Aural skills: sight-reading, interval and chord recognition, rhythmic dictation
Domain focus
Aural tests check whether you can convert sound into notation and recognise intervals, chords and rhythmic patterns accurately under time pressure.
Method
- Sight-reading: scan key signature, time signature, range, accidentals and the hardest bar before starting. Count one bar in tempo, then keep going.
- Interval recognition: anchor to a known scale degree. A perfect fifth is the first two notes of a major scale on the lower note; a perfect fourth is the first two notes of a scale starting on the upper note's dominant.
- Chord recognition: identify quality first (major, minor, diminished, augmented), then inversion by the bass.
- Rhythmic dictation: establish the tactus, write bar lines first, then fill note values; check each bar's total value.
Worked example
You hear C then G-sharp. C to G is a perfect fifth; raising G to G-sharp makes it augmented. Inverted, G-sharp to C is a diminished fourth. If the chord is C–E–G-sharp, it is an augmented triad in root position; if G-sharp is in the bass, it is first inversion.
Traps
Writing a major sixth where a minor sixth was played; ignoring the clef or key signature in sight-reading; losing the pulse during dictation; labelling a chord only by its root and missing the inversion.