#Ear training vs aural skils series#

#Ear training vs aural skils series#

We have a series of chapters dedicated to different manifestations of real-world aural skills: improvisation, playback, transcription, sight reading, and leading or participating in an ensemble. We want aural skills to be something musicians do all the time-not just when they’re in the aural skills classroom. So the initial chapters of this text draw students’ attention to these important skills and give them strategies for improvement. We’re convinced, however, that students who don’t have a foundation in each of these areas won’t develop them automatically. In fact, many instructors say they use sight singing and dictation largely in order to teach students these abilities. Common aural skills tasks like sight singing and dictation require or benefit from an array of abilities, including hearing with reference to key and meter, hearing sound in your head (“audiating”), directing your attention to different parts of the music, and relating music to internalized models. Inevitably, there are accessibility challenges that we have not yet addressed, but we welcome suggestions and commit to making aural skills acquisition accessible for as wide a range of individuals as possible. Finally, we explicitly recognize that students bring different abilities and experiences to the class: for example, when we call for the use of the voice, we try to offer alternative approaches for those whose brain-voice connection is problematic. In addition, we present different visions of what aural skills look like, from improvisation to playback to transcription to sight reading, offering success to students with different backgrounds and goals. This text has been designed with accessibility in mind, with a particular focus on trying to make everything transparent to those who use screen readers.

With their focus on notated music, heavy reliance on working memory, and limited vision of what student success looks like, aural skills classes are notoriously inaccessible to students who don’t have certain specific abilities and habits. We are trying to move away from that model, for reasons too numerous to express here.Īs you consider how this book may be of use in your own teaching, we draw your attention to the following principles, which we have sought to prioritize in the creation of this text. Most instructors will be aware that many existing aural skills curricula and texts are derived primarily from the content and ordering of a music theory curriculum, filtered through two tasks: sight singing and dictation. If you decide to use the book in any way, please let Tim Chenette know at This Book vs.

We request that you offer your feedback at this Google form. If you ever find that you have suggestions or feedback for us, please don’t hesitate to share it. This page has notes to instructors on how Foundations of Aural Skills differs from other aural skills texts, advice on using it as a primary text, advice on using it to supplement an existing curriculum, approaches to assessment, a quick guide to other current aural skills Open Educational Resources, and a sketchy short-term development plan for the text. Fortunately, we still think this book can be useful to everybody in some way. This OER aural skills text is designed to support aural skills instruction at introductory levels, particularly college/university/conservatory classes with names like “Aural Skills 1,” “Ear Training 1,” “Musicianship 1,” and “Sight-Singing 1.” The text may also be useful for teachers of high school AP Music Theory or other pre-college classes, though it has not been tailored specifically to the needs of students studying for the AP Music Theory exam.īefore we start, we should emphasize that this textbook-officially published in December 2022-is still under active development.