Ear Training and Aural Skills
Ear Training and Aural Skills
This is the practical paper: interval and chord recognition, cadence identification, melodic and rhythmic dictation, error spotting and short two-voice work. Marks come from method as much as from a good ear - a candidate who fixes the tonic first and writes in solfège beats one who guesses note by note.
Interval and chord recognition
- Anchor intervals to known openings: minor 2nd (Jaws), major 2nd (Happy Birthday), minor 3rd (Greensleeves), perfect 4th (Here Comes the Bride), tritone (The Simpsons), perfect 5th (Star Wars), major 6th (My Bonnie), octave (Somewhere Over the Rainbow).
- Play the interval in both directions: a perfect 4th below is easily misheard as a perfect 5th above.
- Chord quality: listen to the outer interval and the third. Major 7th sounds bright and tense, dominant 7th wants to resolve, minor 7th is soft, diminished 7th is symmetrical and restless.
Dictation procedure
- Hear the excerpt twice without writing.
- Fix the final note - in tonal music it is almost always the tonic - and hum the tonic triad against the last chord.
- Notate the rhythm alone first, tapping the beat; find the metre from recurring bass changes, not from melodic accents.
- Write scale degrees above the staff, then convert to pitches using the key signature.
- Check the contour and the last two bars, which carry the most marks.
Worked example
You hear a four-bar phrase in 3/4 ending on G, with the last two bars outlining D–B–G. The final note and closing triad point to G major. The opening note is D, repeated, then E, D, B: in solfège 5–5–6–5–3. The first bar's rhythm is dotted quarter plus eighth, the long note on the downbeat, and the bass changes every three beats, confirming 3/4 rather than 6/8. Write the one-sharp signature first, then the degrees: D–D–E–D–B.
Traps that cost marks
- Writing the first note heard as the tonic; the tonic comes from the cadence.
- Omitting rests, ties and triplet brackets - rhythmic marks are awarded separately and lost silently.
- Enharmonic spelling: write G♯ in A major, A♭ in E♭ major.
- For cadences, listen to the bass, not the soprano: V–vi and V–I can sound alike above.