Datasets:

izumi-lab

/

open-text-books

like 15

Follow

Izumi Lab. 15

If you’re able to maintain a stable key (see the section on ), then you’re most likely to make pitch mistakes when either something happens too fast for your brain to process or you’re asked to find a pitch for which your internalized model of key doesn’t provide a ready answer. If things are happening too fast, there’s only so much we can do. Keep practicing, and you’ll be able to think and perform more quickly. But what to do when we’re asked to produce an uncommon or challenging pitch? This question is most relevant when singing. When we are playing an external instrument, most often our fingering and/ or embouchure will help us find that pitch even if we’re not 100% sure where it is. So we’ll focus on finding that pitch when singing. And we’ll assume you don’t have absolute pitch, though the same strategies may be useful for those with absolute pitch in certain circumstances, as when trying to find a certain pitch in transposition. It may be helpful to scan a passage of music before singing through it, to find pitches that are likely to be challenging. These particularly include notes following a large leap, and chromatic notes, especially when following a leap of any size. Finding these pitches accurately almost always comes down

We are usually best at finding the “structural” pitches of a key, particularly scale degrees 1/do and 5/sol. This may be as strong or stronger than #1 in some people: we are often fairly good at finding the pitches of the currently sounding chord (if there is one). From there, the notes that are “diatonic” to the key (in the key signature) are usually the next easiest to find. Finally, “chromatic” notes (marked with an accidental) are typically the hardest to find. Anytime we can find a relationship between a tough note and a more secure category on this list, we can use that relationship to find the pitch. For example, if there is a large leap to scale degree 6/la followed by a stepwise descent to scale degree 5/sol, it may be helpful to find scale degree 5/sol first, or even to practice the excerpt leaping to scale degree 5/sol until that is secure, and only then to add scale degree 6/la. Goal: Develop skills that are useful in finding difficult notes, especially after leaps Before you start: You’ll need a source of notated melodies with difficult-to-find leaps, perhaps from a . A few open-access examples are linked below. You should use your voice for this activity. Instructions: Determine the excerpt’s key and meter, and set these up for yourself as appropriate. Scan through the notation, looking for a pitch that you think you might have trouble finding. Leaps to notes that aren’t members of the tonic triad are especially good candidates. For each difficult note, determine a more stable pitch that may help you find it. Find that more stable pitch in your head or aloud, then find the difficult pitch from it. Be sure to practice finding the difficult pitch from the previous pitch or two in the melody. Sing the full melody. If you had difficulty with the pitch anyway, repeat step 3.

Try sight-singing through your piece slowly but in rhythm. Mark all places/ notes where you had significant difficulty finding the next pitch. After making it through the piece once (or twice), return to your marked passages. Using the skills you’ve learned, practice making the jumps between difficult leaps. Making connections: What helps you

Using the skills learned in the “Chunking” section above, separate the melody into groups of 3-5 pitches. Play the notes on your instrument and sing them back. (Or – for more of a challenge – sing first and play on the instrument second to check your accuracy.) Continue chunking the melody with the assistance of an instrument until you feel comfortable singing the chunks WITHOUT the instrument’s help. Using the skills from the “Tuning” section above, try singing through the melody (in chunks, if needed) while sustaining the tonic pitch below the melody. Would you feel comfortable singing this piece a cappella? Try it!

We can’t teach you perfect “musicality,” because it can be very personal: people often disagree about whether a given performance was “too mechanical,” “overdone,” or “just right.” We’ll leave the details to your mentors and your own taste. But there are two principles that we feel pretty comfortable will be useful regardless of the details of your approach:

The first principle, of course, means that we should ideally observe any written-in indications of dynamics, tempo, and articulation. To follow such instructions while also accurately performing pitch and rhythm requires a lot of “brain space,” so don’t expect it to happen with extremely difficult melodies right away. Rather, to practice following these markings, work with music whose pitches and rhythms are simple enough that they occupy only some of your brain, leaving space for everything else. We may also wish to “fill in some gaps,” either where there seem to be insufficient markings, we disagree with the written markings, or we wish to do something with a parameter that isn’t often notated (rubato, timbre). There are few hard-and- fast rules here, but common principles include playing the second time through a repeated passage a little softer, and slowing down as we approach the end of a section—the bigger the section (phrase, group of phrases, formal section, entire piece), often, the bigger the slow-down. The second principle, fortunately, is aided by chunking. But the more we can see those chunks as participating in larger processes, the more we will craft them into something with even larger-level coherence and beauty. Once you have identified the mostly-3-to-5-note chunks of a passage, see if you can describe the passage as a whole in a sentence. Different musicians will be comfortable with different levels of abstraction and interpretation, but as long as it works, it’s good! Consider the following approaches, which can all be valuable to different people: “There is a gradual increase in tension until the climax, and then suddenly it’s all released” (abstract) “It’s like the music is running from something, with more and more desperation, until suddenly it finds a hiding place and feels safe” (highly personal interpretation) “The dynamics and pitches both rise until measure 7,

Goal: Develop the habits of observing notated markings beyond pitch and rhythm and of adding your interpretations. Before you start: You’ll need a manageable excerpt of melody (ideally 1–2 phrases) of an appropriate length and difficulty to leave “brain space” for thinking about musicality. You may wish to choose something written for your primary instrument or an excerpt from a . This activity may be done either with the voice or with your primary instrument. Instructions:

Consider whether there are locations where it might be appropriate to add your own ideas for dynamics, tempo, phrasing, and articulation. This is particularly appropriate when there is a section or excerpt without many markings from the composer, but you can also experiment with adding new ideas to music that gives more detailed instructions. Sight-read through the melody, balancing pitch, rhythm, and other factors. Evaluate how it went! If you were unable to think about all of this at once, you may wish to repeat the exercise with a less-difficult excerpt. If you didn’t like how it sounded, repeat steps 3–4, revising your interpretation.

Just like pitch accuracy, rhythmic accuracy comes down to relationships. In pitch, we oriented ourselves to the key and its structural pitches; in rhythm, we orient ourselves to the meter and its strong beats. Once you can feel the meter securely, we use our internalized rhythmic cells and subdivision skills to place rhythms correctly within that meter. These will be most effective if we practice them at different tempos. Most of the time, we can relate more complicated rhythms to the rhythms we learned as cells in order to perform them. For example:

Goal: Gain confidence in using knowledge of rhythmic cells and subdividing to improve sight reading. Before you start: You’ll need some notated music to read that has a certain level of difficulty. If you’re using a , you may wish to draw from a chapter on ties and dots, divisions/ subdivisions of the beat, syncopation, or complex rhythms. Instructions: Look at the time signature and, if indicated, tempo. Set up the meter physically to make sure you can feel it. Scan over the music, visually noting where the beats occur. Look for spots where you don’t see comfortable rhythmic cells, and either figure out how they relate to more familiar rhythms or use subdivision to figure those spots out. Remind yourself of the meter (conducting is a good way), and perform the rhythm vocally (“ta” or another syllable) or by tapping or clapping. (Optionally, add pitches by singing or performing on your primary instrument.) Evaluate how you did. If there was a difficult passage, revisit it with your strategies in mind before performing the whole thing again.

Everything that you have already learned in the above sections, including eye movement habits, audiation/internal auditory imagery, and chunking, is relevant to sight reading on a non- voice instrument. There are some additional challenges and helpful hints, however, that apply to instrumental sight reading. Some of these are instrument-specific: for example, pianists often focus on reading harmonies and patterns rather than taking in each note, while brass players need to consider the combination of embouchure, fingering, and adjustment for better tuning. These are skills best practiced in private lessons. We’ll work on a more universally-helpful process here: specifically, making sure your ear (or, more accurately, your internal auditory imagery) is involved in the playing of your instrument. Many instrumentalists have done a good job of building connections between notation and fingerings/embouchures on their instruments. This is helpful, but sometimes bypasses our internal images of sound. By intentionally giving yourself specific goals while reading, it is possible to rewire the brain and put the ear in control of physical gestures. This is not to say that all musical ideas originate in the ear, but for purposes of getting started, we’ll focus on giving the ear primary control over physical gestures. In the activities below, let your ear guide your playing as much as possible. In some exercises, you will intentionally use your ear to focus on specific notes (e.g. the sounds on consecutive downbeats); in others, you will continue to strive toward audiating all sounds in advance but at a slower tempo.

Goal: Promote the ear’s control over all physical gestures while reading music Before you start: You’ll need a non-voice instrument that you’re comfortable with and a piece of music for that instrument that is technically well within your grasp. Instructions:

concentrate on your process. Begin reading the music, but allow your audiation to regulate your bodily movements. Relax your body as completely as possible (torso, arms, hands, face, back, legs), and commit to not moving any part of your body until your ear has internally “heard” the following note(s) in the passage. As you read, be (hyper-)self-reflective regarding whether your body is moving to the next note before you have audiated this note. If your playing mechanism is operating at any point independently from the prompting of sounds in your inner ear, slow down, relax, and return to step 2 to try again. performed at a faster tempo (i.e. music that is too fast to audiate/process every single note or “chunk”). Before you start: You’ll need a non-voice instrument that you’re comfortable with, and a piece of music for that instrument that is technically well within your grasp. This time, it’s ok if it’s a little faster or more complicated than in the previous exercise, or if it features some faster passagework; we just don’t want your technique to be distracting you from the task at hand. Note: this activity is based on the piano pedagogy of Abby Whiteside. Instructions: Determine the key and meter and set them up as appropriate. Try to keep the tempo close to performance tempo. Practice reading the music by playing only the notes found on the downbeats. Even though you are leaving out a majority of the notes, play the downbeats as musically as possible. Use your torso and other physical gestures to “connect” the downbeats, and try to hear them internally before they sound. Play through the passage again, and continue audiating and focusing on the downbeat arrivals. This time, begin observing the other notes in each measure and focus on how they fit into the space between each downbeat. Draw on skills developed in the previous activities (audiating, chunking) as you take in this intermediate information. Depending on the piece, repeat steps 2 and 3 by playing the music on beats 1 and 3, always focusing on audiating those notes and creating gestural arcs that connect each downbeat. (Try to “tuck” the third beat note into that arc on the way to the next downbeat.) Finally, play through the entire passage as notated, but keep your ears focused on audiating the goal notes on each downbeat. Any attention given to notes within the measure should utilize and apply the audiation/chunking skills developed above, but not in a manner that distracts you from following your gestural arcs (and audiation) to the following downbeat goal.

Do you remember where you put your “” after using them in the chapter on improvisation skills? You may want to go find them, because they’re useful in sight reading as well! Recall: “Wearing these imaginary goggles, you can ‘see’ the harmonies around the chords in the melody. In other words, with these goggles in hand, you no longer have to ‘make up’ the chords! They are right there in the music.” Given all the information we already have to interpret from notation when sight reading, why in the world would we want to add even more information? Perceiving the implied harmonies of a melody is useful in at least three ways: To the extent that we have internalized models of harmony (which maybe you haven’t yet, but they will come!), they can help us “picture” the notes to perform and thus improve our accuracy and tuning. Chords are such an important part of how many songs create a sense of tension and release that being aware of them can be very helpful as we think about musicality and shaping. Harmony is an important factor that affects “chunking,”

We’ll save detailed discussion of implied harmony for the of this text. Simply consider this an invitation to bring that perspective to your sight reading to the extent that you are able, and to keep returning to sight reading as your understanding of harmony grows!

So much of what musicians do is collaborative that it would be a shame to restrict our learning to individual music-making and listening. In this chapter, we look at how we can apply the skills we’ve been learning to ensemble situations. It’s honestly a little odd how little traditional aural skills teaching centers around ensemble work, given the importance of ensembles to so much music making. But thanks to this situation, there aren’t a lot of established ways to teach these skills. We’ll use what knowledge we have, and our creativity, to give you advice and instruction. But to a certain extent, this chapter will have to rely on simply asking you to apply these skills in ensembles. Much of what we will be doing here has to do with communication, particularly nonverbal communication. If

Set up and communicate a key, meter, and tempo for an ensemble. Follow a meter and tempo established by another member of an ensemble. Tune to an ensemble. Teach music to an ensemble in a “musical” way. Detect pitch and rhythm errors within an ensemble and offer advice for correction. Communicate and perceive ad-hoc decisions about expressive timing, dynamics, and other elements of musicality within an ensemble. Improvise music within a group.

Are you tired yet of chapters that start by practicing setting up a key, meter, and tempo? Sorry. Here’s one more. These are just so important! Key is particularly important to set up for vocal ensembles, though helping to internalize the key can also help instrumentalists make music more accurately and musically. Meter and tempo are always crucial for an ensemble, whether you are a conductor or a member of a chamber group. We’ll start with meter and tempo since these are so universally important. The methods for setting these up differ from ensemble to ensemble: for example, jazz band leaders often start with “a-one, a-two, a-one-two-three-four”; orchestra, band, and choir conductors often give a single preparation beat with their arm/hand; and chamber ensembles often give a preparatory beat with an in-breath and slight raising of the upper body. It’s worth practicing all of these since they’re all different but effective ways of communicating. There are a few methods that will make any of these methods of communication more effective:

into account whatever effect you want the music to have (“frantic,” “relaxed,” “walking speed,” etc.). Be sure you can feel not just the beats but also the divisions and cycles/measures, and that you can hear the beginning of the music in your head to make sure it sounds “right” at your chosen speed. Think about what point(s) of reference your ensemble may need. In many cases, simply giving the beat will be enough, but if there are a lot of complicated or fast rhythms at the beginning, it may be important to communicate the beat division as well. Finally, consider your fellow musicians’ reaction times. You’re not just setting up the tempo, but also helping them start together! If your preparatory cue is short (usually just a single beat), make sure that the time from the cue till the musicians should start playing is clear. It may be helpful to think of your cue not as a clock’s “tick,” which doesn’t tell you when the next tick will be, but rather as the tossing of a ball for which the effect of gravity determines when it will arrive at its destination. You might even make a gesture with your upper body, arm, or head that imitates the shape of a tossed ball’s (shortened) trajectory through the air to help your ensemble see exactly when their entrance will arrive.

steps typically help us lock in to the collection, and tonicizing gestures help us hear the tonic as tonic. If we don’t want to rely on an accompanying instrument, it may help to teach the ensemble how to hear the context of their starting note by adapting the formulas we used in the chapter on tonic/ collection and solfège as appropriate and teaching them to the musicians.

Goal: Develop the ability to synchronize musicians with appropriate starting cues. Before you start: You’ll need at least one other person or a small group, and a poem—ideally one with a pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. Identify one group member as the leader. Instructions: The leader looks over the poem and begins imagining it recited at a specific tempo. Once solid in how it should sound, the leader decides what gesture they will use to prepare the group to recite it together. (Our goal is for everyone to read the poem together at the exact same speed.) You are encouraged to use gestures associated with music, such as those described in the text above. The leader makes the preparatory gesture, and everyone reads the first few lines of the poem together. Evaluate: how together was the ensemble, both in time and in affect/character? Was there anything about the preparatory gesture that could have better prepared everyone for the intended tempo and character? music, ideally with 3–4 parts. Many have multiple-part excerpts, though you may need to scan through the anthology or read a dedicated index in the back to find them; alternatively, if you have access to a choral music library or chamber music library, you can check out scores from there. You’ll also need a small ensemble to work with. We encourage you and your ensemble to use your voices, since this requires an understanding of context, but you can also work with instruments. Instructions: Each person takes charge over a certain excerpt or piece of music and looks it over, noting the opening key and meter. They should consider the opening melodies in light of that context, in particular how the rhythms relate to the beats and tempo and what scale degrees each part is singing, and create a plan to orient their ensemble to that context. Each person takes turns leading the ensemble. First, carry out your plan to help your ensemble orient to key and meter, then have them sight-read through the first phrase.

One hallmark of really great ensembles is that they seem to be synced together as if they were a single, multi-human organism. Sometimes this means they are perfectly locked into a solid, steady beat or groove; other times it means they are expressively slowing down and speeding up perfectly together. These are, of course, different experiences, but they rely on similar processes and principles, foremost of which is the ability to predict what each other will do. Of course, to some extent this comes with lots of practice, but there’s a lot we can also do consciously with our nonverbal communication to share our tempo and timing. Sorry for stating the obvious, but rule number 1 is this: make sure you are paying attention to your fellow musicians! Obviously, it’s hard to be looking around if we’re lost in sight reading notes or not sure what’s going on. That’s why we’ve been working on these skills! As they become more automatic—for example, as we are able to sight read more efficiently in chunks—we have more “brain space” for paying attention to other things, like our fellow musicians. For groove-based music, where we want to play “in the pocket” (that is, perfectly aligned with the important elements and timing of the groove), there are two elements that can be really helpful. First, the more familiar we are with the groove, the better we’ll do. Of course, that just comes with practice. Second, think about repetitive/cyclical bodily movements you can do to help you keep track of the groove’s cycle. Sway back and forth, or stick your head out and back, or whatever feels right for the groove you are playing. As you do so, see if you and your fellow musicians can align your motions to make sure you’re together. This is almost like using dance to keep track of the music! For more flexibly-timed music, rely on looking around, plus two kinds of movements: bigger, broader, more expansive movements are associated with slowing down, while smaller, more compressed movements are associated with speeding up. For example, a string quartet might lean in a little as they follow an accelerando, and then lean back and move their upper bodies slowly from side to side as they relax into a more expansive section. sensitivity to others’ nonverbal communication within the ensemble. Before you start: You’ll need a small ensemble (any instrument or combination of instruments), and some music to perform together. The music can be something you all already know or something you’re learning for the first time from notation or aurally. often have multiple-part exercises, but it’s even nicer if you can check out some 3–4-part music from a score library or find some on or . (More parts can work, it just gets complicated.) Instructions: Perform through a phrase or small section of the music together, doing your best to synchronize your playing in time. You may wish to start by playing without too much variation in tempo, but as you get comfortable, you should designate someone to come up with some tempo changes they feel are appropriate to the music and see if they can lead the ensemble through those changes nonverbally as they play without discussing them beforehand.

Goal: Develop the ability to stay strictly in time, sharing a common pulse with your fellow musicians. Before you start: You’ll need a small ensemble (ideally 3–8 people) to work with. For this activity, we encourage you to use instruments with a sharp attack, such as plucked strings (including guitar and bass), piano, and percussion instruments. Instructions: One member of the ensemble should come up with a meter and tempo, and start playing a “groove”—a repeating pattern—that lasts 1–2 measures. Pick something pretty doable, because you’ll keep repeating it for a while. The rest of the ensemble should listen for a few repetitions, really getting used to the first person’s groove and starting to move to it. One by one, the other members of the ensemble come up with another repeating pattern on their instrument that complements

Tuning is another way to express “togetherness” as an ensemble. When paying attention to tuning, it’s important to think about the kinds of instruments you’re working with. If some have fixed pitch, such as a piano, then other pitches that align with those of that instrument will need to tune to it. If not, then there is more flexibility. We’ll focus on the latter case, and encourage anyone whose primary instrument has fixed pitches to use another instrument, such as their voice, for this section. While different approaches may be appropriate for different situations, perhaps the most common way to tune a chord is to “build” it up in the following order:

As a rule of thumb, when we want chords that sound “perfectly in tune,” fifths should typically sound extremely pure, with no “roughness” or “”; major thirds should be played just a little on the low side; and minor thirds should be played just a little on the high side. Experiment, however, with what sounds good to you. Players of fixed-pitch and/or quick-decay instruments such as piano, guitar, harp, and marimba should either sing or choose an alternative instrument. Tuning will be easiest if everyone uses the same instrument; a good second-easiest is to mix instruments within families (winds, brass, strings). Instructions: Assign each member of the ensemble a pitch. Choose the pitches to create a chord. As you repeat this activity, experiment with different tunings and, if you have more than three people, doubling different members of the chord. Have each musician start to play their pitch as a sustained tone, one at a time in the order root-fifth-third-anything else. With each new pitch, the person who just joined should adjust as necessary to achieve excellent tuning. If the ensemble is singing, make sure everyone is using the same vowel. If someone is having trouble, it may be helpful for them to get feedback from other group members. Once steps 1–2 are working well, choose a second chord to move to and assign everyone

If you’re leading an ensemble or a member of a chamber ensemble that shares leadership, you have the responsibility to think about how to teach the music that you will be performing. This is often very difficult, particularly if you’re working with inexperienced musicians, and leaders sometimes resort to teaching by rote. There’s nothing wrong with this as long as it fits your goals, but sometimes it can slow the learning process down and feel “unmusical.” In addition, many ensemble directors—especially those who work in schools, colleges, and universities—have educational goals for their students. Integrating aural-skills thinking into the rehearsal process can help ensemble members learn to think for themselves in terms of key, meter, and more. Recall that one of the central themes of this text is the importance of context, particularly key, meter, and tempo. Though we haven’t discussed it much yet, we should also add harmony/chord progression to that list. Adding an awareness of these factors from the beginning of the learning process can make that process more effective and sometimes quicker. In addition, if musicians learn music without that context (say, a part at a time), then when they are suddenly faced with the context (all playing together), it can be disorienting and require yet another learning process. How can we teach music in a way that supports our musicians while making sure they have the context they need to facilitate their learning and understand the music? This is a huge question, with many nuanced answers. We’ll just give three principles here: When communicating with your musicians, make sure you’re referencing the context. For example, it is our experience that choral directors often reference intervals when helping their singers find difficult notes. This gives a certain small amount of context, but it may be even more musical and effective to draw on the larger context of the accompanying chord(s) (pointing out, say, that they are moving from the root of one chord to the third of the next, and perhaps playing that chord progression for context) or the key (pointing out that they need to find, say, scale degree 6/la). The way you do so will of course depend on the education your musicians have and their standard practice: you might use solfege and technical terms, or merely demonstrate while helping them track the chord/key with an accompanying instrument. Use the bass to help your musicians hear their relationship to the key and chord progression. The bass is strongly associated with chord progressions, so having it sound while another section is practicing or learning their part will help that part hear some of the context without being distracted by large numbers of other sounds. Finally, think about which parts have natural relationships. These might be similarities (say, two parts often move in parallel thirds) or pointed contrasts (say, one part always rests while the other plays and vice versa). These parts can be very useful to learn together since each provides crucial context for how the other will sound.

Goal: Integrate fundamental aural skills into the rehearsal process (the director); practice sight reading in an ensemble (everyone else). Before you start: You’ll need an ensemble; we recommend a 1- or 2-on-a-part choir; working with singers typically requires the highest level of thinking about context, since singers don’t have the aid of an external mechanism in finding pitches. You’ll also need some music to rehearse; we recommend notated choral or instrumental music with 3–5 independent parts. You may be able to find such music in a , but it’d be great if you can check some music out from a score library or find some on or . Instructions: Assign each member of the group to a different piece of music or section of a piece. Each person will act as ensemble director for their assigned excerpt. It will be helpful if everyone has some time to look over their section, consider how to orient the ensemble to key and meter, consider what in the excerpt will be most difficult, and relate everything to context (key/scale degrees, meter/rhythmic cells). Each person should take 10 minutes to lead the ensemble in sight-reading and rehearsing their assigned excerpt. Whenever there are difficulties, the leader should offer advice related to aural skills—the numbered list of ideas above may be helpful. Since the group is not working towards a performance, you can focus on integrating aural skills into the

Detecting errors in an ensemble is complicated. If you’re working from a notated score, then it uses both your sight reading and your listening skills. Not only that, but ensembles typically play multiple parts at once, giving us a lot to listen to. Fortunately, we’ve already worked through the skills you will need—now you’re just putting them together! Here’s what we’ll be using: Perception of context (key, ) Identifying rhythmic cells and to verify they are correct Sight reading, , and practicing internal hearing to compare the score to what we hear Directing our to different parts of the texture to assess where problems might be Once we’ve found an error, then we can also use the principles in the to help our fellow musicians (or ourselves!) correct it. As a reminder, those principles are: make sure you’re referencing the context, use the bass to help hear

Goal: Integrate listening and reading skills by comparing sounding music to a notated score. Before you start: You’ll need to find an error- detection exercise. You can find such activities on the internet with a search for “aural skills error detection practice”—results may include videos and websites. Instructions: Identify any discrepancies between the notated and performed music. If you have difficulty, it may be helpful to scan through the notated music and hear it in your head (or out loud) before listening through the performed version. Then use your “thinking ahead” sight-reading skills to anticipate each note based on the notation before it sounds.

Goal: Integrate error-detection skills into the rehearsal process (the director); practice sight reading in an ensemble (everyone else). Before you start: You’ll need an ensemble; we recommend a 1- or 2-on-a-part choir; working with singers typically requires the highest level of thinking about context, since singers don’t have the aid of an external mechanism in finding pitches. You’ll also need some music to rehearse; we recommend notated choral or instrumental music with 3–5 independent parts. You may be able to find such music in a , but it’d be great if you can check some music out from a score library or find some on or . Instructions:

everyone has some time to look over their section and hear it in their heads as much as possible. Many people struggle to hear a whole ensemble in their heads, but it is often helpful to work through at least the melody and the bass. Each person should take 10 minutes leading the ensemble in sight-reading and rehearsing their assigned excerpt. The director should concentrate on identifying errors in performance, and then offer advice. Since the group is not working towards a performance, you can focus on integrating aural skills into the process rather than teaching the music in the quickest way. Once everyone has taken a turn leading the ensemble, engage in self-evaluation or discuss how things went as a group. What skills did you need to bring to bear to identify errors? What were the most productive methods of fixing those errors?

Making music with a group, and coming up with your own music on the spot, are both wonderful and challenging activities. Putting them together is also wonderful—and challenging! You may never plan to get on stage and improvise a song on the spot with a bunch of co-performers. But even so, group improvisation is a wonderful way to practice your listening skills and your creativity. The exact details of how a group improvisation might work are heavily depending on the instruments involved, the styles of music each member of the ensemble is comfortable with, and more. But there is some general advice we can give. First, it is usually helpful to set up some kind of structure beforehand. This structure might include a key or order of keys you want to go through, a meter or order of meters to go through, a general idea of who will start and when everyone else will join in, an agreement on a style or approach to music, and a sense of the length and shape of what you will come up with together. Second, it can be useful to think of the music in relatively consistent layers. That is, each performer will decide on a role such as bass line, chords, mid-range melody, high melody, countermelody, rhythmic interest, etc., and commit to mostly performing that role. It might even be simplest, at first, to mostly focus on looping melodies or progressions so that they are easy to predict; if loops are comfortable, you can try changing melodies or chord progressions but with consistent range, shape, and length. If a single performer used their whole range of possibilities all the time, it’d be hard for others to figure out how to interact with them effectively. Of course, there should usually be changes in dynamic, character, melody, and harmony as the improvisation goes on, but performing them in a predictable, probably slow manner will help the other members of the ensemble work with you. Third, listening is crucial. If you are not the first person to start playing, listen carefully to what is happening in the music before you join, and consider how you can add to it. As the music continues, make sure you are synced in time and meter with your ensemble. And when everything seems to be working together, try to stay alert to changes in the music. Is it speeding up? Slowing down? Getting more exciting? Calming down? Changing key/meter? Once you notice a change, consider whether you can contribute to it or whether you should simply continue what you’re doing and let the other musicians accomplish the change on their own. Goal: Have fun with creativity, and integrate improvisation, ensemble skills, and listening skills. Before you start: You’ll need a (probably small) ensemble. Any combination of instruments can work, but to help everyone come up with an appropriate role, it may be advisable to make sure there is at least one bass instrument, one melody instrument, and one chord instrument. Instructions: Work together to decide the basic structure of the improvisation: What key or keys will it be in? What meter or meters will it be in? A free- flowing sense of meter is just fine; it’s often also effective to start relatively free-flowing and then gradually build up a sense of meter. Is there a style or approach to music you will use to unify the ensemble? Approximately how long will your improvisation last? What dramatic shape do you want your improvisation to have? Who will start first, and when will everyone else enter?

Transcription refers to any time we write down something we hear; we will use the term particularly when the task allows (theoretically) unlimited time and plays to work through the process and/or when we are transcribing multiple parts. Dictation refers to a more limited kind of transcription, most commonly done in a classroom, with a limited number of plays and a limited amount of time, and usually focuses only on rhythm, melody, or harmony. Honestly, we feel that aural skills classes often focus too much on dictation. Transcription offers many of the same benefits and may be a better learning tool than dictation, particularly when we’re trying to develop aural analysis and notation skills. Dictation can indeed uniquely focus us on attention and memory, but those are limited capacities that are negatively affected by the stress that may accompany dictation. These capacities can also be affected by neurodivergence, mental illness, and outside-of-class stressors. We don’t think the ability to take dictation at an extremely high level is absolutely necessary for success in a music career. And while the National Association of Schools of Music requires its member schools to teach all students “the ability to take aural dictation,” it’s entirely possible that they would count transcription. Nevertheless, some instructors may be required by their institutions to use dictation, others may not be ready to deemphasize or abandon it, and there may be some learning benefits that are better built with dictation than with transcription. So we felt it best to give support resources, and particularly to give advice on how to approach dictation in the most helpful and productive ways we know. Dictation requires a slightly different focus from more permissive forms of transcription. In particular, it requires a higher degree of focus and makes greater demands on our use of memory. As such, our chapter on transcription focused more on analysis/understanding and notation, while here we will focus more on the earlier stages of attention/focus and memory. It’s pretty well established in cognitive science that we can’t increase the size of our working memory. So what’s the point of focusing on this? All people, and especially musicians, benefit from developing good attention and memory habits to most efficiently use the memory capacity they have. So we’ll give what advice we can for building these habits and strategies. Keep in mind that building new habits and strategies requires what cognitive scientists call “executive function,” referring to the mechanism in our brains that makes decisions about what to pay attention to and how to approach it. Executive function, however, can be impaired by tiredness, anxiety, and stress, so anytime we’re affected by these, we may have a harder time building our skills. Of course, if you had to work a night shift and you’re now in a morning aural skills class, there’s only so much you can do. But both instructors and students need to keep in mind the negative effects of stress on executive function. To the extent that dictation becomes a high-stress event, the habits and strategies we’re looking to reinforce will probably become impossible. That defeats the purpose! So as much as possible, we encourage students to practice mindfulness and centering, and we encourage instructors to create welcoming environments and grading policies that show students that they are not under threat.

Describe the processes necessary to take dictation, including how they differ from the similar process of transcription. Determine an appropriate meter and key for music they wish to dictate. Set an intention in order to engage in goal- directed listening. Use chunking and extractive listening to strengthen their memory of dictation melodies. Notate music they hear, relatively quickly.

In a previous chapter, we focused on the steps involved in transcribing music. Since dictation is a specialized form of transcription, the steps are much the same; we’ll just focus on a different part of the process. You may wish to review the transcription process . Like transcription, dictation involves several steps. If they’re already pretty automatic for you, that won’t be a problem; but for people who have to really work at any of these steps, putting them all together right away can be a problem. Fortunately, we can focus on them one by one to make them more manageable. On our first hearing, our primary goal is to set up the context: determine meter and key. On our second hearing, we focus on and memorize a bit of the music. If the music is short enough, maybe it will be the whole thing, but if not, we’ll have to focus on one portion at a time. This is a challenge for our focus and memory. It can help to set an intention before this STEP-BY-STEP second hearing, based on our first-hearing impression: for example, “I’m going to really focus on the first half this time.” After that second hearing, we have a short period (typically of relative silence) to analyze and notate the music we memorized. This is really two steps: analysis is figuring out what’s going on in the music, then notation is using our knowledge of how notation works to write it down. Depending on the length of the music and the number of times we get to hear it (which are hopefully related), we may repeat steps 2–3 a few more times, focusing on different portions of the music. Anecdotally, we believe it’s particularly common to receive 3–6 hearings for a typical dictation. Ideally, we will have the music mostly notated before our final time hearing the music; if so, we use the final hearing to double-check our answer and/or fill in any remaining gaps.

Since we have a limited number of times to hear the music, there is greater pressure on our focus and memory. This is especially true if the music is long enough that we have to focus on one section at a time.

Goal: Memorize a structure that will help you keep track of the steps involved in dictation, reducing the load on your working memory. Instructions: Memorize the process described above. It may be useful to memorize it in short form: meter, key, memorize, analyze, notate (MKMAN). This may seem silly and unnecessary, but remember, dictation can be overwhelming. The more you feel you understand the process, the less stressed you’ll feel and the more efficiently you’ll be able to move through the steps.

The first step of dictation is, fortunately, exactly the same as for transcription: determining the context (meter and key)! Of course, given the limited time and hearings, we do need to figure these out more quickly. Hopefully, based on our work with transcription, these processes are starting to become more intuitive and automatic. If not, it’s really important to focus here before you get too deep into dictation. If these aren’t determined correctly, the rest of the stages of dictation will not work. If you’re having trouble figuring out meter and key, it’s important to focus your efforts on these skills. If resources allow, you may wish to work intensively with a tutor or instructor. If not, it may be appropriate to spend in-class dictations working primarily on these skills rather than trying to go through the full process of dictation, which is likely to be frustrating without these skills solidified. The rest of the text here is simply taken from the similar section of the chapter on transcription. Figure out the meter: This procedure helps us locate these layers in the music. The answer we come up with will tell us the top number of the time signature we will use for our notation (see table below; we’ll wait to worry about the bottom number until we get to notating rhythm). Recall that sometimes what one person identifies as the beat, someone else may identify as the measure or division, and vice-versa. So disagreements about time signatures may not mean one person is right and the other is wrong (though this is possible); they may just indicate that you’re focusing on different layers.

This procedure helps us find tonic and collection in the music. If we have access to an instrument or absolute pitch, we can then figure out the note name of that tonic; otherwise, if we need to use full notation, we will either receive that information from an instructor or write in an arbitrary key. One more step for now: we should also determine whether the key is major or minor (or, if this is a possibility given the music you’re working with, a mode). You may have an intuitive sense of this; if not, walk up through the scale, focusing on scale degree 3’s relationships to the notes immediately above and below.

When we’re unprepared for something, it often goes by without us even realizing what’s happening. As a result, one of the most important new habits to build as we work with dictation is setting an intention before each hearing. What does it mean to set an intention? Basically, we make a plan and prepare to carry it out. That intention will often be something like, “I’m going to focus on memorizing the second half of the melody,” or “I’m going to double-check the rhythm in the second measure.” What are the benefits of setting an intention? Perhaps most obviously, it helps us not get distracted by other elements, making sure we’re on track while taking dictation. But in addition, it’s a really good habit to have in general. Ensembles are typically most productive if they set an intention for each time through a piece. Jazz musicians typically improvise with more direction if they set an intention for each solo. Music theorists typically come up with better analyses if they set an intention for what they are looking/listening for. These are different kinds of intentions, but all rely on the habit of going into an experience prepared. We also encourage you to use your attentional focus skills that we worked on in the . You may wish to review those as we dive into dictation. That said, attentional focus is a limited capacity, and its exact capacity varies among people. It is also affected, like memory, by stress, tiredness, and anxiety. If you find that you are consistently having trouble focusing on dictations, it is worth discussing what to do with your instructor. You may not be able to build the desired skills if you’re not able to focus, so your instructor may decide it’s more valuable for you to focus on , work with a tutor or in a different environment, or something else. This doesn’t reflect poorly on you as a person; dictation can be beneficial but can also require an unrealistically high level of executive function.

Memory and attention are closely related. We can better focus on objects for which we have already stored models in our memory, and we are better able to hold objects in memory when we have been able to truly focus on them. So the first step in remembering a dictation melody is to apply the focused attention we talked about above and in ! Beyond that, there are two ways to increase your ability to remember music, which is particularly necessary when taking dictation: chunking and extractive listening. Extractive listening is especially connected to focus and attention. It refers to the ability to focus on, and remember, a portion of the music. We use it whenever the music is too long to remember in its entirety. We use it by setting an intention and focusing our attention. Consider reviewing the from the chapter on Memory. We use chunking when we remember notes in groups that work together in some way rather than as individual bits. It can be helpful to practice chunking by describing music in words, for example, “there was a short scale from scale degree 1/do

Goal: Use chunking and extractive memory to make your work in dictation and elsewhere more intentional. Before you start: You will need a source of melody for dictation, and optionally staff paper to write down your dictation. A useful source of melody can be found at : once you click on a number, you can click on “Recording” to hear the melody. You are encouraged not to listen to the starting pitch or scale and not to look at the first note of the score so that you continue to practice identifying key and meter. Finally, it may help to have other people available, as several steps below advise discussing your intention and chunking to make sure these processes are explicit.

Play the dictation melody once and determine its key and meter; set them up as appropriate on your staff paper. Before the second hearing of the melody, set an intention for what you will remember (extractive listening). If there are other people around, it may help to declare your intention to them to help you commit to it. As you listen to the second hearing, focusing on the passage you committed to, try to consider the notes in groups such as “arpeggio up the tonic chord, scalar passage from scale degree 5/sol up to 1/do,” etc. After that second hearing, if there are other people around, it may help to turn to them and describe the chunks you heard in whatever level of detail you perceived. Then, optionally, notate what you heard. Repeat steps 2–4 for any additional hearings, setting new intentions as appropriate. Perhaps the most difficult decision you’ll make is whether to repeat the same intention if you didn’t catch everything, or whether to move on to focusing on a new portion of the

In our chapter on transcription, we introduced as a way to record our understanding/analysis of a melody without worrying about the details of notation. The limited time allotted to dictation may make it impractical to come up with both protonotation/ shorthand and staff notation. Nevertheless, protonotation/ shorthand can be useful in two ways. First, an instructor may ask you to dictate in protonotation/shorthand instead of or before staff notation so that they can assess your understanding of what you hear independently of your knowledge of notation. Second, because you have limited time, it is useful to have a quick way of jotting down some notes about what you hear to support your memory and help you distinguish the stages of analysis and notation. We encourage you to review the sections on these systems from the Transcription chapter. If your instructor wishes for you to take dictation in protonotation/shorthand, they will define the parameters. If you wish to use protonotation or shorthand during a

Writing while you listen can distract from your ability to use your attentional focus and memory. We usually advise students to wait to write anything until they have heard the whole thing. Of course, everyone is different, and you should do what works for you. A small body of research suggests that rhythm may be more helpful to write down first, rather than pitch. Again, everyone is different, and you should do what works for you. We particularly recommend using protonotation/ shorthand when there’s potential for confusion: for example, when you’re working with some less-familiar notational complexities (say, compound meter, or a 2 on the bottom of the time signature), or when you’re having trouble figuring out a particular section.

Just as in transcription, the final stage of dictation is to notate each section we’ve memorized and analyzed. Of course, given the quicker pace of dictation, it can be hard to develop the skills associated with notation here. If you’re having difficulty with notation, we strongly encourage practice with the and chapters. Only once those skills are solid in an untimed context will they be reliable in dictation. piano sounds. You will also need staff paper. You are encouraged to set up your work by deciding on a clef, tonic note, and bottom number of the time signature; other aspects, such as whether the key is major or minor, which scale degree the melody starts on, and the number of beats in a measure, can be detected by ear. If you wish to use the open resources linked here, you may need to have a partner or mentor give you the clef, tonic note, and bottom time signature number because the sites are not necessarily designed to restrict other information. Instructions: Dictate a melody into notation. A range of 4–5 hearings is standard for most melodies. If you have difficulty, try a less-difficult example or revisit previous sections of this chapter to practice relevant skills.

Because dictation is time-limited and requires a lot of component skills, it’s often not the best activity for developing those skills in the first place. If you find yourself having trouble with one of them, it’s best to work on it in isolation, making it as intuitive and automatic as possible, then re-integrate it into dictation. If you have trouble with focus, work on or find another way to build these skills. If you have trouble with memory, work on and . If you have trouble with analysis, you can either practice to slow down the process or work on figuring out melodies that are familiar to you. If you have trouble with notating something that you understand, most likely you should review the chapter on .

move to the beat, imagine playing on an instrument, subvocalize, follow the contour of the melody with your hand in the air, and otherwise activate your internalized knowledge structures, the more you will be able to figure out.

This section is addressed to teachers as much as to students. It has long been traditional to grade dictations by assigning a certain number of points for each pitch and a certain number of points for each beat’s rhythm, plus perhaps a few “global” points for setting up the right key and time signature and perhaps for good notation. When applied at the beginning of a learning process, this rewards students who are already skilled and penalizes those who most need to learn. Applied at any time, it communicates that perfection is expected. While high standards can be a good thing, it is important to remember that dictation (as compared to transcription) focuses on skills of memory and attention that are negatively affected by feelings of threat or stress. This can result in students who are not immediately successful experiencing a downward spiral of feelings of failure causing negative self-image and stress, which in turn causes additional feelings of failure. When this happens, those who meet initial difficulties may feel like they are never able to improve. We encourage both teachers and students to consider their specific goals for doing dictation and to use those goals to motivate their practice and grading procedures. The grade

If you are working on identifying key and meter by ear, then the majority of the student process and the grade could be focused on whether students apply an appropriate time signature, seem to be using rhythmic notation appropriate to that time signature, write an appropriate key signature (or tonic and mode above the staff), and begin and/or end on the right note. If you are working on simply understanding/teaching the process of dictation, then students should focus on structuring the process, a completion grade might be appropriate. If you are working on a specific musical device—say, arpeggiations of the subdominant chord, or dotted rhythms in simple meter—the majority of students’ focus and the grade might be focused on detecting where these occur and notating them correctly.

On the one hand, humans have been shown to like things they are already familiar with. Since we already have experience with them, they’re easy and therefore pleasant for our brains to process. (This is sometimes called the “mere exposure effect.”) On the other hand, we need novelty to keep our interest, since we tune out elements of our environment that are always the same in order to pay attention to new stuff. For example, you might hear a lot of background noise upon entering a room, only to realize just a few minutes later that you’re no longer paying attention to it. The play of repetition and novelty in music is often referred to with the term “form,” and that’s our focus in this chapter. Students sometimes think their teachers expect them to be aurally analyzing absolutely everything they hear. Don’t aim for that! But we’d love for you to be able to turn this mode of listening on and off as you wish. For example, maybe you’re trying to plan your approach to arranging a piece of music for an a cappella group, so you want to think about the way sections relate to each other and make some decisions about shortening or combining them—so you turn on your “analysis of form” listening skills. But then maybe you go to a concert of one of your favorite ensembles, and you just want to enjoy the wash of sound. We value both of these ways of listening. (We also think you can enjoy both.) One last note before we dive in. A lot of how form works in music is very style-specific. For example, the ways an electronic dance music (EDM) track builds up tension over time are often very different from the shape of a classical set of variations on a tune. Our goal in this chapter is to sensitize you to some principles that we believe are relatively style-neutral: closure, repetition, and contrast. As you learn more about styles and genres in your practicing, performance, and listening, you will need to learn the detailed principles and terms associated with whatever you end up working with.

Identify exact repetition of passages of heard music lasting at least 5 seconds. Identify and describe altered repetition of passages of heard music lasting at least 5 seconds. Identify important moments of contrast in heard music. Identify the ends of heard single phrases as either closed (ending on tonic) or not. Use the above skills to come up with a basic formal diagram of a piece of heard music.

In some ways, repetition is the easiest aspect of form to listen for and is fairly intuitive. This is especially true since right now we’re focused on exact repetition. Just listen for something that’s the same! And yet, repetition doesn’t always leap out at us when we’re listening. found that on an initial listen, many of us are great at hearing really short, quick repetition (say, two notes that instantly repeat) but not at hearing larger-scale repetition (say, of an entire section). As we listen to the same music more and more times, we get better and better at hearing larger-scale repetition—and, surprisingly, worse at hearing the short, quick repetition! This suggests that as we get used to a song, we start grouping it into larger chunks. We’ll focus here on the repetition of larger segments, specifically in melodies. As a rule of thumb, we’ll consider something important to note if it involves a repeated unit that lasts at least 5 seconds. This makes the task a little more manageable than if we focused on absolutely every little repetition, while still keeping us focused on the bigger picture, which often gets lost as we get buried in details when we’re doing other aural skills tasks. Remember the study mentioned above: on a first hearing, you’re likely to focus most of all on little details. How can we move quickly to hearing the larger-scale? This is basically a challenge of attention. As you listen, try to pay attention to groups of notes—even full themes—rather than individual notes. And don’t stress over perfect accuracy right now. Depending on your experiences and ways of processing music, you might not be totally sure (for example) whether something is repeating in the same key or a new key, and that’s ok. We’re just trying to build habits of listening that we could follow up in more detail if needed, not aiming to produce an exact score based on one hearing. Your instructor may give you guidance on exactly how to convey what you hear. Here are a few options: You might convey your hearing through prose. Depending on whether you have access to timings in the recording, this might be very specific (“I heard a section from 0:58–1:05 that repeated at 1:30–1:38”) or more general (“I heard a section, maybe two phrases, near the middle that repeated at the end”). You might instead use a form diagram. Form diagrams often represent phrases with slurs, lines, or brackets, and use color-coding or letter names to indicate repetition (with anything labeled “a,” for example, indicating the same music). Your instructor will indicate whether you need to mark all phrases or just stuff that repeats. You might use the Variations Audio Timeliner tool.

Goal: Develop a sensitivity to repetition when listening, and strengthen the general habit of paying attention to form Before you start: You’ll need some way to convey what you hear. This might be writing it down, drawing a form diagram, or simply discussing it with someone else. Instructions: Play a song from the playlist below. Listen to each melodic theme as it occurs, and try to identify when these themes repeat. Optionally, you may wish to write down the exact timings of the themes.

Perhaps the most obvious way to negotiate the play of repetition and contrast is to incorporate repetition with modifications. These modifications, which might be small or very large, might include changes in:

Such changes are common between phrases, but also between larger repeated/altered sections (verses in popular songs, choruses in popular songs, variations, outer sections of ternary forms, etc.). As a result, with longer pieces, you may need to create more than one “level” of analysis. Most often, two work well to represent a piece: one tracking phrases to show how they are repeated (and altered) within sections, and the other showing how larger sections are repeated (and altered). As we get into formal listening, especially if you have some knowledge of the terms associated with a style, you might be tempted to label sections with jargon like “exposition,” “binary form,” and “pre-chorus.” In order to be as style-neutral as possible, and to make sure our attention is focused primarily on modified repetition, we urge you instead to use descriptive language. For example, instead of “second verse,” you might instead say, “repetition of the melody and chords of opening section, but words are different and there is an added high- register synth pad.” This is a little unwieldy, but much more detailed.

Goal: Develop a more detailed sensitivity to repetition Before you start: You’ll need some way to convey what you hear. This might be writing it down, drawing a form diagram, or simply discussing it with someone else. Instructions: Play a song from the playlist below. Listen to each melodic theme as it occurs, and try to

Music also, of course, includes dramatic contrasts. When these are significant, they really grab our attention! Less significant contrasts may slip by us. And the least significant contrasts—like, for example, “the second phrase is a different melody from the first”—are often not worth noting. We’re not going to draw a line between important and unimportant contrasts, because they’re all important. But we need to give ourselves a manageable and meaningful task, since we have a limited capacity for attention, so we will focus on the more dramatic contrasts. After all, anywhere we don’t indicate a repetition, we’re presumably indicating that there’s some level of contrast. There are certain factors that, on their own, can create a clear sense of contrast. For example, changes in key, timbre/ instrumentation, and meter often create the sense that something new is happening. Often, though, strong contrasts come from a combination of factors that result in what we might call a new “character.” Often it’s easiest to describe these changes in metaphorical language (say, “it goes from excited and bouncy to subdued and depressed”). We should absolutely use that language because it helps us think about the overall effect, but we also want to think about the combinations of technical factors that contribute to this change. As a result, as you articulate your perception of contrast in a given piece of music, do your best to include both explicitly metaphorical and more technical language. For example, you might label one section “excited and bouncy: lots of syncopation in simple meter, high register, fast tempo” and the next “subdued and depressed: slower tempo, drone, melody now in lower register, compound meter.”

Goal: Develop a sensitivity to contrast when listening, and strengthen the general habit of paying attention to form. Before you start: You’ll need some way to convey what you hear. This might be writing it down, drawing a form diagram, or simply discussing it with someone else. Instructions: Play a song from the playlist below. Note the timing of any significant contrasts, and list

So far, we’ve focused on units/sections of music that either repeat or contrast with each other. Our focus in this section is a little different: we’ll pay particular attention to the ends of phrases/sections. These endings often contain important clues as to how the various sections are intended to be heard together. In particular, if a segment of music is intended to sound like a single, coherent section, its beginning and middle phrases are likely to have less-conclusive endings, while its last phrase is likely to have a more-conclusive ending. Many factors contribute to a sense of conclusion, including long notes, silences, and predictable rhythms. Hearing a new beginning afterward is also a clue that something just ended. But because it is particularly important across a range of classical, jazz, and some popular music, we’ll focus here on the concept of cadence, or a formulaic chord progression that indicates closure in tonal music. (Note: the chord progressions associated with cadences also occur at beginnings and middles of phrases. We’ll only call them “cadences” where they are paired with other factors like long notes or low points in the melodic contour to clarify that they are intended to feel like an “ending.”) Locating cadences can sometimes be difficult. In Classical and contemporary popular music, there are often but not always points of rest at regularly-spaced intervals of time (often described as a default of “every four measures”). But even here, there is sometimes ambiguity, and other styles are less apt to be regular in this way. Locating cadences is a useful skill, but here our focus will be primarily on identifying them. One other note: music theorists sometimes argue at great length over whether a given chord progression is “truly” a cadence or not. We will not worry too much about this. If something feels like it has some level of conclusiveness, we’ll call it a cadence. Music theory classes that focus on written score analysis often define a large variety of cadences; standard definitions can be found and with more specificity . Since listening is a more in-the-moment, attention-limited activity, we’ll focus on the most important distinction:

Cadences are typically heard as less conclusive than Perfect Authentic Cadences, as implied by the names people have chosen for them. If you can hear that level of detail, great, but our primary focus is simply on the more general categories of “closed” and “open.” There are several ways to attune yourself to this distinction. The first and most powerful is simply using your intuition, which is likely to work pretty well if you are deeply involved in the style of music you’re listening to. If your intuition isn’t reliable, however, you might focus on whether scale degree 1/do fits in the final chord of the phrase, perhaps humming it along to hear if it sounds right. If so, it’s most likely a closed cadence. Open cadences are more strongly associated with scale degrees 7/ti and 2/re. As you gain skills in harmonic hearing (see ), you can use this more detailed mode of hearing to determine whether the chord is truly tonic or not. Finally, note that when a song modulates to a new key, we change our frame of reference: so a cadence to the new tonic would be considered “closed” (even though it may not feel as final as when we get a closed cadence in the home key). Goal: Develop a sensitivity to cadences and how they relate to each other. Before you start: You’ll need a source of sounding music that uses cadences. You could use harmonic dictations from chapters 22 and following of ; these are written in chorale style (four simultaneous notes, all moving together, without a consistent harmonic rhythm) and use a piano sound. You could alternatively simply listen to the first phrase or two of any song. Instructions: Listen to the phrase or the first phrase or two of the song and identify cadences as closed (ending on tonic) or open.

At this point, we’ll put together all the skills we’ve been working on so far to create a form diagram. As before, we encourage you to use descriptive language (“new key, now the melody is in the horns, melodies are now shorter”) rather than style-specific terms (“development”). This language is more detailed, focusing you on exactly what you’re hearing. It might be a little overwhelming to listen for all of what we’ve focused on thus far all at once: exact and modified repetition, contrast, and elements of closure/cadences. So we’ll typically engage in several “hearings” of a given piece of music. Don’t stress about perfection, but do see if you can focus on what’s most important about a piece of music’s form. It may be useful to think about trying to divide any given piece of music into 2–4 most-important sections or an overall description (e.g., “a series of variations on a theme”). This is even true in songs with a seemingly larger number of sections: for example, a popular song may have 3–5 verses, 3 prechoruses, 3 choruses, and a bridge, but they often group together into a smaller number of verse-prechorus-chorus “cycles” (explained ).

Goal: Develop aural sensitivity to form. Instructions: Listen to a song from the playlist below and create a form diagram. You may wish to purchase a song and use , which makes the relationship between the music and the diagram especially straightforward. As you create the diagram, focus on the following: any repetition of something at least 5 seconds long, including any differences from the original any contrast that lasts at least 5 seconds cadences—if it is unmanageable to note every single cadence in the song, you might focus just on large section-ending cadences

Let’s say you’re at a party. Music is playing. You turn to a friend nearby and say, “Hey, this song goes ‘one sus-four, five in first inversion, six in second inversion, four’!” Your friend is very impressed. That’s a cool party trick! Many aural skills curricula approach listening for chords in a way that might suggest this party trick is their primary goal. But it’s not ours. Some people seem able to do this with relative ease, and others don’t, and that doesn’t always correlate with their success in other musical pursuits. We aren’t going to treat chords as facts to be correctly identified, but rather as useful tools that let us do new things. Listening for chords is useful for a few reasons. It can help us detect errors in our ensembles and our own playing. It is useful in helping us chunk and understand music we are reading, playing, or listening to. It guides us as we improvise. Fortunately, none of these goals requires perfect perception of every detail of every chord. So while we will introduce some strategies that help people identify chords more accurately, we will ultimately focus on these outcomes: what can we do with our listening? That’s helpful for everyone, not just the folks who can do the party trick. Two more things to note about harmony. First, it’s really style-specific. The chord progressions you find in the string quartets by Joseph Haydn are different from those you find in contemporary loop-based popular music. Whatever style you are most familiar with will be the one where you’re likely to have the most success in identification. Second, there’s not always a single right answer. There may be different ways of interpreting which notes are chord tones vs. non-chord tones, missing notes that we have to fill in based on what we think is most likely, or decisions to make about whether to prioritize accompaniment or melody when they seem to clash. Fortunately, since we’re not concerned with “perfect chord

Use strategies such as the “Do/Ti Test,” listening for chord quality, and following the bass to more accurately identify chords. Vocally arpeggiate a currently sounding chord. Follow/hum the bass line of a full musical texture. Improvise a melodic line over a chord progression in a way that reflects an awareness of chord tones and non-chord tones. Aurally identify I, IV, V (major key) or i, iv, V (minor key) chords with a high degree of accuracy. Identify strategies for further growth in

Some methods of hearing chords depend on correctly identifying many elements within the texture, often beginning with the outer voices, quality, and function. One problem with these approaches is that mistakes about minor details (e.g. mishearing a single bass note) can lead to compounding errors. How might we listen for chords in a way that doesn’t demand 100% accuracy in perceiving each and every detail? The Do/Ti Test is an alternative approach to hearing chords, one that helps students develop a more holistic understanding of individual chords and complete phrases before paying attention to more atomistic details such as outer voices. The method is straightforward: as you listen to a piece of music, sing and sustain scale degree 1/do, and if the chord requires it, move to scale degree 7/ti (or te, for certain chords in the minor mode). This simple technique allows many listeners to quickly and accurately categorize harmonies as “do-chords” and “ti-chords.” (“1-chords” and “7-chords” can sound like we’re talking about chord roots, so while we usually use both solfège syllables and scale degree numbers, we’ll use “do” and “ti” in our text when talking about chords.) Give it a try! As you listen to the excerpt below, sing either scale degree 1/do or 7/ti with each chord. For now, don’t worry about whether the sung guide tones are right or wrong. Rather, sing them as if you were on stage as a member of the band, with all the participatory energy you can muster. If the guide tone you are singing doesn’t seem to “fit” well with the rest of the band, try changing to the other. Keep listening and singing until you feel that your line matches the music you are hearing. Identifying a chord as a do-chord or as a ti-chord is a great first step on the way to a complete and accurate determination of a chord’s identity. But recall that “perfect” identification of chords is not necessarily our goal. A great strength of the Do/Ti Test is that it focuses us on a fundamental distinction. Ti-chords, and particularly the so-called “five” and “seven” chords, are often experienced as more “tense” or “unstable,” while do-chords often seem to have different degrees of relative “stability” or “resolution.” Being alert to this distinction helps us be more sensitive to this fundamental aspect of chords. Only one chord, the so-called “two” or “supertonic” triad, is unusual in that it contains neither scale-degree 1/do nor scale-degree 7/ti. However, this chord is so often combined with scale degree 1/do (creating a “two-seven” or ii7, often in first inversion) that this scale degree often feels like it “fits” even when it is not actually sounding. It’s your choice whether you hear this relationship and consider the supertonic chord a do-chord, or whether you’d like to complicate the system a bit and add scale degree 2/re to the system to sing when you hear this chord. Remember that the Do/Ti Test is a pragmatic tool, a heuristic device for participating creatively in the music while listening. The Do/Ti Test is not an analytical tool, so we shouldn’t be too disturbed that we might sing a guide-tone scale degree 1/do in a chord that does not contain it, such as a root position supertonic. The power of the Do/Ti Test is that it can be flexibly applied and developed when hearing real music to identify numerous harmonies and patterns, including chromatic chords that you will learn in later semesters, and sequences. The method can easily be adapted for the minor mode by including scale degree 7/te as a guide tone and adjusting the guide tone figurations to suit the chords in the minor mode. Simply put, singing guide tones provides a critical point of reference when hearing chords that can be

Play a song from the playlist below. As it sounds, find the tonic. Restart the song and play the opening 1–2 phrases while humming, singing, or imagining either scale degree 1/do or scale degree 7/ti (or, if you wish for supertonic chords, scale degree 2/re) as appropriate to the sounding chord. Repeat if necessary to clarify. Optionally, write down your guide-tone line as solfège syllables or on a staff.

The term “triad quality” refers to whether a triad is major, minor, diminished, or augmented. When we hear these triad types sounding in isolation, they can feel very different from each other: some people find, for example, that major triads feel brighter, happier, and lighter, while minor triads feel darker, more serious or sad, and heavier. Diminished and augmented triads, since they are less familiar, may be harder to distinguish, though it may help to hear diminished triads as “tense” and augmented triads as “otherworldly.” This concept extends to other types of chords, such as and extended chords. For example, some people hear these associations with seventh chords: Dominant seventh: “dominanty,” rich, “bluesy,” “leading” Minor seventh: somber, dull Major seventh: bright, nostalgic Diminished seventh: tense, scary, dramatic Half-diminished seventh/minor 7 flat 5: mysterious

be particularly useful when trying to distinguish two similar chords such as vi and IV in a major key. Nevertheless, we need to add a caution: chords in isolation are very different from chords in context. We use the terms “major” and “minor” with intervals, triads, and keys. A minor triad, for example, has a major third in it somewhere (between the third and the fifth of the chord), and can be used in a major key. These “major” aspects of the chord and context may sometimes outweigh the “minor” effect of the chord itself in our perception. In the end, we see no reason to avoid using listening for chord quality as a strategy when listening for details of chords. But keep in mind the effects of context, and practice with these in mind. will likely want to start with root-position triads; once these are comfortable, the next step is usually adding inverted triads and/or seventh chords. Identifying inverted seventh chords is not likely to be very useful at this point, with the possible exception of the dominant seventh. Instructions: Listen to the first chord, and describe it with whatever adjectives seem appropriate to you. Identify the chord’s quality with your best guess. Either reveal or ask your friend to identify the quality of the chord. If you were incorrect, listen to the chord again, paying attention to how that sound, your adjectives, and the correct quality go together.

Bass lines are strongly associated with chord progressions. In popular music and mainstream jazz, root-position chords (at least on downbeats) are by far the most common, so figuring out the bass scale degrees translates fairly directly into the identification of chords. Even within classical music, the relationships between bass and chords are fairly constrained, with root-position chords remaining common—along with a fair number of first-inversion chords, particularly over certain scale degrees, and a small number of very constrained second- inversion chords and third-inversion seventh chords. We encourage you to revisit two earlier sections of this textbook to review listening to bass lines:

We are best at identifying familiar objects. As a result, you will likely find it easiest to identify certain most common chords in certain most common contexts. In this section, we’ll do activities to get used to listening for what are sometimes called the “primary triads” of a key (the “one,” “four,” and “five” chords). As you listen, make sure you’re paying attention to how you perceive each chord in relation to the chords around it. After all, the primary triads of a major key are all major triads: there’s nothing about them in and of themselves that distinguishes them. Their only differences lie in how they relate to each other. The relationship that is most likely to be helpful here is the relationship between the “one” chord and the major “five” chord (which is often used in minor keys even though it requires an accidental there). In the vast majority of classical music and jazz, and a significant amount of broadly-defined popular music, the “five” chord most often leads to a “one” chord, especially at cadences/points of rest. If you’ve heard this progression enough, you will feel a sense of tension when you hear a “five” chord, as your brain waits for the expected “resolution.” When the “one” chord arrives, you’ll feel more relaxed as your expectation was satisfied.

Once we have some basic information about a chord, such as whether it has scale degree 1/do or scale degree 7/ti in it, its bass note, and/or its quality, it can be helpful to arpeggiate the notes of the chord to figure out other details about it. Doing so can help us confirm via trial-and-error whether or not certain notes are indeed in the chord. It also helps us practice directing our attention around different parts of the texture. This arpeggiation can be sung or played on an instrument, though most people with a decent amount of voice control will probably find it easiest to do with their voice. There is something a little unmusical about arpeggiating a chord to figure out its details. After all, chord progressions often exist in a state of continuous motion. Taking a moment to arpeggiate takes a chord out of its context and may require you to pause the actual music for a moment as you do so. Nevertheless, as you practice and get faster, you may be able to do these arpeggiations at a high enough speed to allow the music to continue; and even if not, using pieces of this skill occasionally (say, just arpeggiating certain chords or notes) can still be useful. There are two obvious places to start this arpeggiation, depending on your other skills. If you can locate the bass note, this is probably the most logical place to begin the arpeggiation. You’re most likely to find a third above the bass, and then either a third or a fourth above that. On the other hand, if you find it more intuitive to locate scale degree 1/do or scale degree 7/ti with the Do/Ti Test, you may wish to start from there. If starting from the bass, you should try arpeggiating the chord as if it is in “closed position”—that is, as if all the other chord tones were as close to the bass as possible. For example, if you hear an E3 in the bass, C4 in the tenor, G4 in the alto, and C5 in the soprano, you would arpeggiate up E-G-C. If you find it more practical and intuitive to arpeggiate from scale degrees 1/do and 7/ti, you can find advice in the next section, on . exercises designed to facilitate such chord arpeggiation can be found at Cynthia Gonzales’s or you can use other music recordings. Instructions: Listen to the music and choose a phrase, likely the opening phrase of the music. Start by finding the bass line as a reference point; make sure you can securely sing along to this line. Then restart the phrase and arpeggiate the chords up from the bass, in closed position, as best you can. If necessary, you can stop the recording at a difficult- to-figure chord, trying to retain it in memory, and arpeggiate through it by trial-and-error.

The is a listening strategy that promotes linear, horizontal listening as a way to clarify and organize perceptions of vertical chords. One advantage to listening horizontally is that you can learn to hear through difficult passages without losing your sense of tonic. It isn’t necessary to hear every chord with 100% accuracy to maintain your tonal orientation (i.e. keeping scale degree 1/do) and to identify the most important harmonies (e.g. tonic, cadential chords). While 100% accuracy isn’t necessary, when it’s helpful, the Do/Ti Test can be extended to improve our accuracy. There are two ways to build on singing guide tones that can help you identify the chords: singing “guide-tone figurations” or singing “secondary guide tones.” The first way is useful when the harmonic rhythm is slow, but it can also be used to check your work in faster pieces. Singing guide tone figurations involves singing a pattern of intervals around your primary guide (scale degree 1/do or 7/ti) to create chords that you know. If the chord that you know and sing matches the chord that you hear, then you’ve effectively identified the harmony. For this method to work, take some time to practice the following figurations, being sure to begin and end each figuration on a primary guide tone: Chords in a major key:

At both fast and slow tempos, many listeners prefer to sing “secondary guide tones” while listening, effectively creating a mi-line (around scale degrees 3/mi or me, 4/fa, or 2/re) and sol-line (around scale degrees 5/sol, 6/la, and 4/fa). A listener who can accurately notate a mi-line and sol-line above their notated Do/Ti Line has all the information they need to identify the harmonies. However, it is important to note that identifying harmonies by ear isn’t a skill that can be developed by focusing only on atomistic details and later deducing the harmony. Rather, we encourage you to develop a synthesizing mode of perception, in which your ears are constantly integrating every possible perception (primary guide tones, secondary guide tones, guide tone figurations, quality, and function) to identify the harmony holistically, much like we might recognize the face of a good friend at a single glance. Paying attention to multiple streams of evidence while listening can help you auto-correct when a single perception is incorrect. Goal: Develop the ability to arpeggiate a heard chord. Before you start: You’ll need a source of songs with chord progressions that are slow enough for you to sing arpeggios before they change. A series of exercises designed to facilitate such chord arpeggiation can be found at Cynthia Gonzales’s or you can use other music recordings. Instructions: Listen to the music and choose a phrase, likely the opening phrase of the music. Start by figuring out an appropriate Do/Ti Test guide-tone line to use as a reference point; make sure you can securely sing along to this line. Then restart the phrase and arpeggiate the chords from your reference point as best you can. If necessary, you can stop the recording at a difficult-to-figure chord, trying to retain it in memory, and arpeggiate through it by trial-and-error.

Listen to a song from the playlist below and choose a phrase to figure out. Listen to that phrase again and work out the appropriate “do/ti” guide-tone line. Choose another location in the scale to begin another, secondary guide-tone line, and work out the appropriate secondary guide-tone line. If appropriate, work out a third guide-tone line. Optionally, identify the chords active in the passage. If you do this, listen back through, listening for how each chord “feels” within the progression, attempting to synthesize your various perceptions of the chord progression.

People sometimes worry that it’s “cheating” to use an instrument in an aural skills class. We prefer to think of it differently: instead of asking whether or not it’s cheating, we ask, is it useful in building skills? As we’re listening for chords, an instrument absolutely can be a useful tool. Compared to just listening and guessing at chords, playing an instrument can be like having a dialogue with what you hear: you hear something, then play something back and see how the two relate. In addition, playing an instrument can build and activate your physical, instrument- based kinesthetic imagery. We encourage you to use an instrument on which you are comfortable playing chords. Ideally, use an instrument that can play chords all at once (piano, guitar, harp, marimba, autoharp) rather than having to arpeggiate. In this section, we’ll listen to a chord progression and try to replicate it on an instrument. We encourage you to listen first, then play, then repeat as necessary to figure things out. But if necessary, you may wish to play as you listen. The only approach that we will discourage, here, is random guessing of chords. For the most part, this shouldn’t be a very rewarding strategy anyway, but in addition, it will short-circuit the kinds of thinking we’re trying to build. Instead, after listening, come up with a hypothesis and then try it out; then compare what you played with what you heard.

Goal: Connect instrument-based kinesthetic imagery to chords. Before you start: You’ll need a chord-capable instrument, or to work with a group of people who have access to at least one such instrument. Alternatively, you can do this on your own with a melodic instrument and arpeggiate the chords, but this tends to be much more difficult to compare to the chords you hear. Instructions: Listen to the a song from the playlist below and determine its key. Choose a phrase, listen to it, and then play back the chord progression on your instrument. Try to alternate listening to a phrase and then playing it back; however, if you have difficulty, you may wish to play along as you listen.

We’ve already worked on improvising a melody over a chord progression in the chapter on Improvisation. You may wish to revisit that section now. We return to this activity for two reasons. First, as our ability to perceive details about a chord progression increases, our improvisations should become more intuitive and fluid. Second, we can use our improvisation to explore how different notes sound against the chords. For example, chord tones may feel one way; harsh dissonances may feel another way; and notes that may not be in the chord but add something interesting to it (often a seventh) feel yet again another way. In the following activities, improvise at a speed that allows you to feel the connection between what you are doing and the chords. Try out different approaches, using chord tones, dissonances, and more. See if you can pay attention not just to what fits the chord and what doesn’t, but also to the way each note feels in the context of its chord.

Goal: Develop a “feel” for how melodies and harmonies relate. Before you start: You’ll need some way to make music. You can use your voice or another instrument. Instructions: Start one of the songs from the playlist below. Each one has a repeating chord progression. Listen to it once or twice to get used to it, then start making music over it. Experiment with long, flowing melodies and short fragments; experiment also with chord tones and non-chord tones. As you play, think about what notes you’re playing and how they fit the chords—or not. Optionally, identify the chord progression with Roman numerals.

Creating a simple chordal accompaniment to a melody is a beneficial skill for many musicians, including both instrumentalists and vocalists. Not only is this skill useful when teaching others, but the activity of learning to improvise a chord progression will help you better appreciate how other composers harmonize melodies. Improvising a chordal accompaniment involves the development and integration of several musical skills at once. To list every such skill would be a daunting task and perhaps intimidating for some students, but rest assured that by this point in your studies, you have worked on the reading, audiation, listening, and thinking skills needed to embark on this rewarding activity. Accordingly, we present two activities below, the first of which invites you to rely primarily on your musical intuitions as you develop a chordal accompaniment. The second, longer activity risks being overly prescriptive to spell out a more detailed process. We encourage you to work through one or both of the activities depending on your own needs and preferences as a learner. And most importantly, as you work through either process, self-reflect on what works best for you. The insights and strategies you develop through discovery will far outlast the suggestions we make below. To get started, pick a children’s song or another diatonic melody that you know by ear. We’ll focus on “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” in the activities below, but we encourage you to apply any helpful strategies that you read or discover to other melodies that you know. At the bottom of this chapter, we’ve provided some additional melodies that you can use to develop this skill. Before beginning either activity, learn the given melody as well as you can, either by singing the melody using solfège or scale-degree numbers.

Choose a simple figuration (e.g. boom-chuck, block chords, arpeggiation) that you will use to activate the chords. Most simple songs invite starting on the tonic harmony. Try that option first, but depending on the style, you may wish to try other starting chords as well. Begin singing the melody while playing your opening chord. As the melody progresses, listen for notes that seem to call for a chord change, making changes that seem appropriate. We recommend singing in solfège since the scale degree of the note that invites a chord change also provides a clue as to what change to make. Continue the process of singing, listening, and responding to the melody, and use your theory knowledge to help consider different chordal options when changes are required.

you might begin by exploring a range of accompanimental figurations. As you sing the melody in solfège or scale degree numbers, you’ll probably notice that it begins with 1/do, 1/do, 5/so, 5/so, which invites a tonic opening. This harmony interprets the melody by encouraging listeners to hear the first two pitches (1/do and 5/so) as a chordal skip within the tonic triad. You might decide to interpret the first two melody tones differently and try other harmonic settings, but to be sure, a tonic start is the most common and stable solution. Let’s assume that you begin on a tonic harmony. As a general rule, it is advisable (and practically expedient) to stay on the same harmony until the melody requires a change. In “Twinkle, Twinkle,” the 6/la that arrives on the downbeat of measure 2 clashes with the tonic harmony and calls for a chord change. Because the note is 6/la, it invites the subdominant harmony (IV, or the four-chord). Other harmonies that contain 6/la include the supertonic and submediant. Feel free to try all three, and consider which options you like the most and why. That said, since this is a practical skill that you may be learning for the first time, you might also find it helpful to stick as closely as you can to three common harmonies: the tonic (I, or the one-chord), the subdominant (IV, or the four-chord), and the dominant (V, or the five-chord). As the melody continues, listen to the changes of melodic tones that continue on strong beats in the measure (beats 1 and 3). If the notes that arrive on these strong beats clash with the previous chord, a chord change may be needed. Follow your ear as you develop your chordal accompaniment. See how many different harmonizations of the same melody you can create. You can try adding things like first-inversion harmonies or chromatic notes in the bass to find new harmonies. If you are struggling to produce satisfying results as you work on the exercise above, try the suggestions or alternative approaches given below the second exercise. Like any skill that involves the integration of sub-skills, improvising a chordal accompaniment may take time and intensive practice before you reach proficiency. The slower, more intentional, and more consistent your practice, the faster this skill will develop. Be patient!

If you are not familiar with the notated melody, begin by singing the entire melody several times. Consider its overall shape and phrase structure, and listen for which notes seem to be structural or embellishing. Generally, structural notes require a chord change, while embellishing tones (e.g. passing notes, neighbor notes, chordal skips) do not. Begin at the end. Does the melody invite cadential closure? If so, which type, and where will the cadential dominant and tonic chords go? Before the cadential dominant, is there a place in which a predominant chord could be used? (If the melody does not seem to require a cadence, consider other ways that it might invite closure.) If the melody consists of multiple phrases, are there other cadence points to consider? Study the opening of the melody to determine how you will begin your harmonization. By default, many (but not all!) melodies invite starting on the tonic chord. Once the beginning and ending chords of each phrase are set, there usually aren’t many chords needed to fill in the middle. Generally, try to use as few harmonies as possible, changing only when the melody (or your ear) requires it. This principle has strategic value: an accompaniment with fewer chord changes is easier to play and will lead to a better overall performance. Think of this principle like a musical Newton’s law: chords at rest tend to stay at rest unless acted upon. Melodic tones on strong beats that don’t fit the prior harmony often cause the harmony to sound like it needs to change. If possible, emphasize tonic chords or chords that lead back to the tonic (for example, IV, or the four-chord, or V, or the five-chord). As you develop your chordal accompaniment, be mindful of harmonic rhythm (the rhythm of the harmonic changes, not the rhythm of the figuration). Generally, it is practically expedient to use a consistent harmonic rhythm that uses longer durational values (for example, whole notes and half notes). Doing so enables you to use the same accompanimental figuration without needing to make constant adjustments. If you make a chord change that uses a short duration or that falls on an off-beat, listen carefully to see if it fits well within your overall accompaniment. As you harmonize the melody, consider the contrapuntal relationship between the bass and melody. In some styles, you may wish to avoid consecutive fifths and octaves and other problematic voice-leading relationships, but in other styles, more freedom may be exercised. Applying the process above to “Twinkle, Twinkle,” you might have made observations similar to the ones below at each step. The score to this simple tune is given below; it may be helpful to imagine that you do not know this melody already. “Twinkle, Twinkle” has a simple three-phrase form (ABA). Aside from the opening leap from 1/do to 5/so, all other note changes occur on strong beats and invite a change of harmony. In other words, almost every note of “Twinkle, Twinkle” will be treated as a structural tone requiring its own harmony. The A phrases of “Twinkle, Twinkle” end with 2/re to 1/do in the melody, thus inviting authentic cadences, while the B phrase invites a prolonged emphasis on the dominant harmony (with 5/so in the bass throughout). At the end of the A phrase, the repetition of 2/re also admits using a predominant (ii6, or two-chord in first inversion) on the first 2/re followed by the cadential dominant (V, or five-chord) on the second 2/re. In the case of “Twinkle, Twinkle,” the first four notes of the melody (1/do, 1/do, 5/so, 5/so) call for starting on the tonic chord. In “Twinkle, Twinkle,” the first two melodic tones (scale degrees 1/do and 5/sol) both fit the opening tonic; neither note forces the chord to change, so a single tonic chord is an excellent choice. On m. 2 (the word “Little”), the move in the melody to la on a strong beat suggests a harmonic change, and the move back to sol on beat 3 invites yet another change. To emphasize the tonic, the 6/la in m. 2 and 4/fa in m. 3 could be harmonized by a IV (four-chord) and V7 (five- seven-chord) respectively since these chords lead back to the tonic chord. In “Twinkle, Twinkle,” the melody invites chord changes only on strong beats (1 and 3), resulting in a harmonic rhythm of whole-note and half-note durations. If you are creating a harmonization of “Twinkle, Twinkle” that reflects conventional tonal practice, you might find, for example, that the interior scale degrees 4-4-3-3/fa-fa-mi-mi in the A phrase would fit the harmonies IV–I6. However, these chords would create outer-voice parallel octaves between the bass and melody, and in this style, should be avoided. Similarly, if the melody has a tendency tone (e.g., chordal seventh, leading tone), avoid placing that note in the bass of the chord progression. marking at which you are currently struggling. Remember: mistakes in music are usually a symptom that your ear, mind, and body didn’t have the time they needed to hear, know, and move in advance of the next required sound. The purpose of going slowly is to give your ear, mind, and body the time they need to coordinate each sound. If you practice too fast, those three components are never given the opportunity to learn how to coordinate, and so no growth or improvement can possibly occur. By going incredibly slowly, you are being a good teacher to yourself by giving your “students” the time they need to learn how to work together. Students who practice slowly for one week are often surprised at how quickly real improvement follows. Focus on audiating both the melody and the harmony before you play them. Anytime you find yourself singing and playing notes that you haven’t anticipated internally by ear, your playing process will tilt toward rote learning rather than authentic, creative musicianship. Musical creativity, poise, and control are developed in the ear before you play. If you find yourself repeating the same figurations and wish to expand your creative horizons, try opening a volume of lieder (German art songs) by Clara Schumann or Franz Schubert and trying one of the accompanimental patterns that they developed. Watch out for non-chord tones that fall on strong beats. For example, the “Happy Birthday” song places an upper neighbor on the downbeat of the song. Look at the entire melodic context when choosing harmonies, not just one note (even if that note is on a strong beat). Relatedly, if a non-chord tone falls on a strong beat, you may find it helpful to use an accompanimental figuration that employs only the bass note on these beats, and wait for the upper voices to enter after that melody tone has resolved. Always aim for a simple, playable accompaniment, even when the melody does something unusual. Trust your ears; they will point you in the right direction and help you avoid awkward harmonizations. Just like good writers read their texts aloud to find poor wording, listen Creating a chordal accompaniment involves quite a lot of careful thinking, listening, and creative exploration. Luckily, the entire process can be aided by donning a pair of “magic chord goggles.” Wearing these imaginary goggles, you can “see” the harmonies around the chords in the melody, and in many cases, you may only need to add one note to fill in the remainder of the chord. Better still, you can often follow the voice leading indicated within the melody. In other words, when you wear your magic chord goggles, you no longer have to “make up” the chords! They are visible right there in the music. For example, consider the melody below, given in its original form and as seen through the magic chord goggles. Mozart, Symphony No. 39, K. 543, third movement: You can use the melodies below to try the magic chord goggles for yourself and to practice implementing the instructions for the activities above. After you have created your own chordal accompaniment, you can listen to the original by accessing the playlist below. [in progress]

Chances are, if you started out unable to identify chords by ear with a high degree of accuracy, you’re still not 100%. That’s fine! Remember, the most useful applications of this skill don’t require perfect perception of all tones (if that is even possible). But there are ways to continue to improve this skill, if you wish. Here are the ways you’ll improve: Play lots of music on a chord-capable instrument, thinking about the scale-degree functions of what you’re playing. The great thing about playing chords is that you’re building both an abstract understanding of chord progressions and models of physical motion and hopefully making stronger connections between the two. Pay attention to the patterns associated with the music you’re working with. Baroque arias, Classical sonatas, 1990s commercial pop, and 1940s jazz each have their own common “stock” patterns that will show up over and over. As you learn these, you will learn to identify them in context, and you’ll be able to compare them to

While this textbook is inevitably shaped in part by its authors’ ideologies and experiences, it is also grounded in research in aural skills pedagogy. We will list here some of the research that has influenced how we approached this text, both as a way to thank the scholars who have been important to us and to invite curious musicians and pedagogues to further reading.

Gary Karpinski’s book (2000) is foundational to current aural skills pedagogy. This text is particularly helpful in understanding how complex skills like dictation and sight reading rely on component skills such as perception of key and meter. We have also been influenced by Karpinski’s emphasis on the importance of context. Timothy Chenette’s article (2021) helped us think through the various fundamentals required for students to acquire aural skills, and along with the article (2019) helped us think about how these skills relate to multiple fields of music study outside of music theory. We have also been more obliquely influenced by the challenges to current instructional models in Philip A. Ewell’s article (2020) and Cora Palfy and Eric Gilson’s article (2018). Jade Conlee’s presentation (2021) and Elizabeth Monzingo’s presentation (2019) similarly helped us think about who aural skills classes are currently built for, and how we might think about new paths forward.

Our understanding of attentional control and how it is affected by instruction is still very much incomplete. However, we have learned a lot from Michael I. Posner et al.’s chapter (2007) and other readings from outside of music, which Timothy Chenette speculatively applied to aural skills instruction in the chapter (2021).

Chapter 3 (Tonic/Collection and Solfège) Gary Karpinski’s book (2000) was particularly influential in how we approached finding and “setting up” tonic. Karpinski’s tonic-location methods are extended in Timothy Chenette’s chapter (2020).

Timbre, envelope, dynamics, texture, and register are unfortunately underdeveloped in the aural skills classroom. We are aware of the pioneering work of , , and others on bringing skills involved in music

Our understanding of memory and music was shaped first by Gary Karpinski’s book (2000). The insights we gained there have been refined by reading about working memory in sources such as Nelson Cowan et al.’s article (2005) and Klaus Oberauer’s article (2002), and then by speculatively applying these insights to music in Timothy Chenette’s article (2018).

(2021), particularly in understanding the rich internal representations that support musical imagery and the insight that this ability may not develop in all musicians if we do not teach it explicitly.

Ideas about improvisation in the aural skills classroom can be found in Jeffrey Lovell’s article (2019) and Jena Root’s chapter (2021). George E. Lewis’s article (1996) also helped us think about what is valued in improvisation.

Our embrace of this non-notation-based practice was influenced in part by Alexandrea Jonker’s presentation (2022). It was also inspired in part by unpublished results referencing instrument-based imagery from a survey about how people perceive chords, conducted by Timothy Chenette, Alexandra Phillips, and Emily Wood in 2019.

While Gary Karpinski’s book (2000) focuses more on dictation, Karpinski’s “four-stage model of melodic dictation” helped us think through the skills involved in translating sound into notation. This model gave us a framework within which to understand the relevance of the research listed above under Attention, Moving to Music (Meter), Tonic/Collection and Solfège, and Musical Memory. The system of “protonotation” is based primarily on Karpinski’s book and on advice from the textbook . The system of “notation shorthand” is derived from Jenine L Brown’s article (2020).

Our understanding of what activities help people improve at sight reading is largely based on meta-analyses by Jennifer Mishra ( 2014) and Marjaana Puurtinen ( 2018). Our understanding of the value of “vocabulary-building” to sight reading has been influenced by Gary Karpinski’s book (2000) and by Kris Shaffer’s blog post (2013).

Ensemble skills in aural skills classrooms have not been well- addressed in the literature. We hope that changes and we can list more sources here someday! For now, we’ll simply mention that the discussion of tuning was informed in part by Timothy Chenette’s conversations with Fry Street Quartet violinist .

Our attempt at being relatively style-neutral in our treatment of form is influenced in part by Brian Jarvis and John Peterson’s presentation (2020) and Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis’s research on repetition in music, as shared especially in her book (2013) and in her presentation (2015).

Many exercises in this text benefit from using sight-reading anthologies. These anthologies typically present manageable excerpts of music that are organized by different rhythmic, tonal, or other categories. There are several commercial anthologies available, most of which are very good. If you wish to use an Open Educational Resource, you may wish to consider one of the following: by Benjamin Crowell is an open-source sight singing anthology, downloadable as a pdf or as source code (LaTeX and Lilypond), with printed copies available for a low price. by André Mount includes many public domain melodies, formatted to permit either dictation or sight reading, as well as downloadable Sibelius and MusicXML files for these melodies.

Published by Ubiquity Press Ltd. Gordon House 29 Gordon Square London WC1H 0PP Text © Gerdi Quist 2013 First published 2013 Cover Illustration: After These Sheets by Kimbal Quist Bumstead Printed in the UK by Lightning Source Ltd.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA. This licence allows for copying any part of the work for personal and commercial use, providing author attribution is clearly stated.