Intermediate Ear Training
Course Description
Summary
In this course, students will develop skills in aural perception, learning to visualize, sing, and notate music through melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic exercises. Students will learn to identify key signatures, intervals, 7th chords, triads, key relationships, common cadences and phrase structures, larger forms, tempo markings, and more. Classwork will include singing melodies with solfege (prepared and at sight); performing rhythms, eventually incorporating syncopation, cross-rhythms, small subdivisions, and changing meters; taking melodic and harmonic dictation; Roman Numeral analysis of chord progressions; writing and singing back short compositions; transcription and analysis of recorded music. Our main focus will be tonal music, including diatonic and chromatic melody. We will also study modulation as we progress. We will also explore other tuning systems and global approaches to ear training including Hindustani raga, South Indian konnakol, Arabic maqam and Turkish makam, and more.
Learning Outcomes
- Accurately identify different types of intervals, triads, seventh chords, harmonic progressions, etc.
• Develop proficiency in singing melodic materials on solfege such as intervals, broken chords, single-voiced melodies, canons and rounds.
• Strengthen rhythmic capabilities through exercises involving binary and ternary divisions of the beat.
• Improve intonation and matching of pitch.
• Take harmonic and melodic dictations, improving listening skills and accurate pitch and chord identification.
Prerequisites
Students must read music notation and have previously taken a beginner’s music theory course or have equivalent knowledge.
Please contact the faculty member : josephalpar@bennington.edu
Corequisites
Attendance at music events relevant to the course; occasional attendance at Music Workshop
Cross List
- Music Fundamentals