1) Intervals
Goal: To be able to identify all intervals an octave and smaller by ear and to be able to sing any interval above or below a given tone.
Category: Aural Skills
I am frequently asked by students how to build skills in melodic dictation, and while there is no “magic answer” (I think many of them want to have an instant solution that requires no time-commitment), I think skills can be built using a dedicated program of four approaches:
Revised August 2015. For pedagogical context on solfège-to-video, you may wish to read “Video Solfège: Creepy, But Effective!” on this site. Another useful post for students is “How to Practice Melodic Dictation.”
Each week’s prepared singing must be submitted to D2L Dropbox for credit. Here is an overview of the procedure:
- Practice the melodies.
- Video-record yourself performing a melody.
- Upload the file to D2L Assignments in the corresponding folder.
- Repeat until all melodies due are submitted.
Nobody practices solfèggio
Students don’t practice solfèggio for a panoply of reasons, most of which are good ones:
- Practicing it is boring
- They find it easy (they have good ears, good voices, and learn the syllables with little effort)
- It is difficult for them and they are not motivated to do well (the “I’ll take the C” crowd)
- They want to succeed but don’t have clear indicators to discern improvement. Some of these students practice a little, but not enough because they think they have “completed” practicing by running through exercises or because they give up in frustration.
Most students share the classic experience of sitting outside an office door, cramming melodies before performing for their professor, which is likely the only practice they put in before the exam. And, regardless of a student’s level of preparedness, many students will choke on a solfège exam because of bad nerves.
I’m going to take the following positions, which might not be shared by all music professors (but I imagine many of the points are common):
Melodic Dictation
If ear training textbooks with CDs and various online musical trainers fairly represent standard practice, “traditional” melodic dictation is typically a four-bar exercise in which a starting pitch is given, a count-off is sounded, and a series of notes that resemble a melody is played on piano. I have some problems with this…
- If there is no accompaniment, students miss out on a valuable asset for orienting metrically and tonality. How many melodic dictations have I seen that get “off” by a beat or are consistently a step (or two, or three) too high after a leap is missed?
- The best students are bored silly waiting for the rest of the class to finish.
- The most challenged students struggle with the first notes and never get to the end; they are discouraged seeing the top students wait and are likely hampered by the pressure of holding up the class.
- Dictation takes a long time and leaves little opportunity for giving/getting feedback. Even when I walk around looking over students’ shoulders, it’s hard to guide students without revealing details to others nearby.
- Little mistakes (a skipped beat, a missed leap, a chromatic step written as a diatonic step) can cause big trouble and a lot of wasted time.
- Dictation doesn’t build some basic skills (most important among them, I think, being how to orient tonally without being given a tonic or starting pitch).
Melodic Dictation Orientation
My favorite type of dictation activity turns many of these problems on their head. I call these elegant little exercises melodic orientations, and they look like this:
Notate the first eight tones of this melody, adding all necessary information for notation. The key signature has four sharps.
