5.1: Skills Practiced and Assessed in Aural Skills

Your multiple semesters of aural skills will be dedicated to similar skills, but in an increasing level of difficulty. In the beginning, patterns will be short (perhaps only two notes) and part of the major or minor scale or perhaps one measure in 4/4 time, for example. You will be asked to read/perform, detect errors in given musical listening examples, and dictate (write down what you hear). The difficulty level will increase quickly and this is a skill-based course, so it is important that you practice. There are no shortcuts!

Sightsinging/Sightreading

Sightsinging, or sightreading, refers to the ability to pick up a piece of music and being able to perform it without first hearing it or without help from accompaniment or any other instrument. For choir, band, and orchestra musicians (Western European traditions), music literacy refers to the ability to translate notation into sound (reading) and sound into notation (notating). These skills are important as a musician. Being able to produce the music with your voice demonstrates your ability to internally ‘hear’ it (often referred to as audiation) and, therefore, more easily and accurately put it into your instrument.

Studying music has many parallels to learning a language. When we’re young, we absorb lots of sounds, then begin to try to imitate what we hear. Then, people label things for us (This is a cat. The cat says “meow.”) and we begin to try out a few words. Those words eventually become sentences. Again, adults read picture books to us so we can associate the words we know to the pictures. Only after that labeling do we learn how to recognize words on a page. The letters are abstract symbols in much the same way
notes are symbols. The final step—in a nutshell—is to read and write. A lot had to happen before you to the letters meant something, yet I bet your first band or piano book had symbolic notation on page one or soon after!

The ability to read standard notation is integral and authentic to participation in the performing ensembles that have been so carefully nurtured in schools in the United States. Musicians in this tradition must be able to do more than imitate. Unfortunately, the pressure of performance often leads to choirs that are taught exclusively by rote. In other words, the teacher feeds singers the “answers” to the “test” from a piano. Band and orchestra musicians are taught to read symbolic notation, but are often taught “by eye” rather than through sound before symbol. In this case, players may be able to decode (press certain buttons when they see certain symbols), but being able to press the correct keys on an instrument in response to notation does not confirm that the performer comprehends what it is they are playing or singing. One parallel might be to compare a French class and learning French in a diction course. In the diction course, you will learn how to pronounce each consonant and vowel so that you can sound like you speak the language, but not have any idea what you’re saying. These musicians will be slow in learning new works (and will probably require a music teacher to do so).

Knowing that a note on the third line of treble clef is “B” means you have a way of talking about music and understanding the theory behind it. Praxis, or practice (doing music), needs to come before theory. Knowing that a note on the third line of treble clef is B does not make you a better musician. Improvisation is not just for jazz musicians; it is being creative in the moment. It is a fundamental aspect of musicianship requiring you to think in music. We recommend several resources for practice later in this volume, but an easy way to get started if you have never been encouraged is to simply use a familiar rhythm and give yourself the choice of one of two pitches to use for each note. You can increase the number of notes or start from a tonal pattern (outlining a major triad—do mi sol, for example) and change the rhythm. You’re improvising!

In the beginning, music reading should focus on just rhythm or just pitch. You will quickly be required to multi-task and perform both together, but one of the first steps on the road to being able to read notation is interval identification. As described in the previous chapter, an interval is the distance between two notes. Being able to identify intervals aurally (by ear) is a foundational skill for later reproducing the intervals vocally, stringing longer numbers of pitches, (patterns), together and, finally, reading melodies. Being familiar with intervals is the foundation for almost everything you will do in your aural skills courses (and later in your job!).

Error Detection

One of the most important skills you will need as a music educator is the ability to hear what is wrong (detect the errors) so that you are able to fix them. Error detection is about picking out and correcting wrong notes, rhythms, or anything else in music. You’ll begin with finding wrong rhythms or pitches in a melody or and eventually move on to hearing incorrect pitches in chords, intonation errors, etc.

Rhythmic, Melodic and Harmonic Dictation

Dictation refers to writing down what you hear. You’ll begin with short patterns of pitches or single measures of rhythms and move to longer phrases, two-part exercises and, eventually, progressions of four-part chords. Listening to and echoing short rhythmic or melodic patterns is a great way to prepare yourself for this skill.