feel productive in the moment—mixed practice, in particular, is often experienced as less productive than repeating the same thing over and over—but they really do work, long-term!

In this chapter, we’ll be working on the connections among sounds in our heads, sounds we make, and sounds we hear. (For this chapter, those sounds are largely pitches without concern for rhythm, which we work on elsewhere.) The more we can make these connections, the better our tuning will be, the more we’ll be able to work with music internally, and the more we’ll be able to engage in immediate ways with music as it is happening by reducing friction between hearing, imagining, and performing. As in some previous chapters, we’ll use the voice quite a bit here. There are three helpful aspects of the voice: it is controlled by the brain with minimal mediation through external structures, it is particularly connected to our ability to imagine sound in our heads, and it can slide continuously up and down, so it facilitates thinking about tuning. If your brain-voice connection isn’t really working, you will have more challenges here, but you may be able to get similar benefits from an instrument with the ability to produce a continuous range of sounds, such as an unfretted string instrument or a theremin. We will also benefit, however, from making connections to non-voice instruments. Such instruments can help vocalists to visualize relationships among notes, and help other musicians connect their internally imagined sound to their understanding of their primary instrument to improve tuning. So we will often ask you to go back and forth between your voice and your primary instrument. Keep in mind the differences between instrument timbres as you do these activities. In particular, it will be difficult to focus on tuning on an instrument with a sharp attack that then quickly gets quieter like the guitar, marimba, or piano. You will likely need to focus your tuning efforts on using your voice or another instrument with a more sustained sound that you also feel comfortable with.

Match a pitch they hear, thinking about tuning, timbre, and dynamics. Imagine a tone or short string of music in their head (“audiate”). Retain a string of music in memory (can demonstrate through sing-backs, play-backs), with or without different kinds of interference such as intervening time and sound Imagine a desired string of music based on notation Alter imagined music in terms of rhythm, pitch, timbre, dynamics, and more Use internalized physical and knowledge- based models to strengthen internal hearing pitch and rhythm call and response Use internal auditory imagery to improve tuning Adjust equal-tempered tuning to other approaches as appropriate to make chords

We start by simply matching pitch. We find this a useful activity to prime the connections between heard, imagined, and performed sound, and to start focusing on tuning. Tuning can be intuitive—it may just “feel right” when you are perfectly in tune. But if not, it may be helpful to make sure you are listening on good-quality audio equipment, and to listen for in the sound. Those beats should get slower and then disappear as you get more in tune. To hear the beats most clearly, play or hum/sing as pure a sound as you can. Students who have difficulty matching pitch with their voices may benefit from some . Many instrumentalists, in particular, simply haven’t used their voices enough to feel confidently in control of them! If this is true for you, gaining some confidence in the use of your voice should have benefits beyond this activity, as the pitched voice is such a useful way to communicate in music. If you have trouble hearing yourself as you’re trying to match a pitch, try momentarily plugging one ear (be sure not to do this for too long, as it can make it harder to tune with the pitch you want to match). If you need to hear yourself for a longer period of time, stand facing a wall, close enough that you can hear yourself, use your hands to make a bridge between your mouth and your ear, or you could even create a connector out of PVC pipes to connect what you are singing to your ear. One final common difficulty is a phenomenon coined by choir director Don Brinegar as “.” Sometimes, especially with an overtone-rich instrument like the piano or a strong voice, it is difficult to recognize the fundamental pitch. If this seems to be a problem for you (for instance, if someone points out to you that you are singing a fifth above the desired note), try practicing matching pitch with something that has a clear pitch and is somewhat breathy, such as a vocal falsetto or pure, straight-tone singing, a recorder, a flute, or an ocarina. Once you feel comfortable with matching pitch on these kinds of instruments, try extending your pitch-matching to other instruments with richer timbres. If you still find vocally matching pitch difficult after working on some basic technique, we recommend first working with a tutor if possible; if things still aren’t working, then you should find another instrument that will be useful in similar ways. If you feel very comfortable with your (non- voice) primary instrument and it has sufficient sustain and tuning variability to focus on tuning, it will likely work fine; if not, you may need to find a digital instrument such as a variable-pitch tuning tone or a theremin.

Open a tone generator with a continuous frequency control (). We recommend setting it to a sine or triangle wave. Find a pitch that is comfortable in your voice, and start humming it or singing it on a pure vowel. Try to keep your breath pressure consistent to keep your tuning as steady as possible. As you do the next few steps, keep humming or singing, simply taking a breath when necessary. Double-check that your volume is not too high, then press “play” on the tone generator. Unless you get really lucky, it will probably not play the same pitch that you are singing. Do your best to determine whether the pitch you are hearing is above or below the pitch you are singing. Slowly drag the frequency slider in the appropriate direction until it is as in tune with your pitch as possible. Once you and the slider are on the same pitch, drag the slider slowly up and down, moving your voice to remain in tune with it. This activity can also be done with an instrument, though if it is not able to slide between notes, you may need to adjust how you do step 5 or skip it altogether. If your instrument occupies your hands so you cannot both play and adjust the slider, you could work with another student, one playing and the other adjusting the tone generator. Open a tone generator and choose a pitch that is in your comfortable range. If you know your choral voice type, the following starting points may be helpful: , , , . (We recommend using a sine or triangle wave.) Double-check that your volume is not too high, then press “play” and listen to the tone. Listening closely, imagine singing or humming along to the tone. What vowel would best match the sound you are hearing? Once you’ve chosen one, prepare your vocal mechanism to sing along. Take a deep, calm breath and sing the pitch on the pure vowel you’ve chosen. As you sing, check the match between your pitch and the sounding pitch. If you can, adjust your tuning to match as closely as possible. You may need to experiment with different vowels. Take a breath when necessary. If you have difficulty matching pitch, return to the activity above. This activity can also be done with an instrument with some minor adjustments.

Goal: Develop vocal control, and listening skills needed to match and sustain a sounding pitch. Before you start: You’ll need a way to hear a sustained complex tone (that is, one that’s richer than the purer tones we were working with above). You might have someone else play a sustained tone on their primary instrument or use a software instrument or synthesizer. If you use an instrument with a loud attack and quick decay such as a piano, marimba, harp, or guitar, it may be difficult to match pitch and work on tuning, but these instruments are often convenient. Instructions: Play a sustained complex tone, or have someone else do so. Once the tone is sounding, imagine singing along. As with the pure tone above, consider how to roughly match the volume and the timbre of the sound through breath support and an appropriate vowel sound. Take a deep, calm breath and sing the pitch, matching its timbre, dynamic, and tone as closely as you can. If you can, adjust your tuning to match as closely as possible. You may need to experiment with different vowels. Take a breath when necessary. There is an online game similar to this activity: the “Single Tones” game on . Note that the game does not allow for octave displacement, but you can adjust your comfortable range of pitches by using the button that looks like a game controller and adjusting the sliders to fit where you are comfortable singing! voice instrument with adjustable pitch. Musicians with fixed-pitch instruments may either choose a different instrument to work with or, if their tuning abilities are already pretty good, compare the note their instrument plays with the desired pitch. Vocalists who do not have an alternative, adjustable-pitch, external instrument should use one of the activities above. Instructions: Just like in the previous activity, someone will give a pitch stimulus. This time, they will also indicate the concert pitch of the note. Using your primary instrument, close your eyes or focus them on a fixed point and imagine yourself playing the given pitch, including embouchure, air, and fingering as appropriate. Play the note on your instrument. If you are using a non-fretted and/or sustained instrument, you should sustain the pitch and adjust it so that it matches the given stimulus.

In the previous section, we worked on matching pitch. Now we’ll go for a different kind of matching: instead of singing the same note you hear, you’ll sing something in tune with it. Again, we urge you to start with your voice here for its relatively direct connection to the brain and ability for continuous pitch changes, but if your brain-voice connection isn’t great, you might get similar benefits from working with an external instrument such as a fretless string instrument or a theremin. Because we’re working with two notes (one you’re tuning to, plus your own sound), we’ll work here with two-note intervals. We’ve put a bunch of links to videos and demonstrations below in the “activities” section to help you hear these; there’s also lots of advice online about how these intervals tend to “feel,” like a sense of “purity” in the perfect intervals, “sweetness” in major thirds, etc. You’ll have to see how things sound to you, but if you hear the intervals in these ways, we encourage you to start by practicing tuning the intervals that tend to sound the “purest” (at least, after the unison): the octave, the perfect fifth, and the perfect fourth. From there, we add the typically more complex-sounding intervals of 3rds and 6ths, and then finally the dissonances. Your instructor may or may not think it’s important to get through all of these. Before we get to these examples, though, we have to ask: what does it mean to be “in tune”? As you may know, instruments with fixed pitch such as the piano and guitar are typically tuned in “,” a tuning system where the relationships of notes within a key are the same in all keys. But when working with an instrument with adjustable pitch such as the voice or fretless strings, we can often get a “purer” sound by adjusting this tuning a bit. If you’re interested in the details of tuning systems, there are websites where you can learn more. But for now, we’ll simply note that there are different approaches to tuning, we’ll give you some examples of different tuning systems below, and you’ll have to base your approach on your and your instructor’s goals. First, choose an interval to work with. We recommend starting with the “perfect” intervals of the octave, perfect fifth, and perfect fourth; then moving to thirds and sixths; and only then adding other intervals. Open one of the links below relevant to your chosen interval, and listen to it. Come up with a verbal description of the “quality” of what you hear. Play the interval again, and this time hum or sing along with the top note or the bottom note. Repeat, matching the other note. Once you have developed some familiarity with a few intervals, move to the activity below and practice generating them. You are encouraged to move back and forth between these activities as you add more and more intervals to your skill set. Resources/Links Perfect intervals:

on which you will be using). Have a classmate play or sing the chosen pitch, or sound it with a tone generator such as . (If using a tone generator, first double check that your volume is not too loud.) As you hear that pitch, imagine the appropriate sound to create the upper note of the interval. Imagine it as vividly and in-tune as you can. Sing or play that upper pitch, adjusting its tuning until it feels “just right” with the lower pitch. Once you are comfortable with this, you can experiment with starting with the upper note of the interval and adding the lower note. This is more difficult for most people.

We move now to short melodies that are each in a key. While you might imagine that a melody is just like putting together several of the notes from the section on matching pitch, studies suggest that the memory mechanisms for these two different kinds of stimuli are different. We find that, with single tones outside of a context, we may be more focused on the “raw sound” itself, while when we hear notes that (potentially) establish a key, we focus more on their relationships. So we’re really working on a different, but complementary, skill here. It may be more difficult to focus on tuning now that we’re drawn to the relationships among notes. That’s ok, because again, we’re building different skills. But as much as you can, keep focusing on making your notes as in-tune as possible, in your head, in your voice, and on your instrument. Goal: Accurately represent internalized sounds in your mind/inner ear and reproduce these vocally (humming or singing) and on an instrument. (Singers may opt for piano or any other instrument with which they are familiar.) Before you start: You’ll need to either work with someone else who has access to an instrument or find another way to listen to short strings of notes. For the final step, it will also be helpful if you have access to your primary instrument. Instructions: Have a friend play a short, diatonic 3–4 note pattern consisting of a mix of steps and leaps. Alternatively, if you are working on your own, find a way to listen to short strings of notes. Listen to their playing, focusing as much as possible at this stage on the sound-as-sound. After listening, take a moment to recall the sound of the melody as vividly as possible. Imagine not only the pitches that you heard, but their timbre, register, envelope (attack, decay, sustain, and release), volume/intensity, and other notable elements of the sound. As you recall what you heard, try to audiate the stimulus as accurately as possible. Hum or sing the stimulus that you are audiating. Feel free to check yourself by having your partner (or the recording) play back the stimulus as you sing it. If there were elements of the stimulus that you could reproduce more accurately, repeat steps 2–3. Using an instrument, find the starting note of the melody and then play it. Go slowly and patiently, giving your ear and body time to integrate. Ideally, the ear should lead, and the body should follow.

Internal auditory imagery, which you’ve already been working with, is sound you imagine in your head. This sound can be more or less vivid, from a faint shadow of the sound to something so realistic that it almost seems like you’re actually hearing it out loud. Whatever the quality of what you can hear in your head, we want you to be able to work with this imagery and strengthen it. Of course, the sounds you hear in your head are not actually sounding externally; instead, they are something your brain puts together from memories of sound that it has stored. This is basically an act of memory. One of the most effective ways to activate your memory is through what’s called cueing. Cueing is when we give our brains a stimulus that is so strongly associated with the desired memory that the brain almost can’t avoid accessing it. For now, we’ll work with two physical types of cues that can be useful for activating musical auditory imagery. The first type of cueing is called subvocalization. To subvocalize a pitch, you actually make all the physical shapes and motions in your vocal mechanism to make the desired sound, but stop just short of actually making it. For example, I’d get my mouth, diaphragm, and throat ready to sing, maybe even breathe in as if I were about to do it, and then instead of actually letting my breath activate my vocal folds, I’ll listen in my head to what it would sound like if I were to do so. You can experiment with exactly which motions are helpful to you. The second type of cueing is called instrument-based kinesthetic imagery. If you have played some instrument seriously for many years, you may be able to cue your memories of its sound by either playing an “air” version of the instrument (for example, forming your fingers to hit the right keys on your saxophone or piano) or even just imagining playing the instrument. Different people will have different levels of success with each of these methods of cueing. For obvious reasons, people with lots of experience singing will have a higher likelihood of success with subvocalization, while instrumentalists with lots of experience will have a higher likelihood of success with instrument-based kinesthetic imagery. Goal: Build the habit of connecting sound/music with physical motion. Before you start: Make sure you have a non-voice instrument. If your primary instrument is voice, you may wish to use another comfortable instrument or practice the other activity below instead. Instructions: Start by choosing a very short passage (3–8 notes) of notated music or planning out a very short passage of improvised music. If improvising, don’t worry about the sound for now—just plan some notes that feel connected in some way (a stepwise passage, some notes in the same key, etc.). Imagine playing this passage on your primary instrument, trying to hear what it would sound like if you were to actually do so. Depending on your goals and your instrument, you may wish to play it in transposition or at the intended pitch. Either is fine. You might experiment with both playing an “air version” of your instrument and imagining playing it—see which one gives you clearer internal auditory imagery of the connection is very tenuous, you may wish to use the activity above instead. You’ll also want to either choose a very short passage (3–8 notes) of notated music or plan out a very short passage of improvised music. If improvising, don’t worry about the sound for now—just plan some notes that feel connected in some way (a stepwise passage, some notes in the same key, etc.). Instructions: Subvocalize the passage; that is, make all the motions your mouth, throat, and torso would need to sing the passage—just don’t actually make the sound. As you do so, try to hear what it would sound like if you were to make the sounds with your voice. Depending on your goals, you may wish to give yourself a starting pitch so you can imagine the sounds as notated, or you may wish to start your internal auditory imagery on another comfortable pitch and simply follow the (transposed) correct intervals/contour from there. Either is fine. Sing through the passage out loud to compare the sound with your imagination. If you didn’t find your imagery to be very

Try to memorize this sentence. Now, try to memorize the following string of letters: Mzeto thtsi emoeri ennets. The second sentence has fewer letters and fewer words but is probably more difficult for you to memorize. This is because our memories work best when they are dealing with known objects. And since internal auditory imagery is essentially an act of memory, the same will be true of this imagery. So one of the best ways to improve your internal auditory imagery is to simply learn lots and lots of patterns that are common in music. And, in fact, not just to learn them, but to deeply internalize them, and to associate them with instrument-based kinesthetic imagery and solfège to reinforce and enrich them. Many traditional aural skills classes ask you to learn lots of music from notation (often called “prepared singing”) to build your internal auditory imagery vocabulary in this way. Unfortunately, many such common patterns are specific to different kinds of music: classical music has contrapuntal sequences and galant schemata, popular music has common chord loops, jazz has “” and ii – V – I patterns, and more. Different teachers will have different priorities. In addition, while the traditional teaching method relies on music notated in sight-reading anthologies and this is what our exercises below focus on, you can internalize patterns aurally as well. Regardless of any given teacher’s instructions here, anyone can build their vocabulary by simply learning as much of the music they are interested in as possible, particularly if they use a method such as solfège to focus their attention on what is “going on” in the music. If the notation-based activities below don’t fit well with your goals, experiment with how to bring this kind of awareness to your own repertoire and music- making.

Find the sections in your sight-reading anthology that focus on leaps within the tonic, dominant, and subdominant triads. (Most anthologies have chapters focused on these.) Learn a series of melodies from each chapter. You may learn them vocally or on an instrument, but you should either be speaking or thinking solfège to make sure you notice how common patterns relate to these scale degrees. You may learn the series of melodies all in a row or, even better, one at a time across several days or weeks. To test whether you have successfully internalized the patterns common to these melodies, try sight reading through other excerpts from these chapters. You are especially encouraged to sing rather than play because using the voice relies primarily on internalized models (our goal) rather than instrument mechanisms. You may wish to look ahead for advice from the

Got internal auditory imagery? Great! (If not, keep revisiting the previous sections of this chapter!) The next step is working on the flexibility of your internal auditory imagery. For example, maybe you can imagine a saxophonist arpeggiating up a major triad. But can you imagine it loud? Quiet? Played by a theremin? Flexibility of auditory imagery is helpful for imagining new sounds and transferring the skill to different contexts. But it can also be a useful challenge for people whose imagery is strong but inflexible. melody. This could be played by a friend or from a recording. As you get more comfortable with internal auditory imagery, you may even be able to generate this internally without actually having to listen to an external sound. Instructions: Listen to a melody. Hear that melody internally as vividly as possible. If you have difficulty, listen to it again. Choose something to change about the melody: dynamics, instrument or timbre, articulation, rhythm, or pitch. Having mentally made the changes, hear the resulting new melody internally as vividly as possible. If you have difficulty, you may wish to hum softly to give your “internal ear” some external reinforcement.

Throughout this chapter, we have been working on the connection between internal imagery and external sound—both what you hear and what you perform. One of the most important applications of this connection is the skill of setting an intention before you perform. We’ll talk about two important applications here. First, tuning. Many expert performers—notably, of strings, winds/brass, and voice—say that you absolutely cannot tune correctly unless you can (internally) hear the note you want to sound before you play/sing it. We can start by practicing with single notes, and then move to phrases: first, imagine what you want to hear, then actually make it happen. Second, shaping. For any instrument, the subtle variations of timing, volume, and articulation that contribute to a more beautiful performance will be more reliable, and more effective, if they are internally imagined beforehand.

Goal: Practice intentional performing guided by your internal auditory imagery. Before you start: Choose a piece of music, either for voice or for your primary instrument (which you may want on hand). Find a short passage—perhaps as few as three notes—that you will be able to hear in your head. If necessary, give yourself the starting pitch. Instructions: Hear the passage in your head as vividly as possible. Practice and repeat this internal hearing as necessary, making decisions about tuning and shaping, until you feel fairly secure in and happy with your mental image. Optionally, hear this internal auditory image one more time as you practice making the motions you would need to perform the passage. Perform the passage, either vocally or on your

Many people used to the fixed tuning of the piano think of tuning as something that’s simply right or wrong. But it’s also possible to get different expressive effects in performance by adjusting your tuning—in ways that can all be, in a sense, equally “right.” Discussions of expressive tuning are particularly prominent in choirs and among fretless string players. Because this isn’t an area we know in great detail, for now we’ll give a few resources here, and then urge you to experiment for yourself! If you have ideas for techniques or resources that would be useful here, please feel free to share them with us.

Beginning musicians are often taught to read rhythms by focusing on individual note durations: quarter notes, eighth notes, half notes, etc. There are good reasons for this, especially if one of our goals is to dive into notated music right away. But it also ignores an important fact about how we tend to listen to music: it’s more natural for our brains to focus on beats than on individual notes. For this reason, aural skills rhythm pedagogy typically focuses instead on what we call “rhythmic cells,” or groups of durations that fill a beat (or other metrical unit such as a half measure). This helps students memorize and internalize the most common ways that beats are divided up into different kinds of meters—learning them as “chunks.” Studying rhythm in this way helps us work with music more efficiently because instead of focusing on each duration in and of itself, we can recognize groups of durations holistically. It’s also easier and more musical for most people, because if we can track a beat, we can understand very quickly how these rhythmic cells fit together; whereas, if we focused on each note separately, we’d have to carefully figure out how each note relates to the meter in order to notate or perform it. While these are all important reasons to focus on rhythmic cells, there will always be rhythms that are either unfamiliar or complicated enough that we haven’t yet internalized them. So we will also address the skill of “subdividing,” to make sure we’re able to work with any situation we are presented with.

Many of the sections of the Rhythmic Cells chapter introduce particularly common rhythms, which we will study as individual “chunks” called “rhythmic cells.” We’ll conceptualize each rhythmic cell in a few different ways: a verbal description, notation, and, when appropriate, a word whose common manner of being spoken might help you understand the rhythm as a whole. The notation appropriate to each rhythmic cell will look different depending on which note value is chosen to represent the beat. For example, in simple meter, the quarter note is most common way to represent the beat, so we’ll be sure to give that visualization. But since different reference points can be used, we’ll also typically give a few other possibilities. We’ll also give each rhythm in “protonotation/shorthand.” These are systems we’ll describe in more detail in a . Finally, we’ll give each rhythm in “rhythmic solmization.” SOLMIZATION help us keep track of either note values or where we are in the meter. Because the approach of this chapter is primarily oriented towards relating to meter, we will give as well as a hybrid system that uses “1 ee and a” for simple meter and “1 la li” for compound meter; we’ll call this latter system simply “Counting Numbers.”

Goal: Consider how different ways of representing rhythm relate to sound and your instincts and preferences. Instructions: Listen to the opening phrase (after the very first chord; approx. 0:04–0:16) of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, movement 2, embedded below. Compare the sound to the visualizations below. Which method(s) of visualizing the rhythm is/are most intuitive to you? What does each one communicate about the rhythm and meter?

Because rhythmic cells are defined by beats, and beats are typically understood within time signatures, we repeat the “Understanding Time Signatures” section from the Meter chapter. The standard model for meter in aural skills instruction is the system of time signatures. Time signatures are a culturally-situated system of describing cycles of beats, measures, and divisions. Unlike some other culturally-situated systems of understanding time in music around the world, time signatures are usually described as an “abstract” representation: while conducting comes close, no one action is associated with beats, downbeats, or beat divisions. This can make them seem universally applicable, but they are not. Time signatures embed a series of assumptions or defaults, including a default that cycles will repeat consistently for significant spans of time and a common association between chord changes and downbeats. Because time signatures embed these cultural assumptions, it is important to make a distinction between time signatures and how we experience music. Sometimes we’ll listen to music and decide things like “this music is in 4/4.” There’s no problem with such language in most situations, but it’d probably be more accurate to say “4/4 would offer a useful model for this music” or “I think whoever made this music was using a framework associated with 4/4.” The top number of a time signature is used to communicate how many divisions are within each beat, and how many beats are contained in each measure. The table below interprets these numbers as if they were always clear and unambiguous, but that’s not always true. 2 and 4 nearly always have the meaning described here. 3 does most of the time, but occasionally it is interpreted as a single compound beat per measure. 6, 9, and 12 are nearly always interpreted as described, but occasionally indicate 6, 9, or 12 beats. In short, learn the “facts” in this table as a default, but be prepared for a messy world.

compound meter, the top number tells us the number of beat divisions in a measure. Other numbers, like 5, 7, and 11, are also possible on the top of a meter sign. Most of the time, these numbers tell us the number of divisions in a measure. For example, 5 often means a beat of 3 divisions followed by a beat of 2 divisions or vice versa, where all the divisions are the same length and the beats vary in length. However, sometimes these numbers indicate the number of beats in the measure. This is messy; you’ll have to use clues like beaming and tempo to determine whether these numbers refer to beats (usually slower tempos) or divisions (usually medium or fast tempos). The bottom number of a time signature tells us what note value represents a beat (simple meter) or a beat division (compound meter). This number will always be a power of 2. Because note values can occur at any speed, you can’t technically hear the difference between 4/4 and 4/8. Nevertheless, in contemporary music-making, there is an assumption that: simple meters usually have 4 on the bottom, meaning the beat is represented by the quarter note, and that compound meters usually have 8 on the bottom, meaning the beat division is represented by the eighth note (and the beat by the dotted quarter, since that is the length of three eighth notes). This assumption, by the way, can help you interpret those complicated 5s, 7s, and 11s on the tops of time signatures. Most often, if 4 is on the bottom, the top number tells you the number of beats in a measure. Most often, if 8 is on the bottom, the top number tells you the number of divisions in a measure. Still, any power of 2 is technically possible on the bottom of the time signature for any meter type. So when we present rhythmic cells, we’ll do so with different time-signature- bottom-number reference points to promote flexibility.

Goal: Associate time signature top numbers with your perception of beats, divisions, and measures. Instructions: Listen to the songs from the playlist below and find the beat, number of beats in a measure, and number of divisions per beat. Once you have determined this information, propose an appropriate time signature top number. You may wish to use the table above for reference.

Our focus in most of this chapter will be on memorizing/ internalizing some of the most common rhythmic cells used in music. But what do we do when presented with something unfamiliar and complicated? The answer: “subdividing,” or using additional reference points within the beat to figure out what’s going on. Subdividing is useful in both reading and listening to music. (It may also be useful in improvisation, but because improvisation is typically done spontaneously, there may not be enough time to stop and ponder subdivisions.) When listening, we can replay the music in our heads, perhaps slowing it down, while subdividing to figure out what’s going on. When reading music, we can use subdivisions to figure out exactly where to place certain notes in time. The most common approach to subdivision is to use the main divisions of the beat as reference points. We can do this in a few ways, but especially at first, we encourage you to use physical motion to track these points in time. For example, you might tap two fingers in succession to keep track of the beat divisions of a simple meter, or three fingers in succession to keep track of the beat divisions of a compound meter. Tapping a surface, with a little more emphasis on the beat than on its other divisions, may also be effective. See what works for you. Just make sure, as you think in divisions of the beat, that you don’t lose track of the beat itself. If this doesn’t make sense, an internet search for counting rhythms through subdivision will bring up some helpful advice, both videos and websites. Once you’re able to locate the divisions of the beat, we then pay attention to exactly when notes happen with reference to these points in time.

Listen to a song from the playlist below and determine its meter, focusing particularly on the relationship between beat and division. Once you’ve figured out the meter, return to the first phrase and listen through, keeping track of the beat. If you can, memorize that first phrase. Goal: Use subdivision to accurately perform complex rhythms. Before you start: You’ll need a notated musical excerpt that features complex, difficult-to-read rhythms. Difficult-to-read rhythms might include lots of ties, dots, beams, and inconsistency. It is helpful to use excerpts from a , as these often have chapters devoted to complex rhythms, quick subdivisions, syncopation, and other difficult-to-read rhythms. However, you may use music for your primary instrument or something else. Instructions: Note the meter of the excerpt, including how the beat will divide. Look through the excerpt’s rhythmic notation, visually locating where the beats occur. If the rhythm is particularly dense, you may wish to mark these above the score with a vertical line. If possible, however, see if you can do this without needing to add markings. Then, look through each beat, visually noticing where each subdivision falls within the notation and how the notes will relate to these subdivisions. Again, if necessary, use some kind of marking to indicate visually where the subdivisions occur, making sure they are less prominent than the beat markings so you can clearly distinguish them. Set up the meter internally, making sure you feel not just the beat and measure but also the beat division before starting. Make sure you do this at a tempo that will allow you to perform the shortest note values. Going as slowly as necessary, read through the excerpt, either with both pitch and rhythm or just reading the rhythms on the vocal syllable “ta” or tapping a surface. Anytime you have difficulty, make sure you are feeling the subdivision internally, and refer to the subdivisions in the notation to help you place the notes correctly. When we focus our attention on beat divisions, we often find our tempo slowing way down. That’s great for working on accuracy, but it may mean we lost track of the beat—an important feature of the music. Make sure you are performing the music at an appropriate speed; if not, then repeat the

Beats in simple meter typically have two equal divisions. Note values (whole notes, half notes, quarter notes, etc.) also divide simply into twos. So in this section, we’ll see lots of ways to divide things in half! In any meter, we can of course get notes that last longer than a beat. We can typically track these simply by counting the number of beats they occupy. Any of the notes in the cells below may be replaced by rests. When this occurs, we simply need to experience the rest as a (silent) part of the pattern. The table below lists four common rhythms in simple meter. The table includes the following ways of understanding each rhythm:

Identify one person to improvise. The improviser comes up with and performs a short rhythm (perhaps 4–6 beats long) made up entirely of the rhythmic cells defined above, plus optionally notes longer than a beat. The other student(s) identifies/identify which cells were used and in what order. If this activity feels too easy, go ahead and add pitches at an appropriate difficulty level to the improvised rhythm.

Goal: Notice when rhythmic cells occur in notated music. Before you start: You’ll need a source of notated melodies or rhythms that primarily use the rhythmic cells listed above. are a good source; Open Music Theory also has appropriate materials . You can do this activity vocally or on another instrument. Instructions: Look over the notation, note the meter, and set up an appropriate sense of meter internally. Scan over the notation, identifying rhythmic cells. Note that some notes in the rhythmic cells may be replaced by rests; you can still call up the “sense” of the rhythmic cell, simply experiencing the silence as part of the pattern. Perform the rhythm, with or without pitch.

Listen to a song from the playlist below and determine its meter. Listen to the first 1–2 phrases of the song and identify the rhythmic cells used and their order. Optionally, identify an appropriate meter, time signature, and durational symbols that represent the music.

Goal: Perform indicated rhythmic cells Before you start: This is a group activity Instructions: Identify a leader. This person will display the defined rhythmic cells in a way that everyone else can see, such as in notation or protonotation on a board. The leader sets up a steady beat, perhaps by conducting, and everyone else aligns themselves with that beat. Once everyone is ready, the leader points at rhythmic cells, and the other participants perform them on rhythmic solfège, on “ta,” or by clapping or tapping. The leader should start by changing slowly, allowing the other participants to settle into each cell by performing it a few times in a row; as people get more comfortable, the pace of change can speed up until you are changing every beat.

Start one of the songs in the playlist below. Pick a rhythmic cell listed above and perform it to the beat of the song playing As you perform the rhythmic cell, listen for where significant changes seem to happen in the music. At these points, change to a new rhythmic cell! If you feel like you aren’t able to hear these points of change while performing the rhythm, that’s ok (we’ll work on listening for form later)—just change when it feels appropriate to you. Continue to switch patterns until you feel comfortable with each of the four cells. If you feel pretty comfortable with the rhythmic cells, you might start performing them one after another or even jumping

Figure 7.15 “ti ti protonotation” by Meghan Hatfield licensed under a . Figure 7.16 “tiri tiri protonotation” by Meghan Hatfield licensed under a . Figure 7.17 “ti tiri protonotation” by Meghan Hatfield licensed under a . Figure 7.18 “tiri ti protonotation” by Meghan Hatfield licensed under a .

“Dotted rhythms” in simple meter are also extremely common. In most styles, it is more common to have the longer (dotted) note fall on the beat and the short note fall right before the next beat (cells S5 and S6 below), but the other way around—having a short note on the beat and the longer note off the beat (cells S7 and S8)—is also common in certain styles. These dotted rhythms are common at different levels of scale. For example, the dotted note could be shorter than a beat (three-quarters of a beat long, followed by a note one-quarter of a beat long) or longer than a beat (a note a beat and a half long, followed by a note a half beat long). To distinguish these, make sure you are carefully tracking the beat, ideally with some kind of physical motion like swaying or conducting. In the takadimi and number rows of the table below, notes that last past the start of the next beat have additional syllables in square brackets: these should be kept track of silently while sustaining the previous note. Once we get to compound meter, we’ll also need to distinguish these “long-short” and “short-long” rhythms from compound-meter versions of those same patterns. Any of the notes in the cells below may be replaced by rests. When this occurs, we simply need to experience the rest as a (silent) part of the pattern.

Identify one person to improvise. The improviser comes up with and performs a short rhythm (perhaps 4–6 beats long) made up entirely of the rhythmic cells defined above, cells defined in the previous section, and optionally notes longer than a beat. The other student(s) identifies/identify which cells were used and in what order. If this activity feels too easy, go ahead and add pitches at an appropriate difficulty level to the improvised rhythm.

Goal: Notice when rhythmic cells occur in notated music. Before you start: You’ll need a source of notated melodies or rhythms that primarily use the rhythmic cells listed above. are a good source; Open Music Theory also has appropriate materials . You can do this activity vocally or on another instrument. Instructions: Look over the notation, note the meter, and set up an appropriate sense of meter internally. Scan over the notation, identifying rhythmic cells. Note that some notes in the rhythmic cells may be replaced by rests; you can still call up the “sense” of the rhythmic cell, simply experiencing the silence as part of the pattern. Perform the rhythm, with or without pitch.