![]() Also, in light of the fact that this music is still very much with us in the concert hall, as well as in the music school, and because I believe that later styles can profitably be studied as outgrowths of, or reactions to, the tonal system, this emphasis seems warranted. Since most of a music major’s two year theory sequence (at least 1.5 years in most schools) concerns itself with music of the common practice period (i.e., Baroque through Romantic), this bias seems justified. One caveat: the strategies I am proposing are without question biased towards tonal music. This is one of the best ways to interrelate the two and reinforce for the students the idea that hearing, seeing and understanding go hand in hand. This is not to say that examples of whatever is currently being taught in theory should not be played in class: quite the contrary. It is unfortunate that as a practical matter, the written portion of a standard theory class progresses much more rapidly than the aural skills portion, so there is a lag between what one has learned in theory and what one is learning in aural skills at the same time. Consequently, everything in theory and ear training should be as coordinated and interrelated as possible. Theory and ear training are flip sides of the same coin - every component works to reinforce every other one. The underpinning of my approach to teaching aural skills is that nothing a student learns in written theory or aural skills exists in a vacuum, independent of anything else. Theory and ear training: flip sides of the same coin If improved sight reading is a consequence, so much the better-a felicitous by-product, but not the point of the exercise. I am not trying to merely provide a service by producing better sight-readers for the choirs and ensembles. My goal is to produce musicians who can hear and think about music equally well - musicians who can understand and see what they hear, and hear and understand what they see. With that vision in mind, all activities must be coordinated in such a way that they all work towards that end. What skills am I trying to teach? There are different opinions about the purposes and goals of sight singing and ear training, so an aural skills teacher must decide which goals he or she is pursuing before developing a program of study. Over the past several years I have experimented with different strategies for teaching aural skills, all of which emanate from my basic beliefs about exactly what skills I am trying to teach, how to integrate them with written theory and how to do it in the most efficient way. Is there more to the study of triads than recognizing the four qualities as isolated events, and hearing which voice has the root? These are the questions and concerns that I will address here, and I will argue for a contextually-based approach to teaching intervals and triads in an ear training program. A similar situation exists with regard to triads. But at the same time, many aural skills teachers question their importance, or the value of the method by which they are most often taught. Nevertheless, the identification of intervals seems to be a major component of many ear training and sight singing texts, CAI music software, and presumably, most ear training programs. Many students do not do particularly well with random interval identification, but can do well with other aspects of aural analysis. Do they need to be proficient at hearing scale degrees and relationships within the context of a key? Most certainly. Do students need to be proficient at identifying random intervals before they can move on to something else? No, I don’t believe so. ![]() One vexing problem for many aural skills teachers is the study of intervals. This article was published in the Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy, VOLUME FIVE, No. It is a violation of copyright to download a copy of this article. Important note: Permission to add this article was given by the Gail Boyd de Stwolinski Center for Music Theory Pedagogy at the University of Oklahoma.
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