Aural Skills, Sight-Singing, and Dictation
Domain 3, Aural Skills, Sight-Singing, and Dictation, tests your ability to translate sound to notation and notation to sound under time pressure: interval and chord identification, error detection, rhythmic and melodic dictation, and prepared or sight-read singing.
Core procedures
- Establish tonality before dictation: sing the tonic triad, scale, and dominant; identify the final note and mode.
- Rhythm first: identify meter, beat unit, subdivision, and syncopation; notate durations before pitches.
- Melody: track contour, scale degrees, repeated notes, and sequence; use moveable-do solfège; check leaps against tonic.
- Harmony: take the bass line, then outer voices, then inner voices; identify cadences and Roman numerals.
- Sight-singing: scan for key, meter, range, and accidentals; audiate tonic; keep a steady pulse.
Worked example
A four-bar dictation begins on sol, rises to do, steps down to la, then leaps down a perfect fourth to mi and ends on do. In C major that is G–C–A–E–C. The perfect-fourth leap is the likely error point; verify it by singing mi–la (E–A) and comparing. Notate the rhythm in 4/4 as quarter–quarter–half–whole, then check the final do against the tonic.
Traps that cost marks
Confusing relative major and minor; writing a raised leading tone in natural minor; grouping 6/8 as three duple beats; enharmonic misspelling such as F♯ versus G♭; ignoring rests; and singing with a drifting tonic. In error-detection items, compare the performed pitch or rhythm to the printed score one parameter at a time rather than guessing the whole phrase.