Aural Skills and Analysis
Aural Skills and Analysis is the ear-and-eye domain of Subtest I. It tests melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic dictation; interval and chord recognition; error detection; and analysis of form, texture, and score detail. Every item asks you to convert sound to symbol, symbol to sound, or either one into a structural label, so practice should always link singing, hearing, and naming.
Dictation strategy
- Melodic: establish tonic, sing the tonic triad, then track contour and label scale degrees in movable-do solfège. Write the rhythm before the pitches.
- Rhythmic: decide meter and beat unit first, then whether subdivisions are simple (two per beat) or compound (three per beat).
- Harmonic: take the bass line first because it supplies roots and inversions, then chord quality, then the soprano.
- Reference tunes are quick but unreliable at extremes; sing the interval and check it against a tonic instead.
Cadences and harmonic function
- Perfect authentic cadence: V–I, both root position, soprano ending on the tonic.
- Imperfect authentic: V–I with an inversion or a soprano ending on 3 or 5.
- Half cadence: phrase ends on V. Plagal: IV–I. Deceptive: V–vi.
- Roman numerals record root, quality, and inversion (I, ii6, V6/5, V7), so an aural label must account for the bass note, not just the chord sound.
Form labels
Binary (AB), rounded binary, ternary (ABA), strophic, through-composed, sonata form (exposition–development–recapitulation), rondo (ABACA), theme and variations, and 12-bar blues. Sections are defined by cadences and thematic return, not by bar count.
Worked example
You hear a passage in A major with the bass A–E–D–E–A. The final two chords are E major and A major, and the soprano moves from B to A. Reasoning: the bass gives I–V–IV–V–I. The last pair is V–I with both chords in root position, and the soprano's 2-to-1 motion places the tonic in the top voice, so the cadence is perfect authentic. The D major chord is IV, a common expansion before the closing cadence; hearing it as ii would require a bass F-sharp with D in an upper voice, which the bass line contradicts.
Traps that cost marks
- Calling a V–I perfect when a chord is inverted or the soprano ends on 3 or 5.
- Hearing the relative minor as tonic; check the bass and the cadence, not the melody's first note.
- Treating every V–I as a cadence when cadences close phrases.
- Mistaking a sequence for a new formal section.
- Forgetting that an anacrusis shifts phrase numbering and cadence placement.