- Note Recognition: The ability to identify and sing the correct pitches indicated in the musical score.
- Rhythm Recognition: Being able to interpret and execute the rhythm of a piece accurately.
- Interval Recognition: Recognizing the distance between two pitches, which helps in accurately reproducing melodies.
- Key and Scale Recognition: Understanding the key signature and scale of a piece, which guides the performer on which notes to sing.
- Phrasing and Articulation: Interpreting the musical notation to convey musical expression, including dynamics, tempo, and articulation.
Ear training, also known as aural skills, involves developing the ability to identify and reproduce musical elements solely by hearing them. This includes melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre. My goal is always to develop the musical ear before the musical eye.
- Pitch Recognition: Identifying individual pitches and intervals between them.
- Melodic Dictation: Hearing a melody and writing it down in musical notation.
- Harmonic Analysis: Recognizing and identifying chords and chord progressions in a musical piece.
- Rhythmic Dictation: Hearing a rhythm and notating it accurately.
- Chord Progression Recognition: Identifying the sequence of chords in a piece of music.
- Transcription: Listening to a piece of music and notating it in sheet music form.
Conversational Solfege is a system of 12 steps that addresses these needs first by ear and then adding the eye and symbols to it to develop a person's musical mind and musical thinking in a playful, creative way!
To learn more about Conversational Solfege, check it out here. And here are the flash cards I use that go with the CS units. I'm happy to chat more about CS as well, it's a passion of mine to use this well-created resource to help develop young musicians.
We even had a conversation about changing voices in this context too, since that is a reason some do not give Maximum Effort -- fear of teasing when their voice does something they didn't want. It was SO good, and really shifted the atmosphere of the room from a space where there are things to hide or be embarrassed by to a sense of safety or transparency.