Lesson 1 -Tonality, How to Find the Tonic--Aural Skills, Pitch

The Scale and Its Members The scale is the primary building block for most of our ear-training for pitch. Our goal is to ultimately be able to recognize any of the seven different notes that make up the scale. Generally one's ability to recognize the notes lags behind one's ability to sing the different notes. So.... The exercises you will be doing will first involve trying to sing the different notes of the scale so that their individual personalities begin to emerge. All the notes in the scale have a directionality to them. For example, the second note of the scale tends to lean downward toward the first degree. The seventh degree works just the opposite; it likes to go up to the first note. To learn how these tendencies feel you are encouraged to sing some simple melodies that reinforce the tendencies of each of the scale degrees. You can hear these melodies in the skills demonstration, How to Learn Scale Degrees. We call these short melodies "musical tails" because they sound like the ending of musical phrases. You will notice that they all lead back to the first degree of the scale (also called do or the tonic). Back to Top The Musical Tails One learns to "hear" these tails by learning to sing them. To do so you first pick any note that is easy to sing. You do not need to know its name. You can call this note 1. From this 1 you sing the musical tails for each degree of the scale. All the musical tails start with the same three notes, 1 7 1 (sing the 7 just below the 1 you have picked). To practice the second degree, sing: 1 7 1 2 1 To practice the third degree, sing: 1 7 1 3 2 1 To practice the fourth degree, sing: 1 7 1 4 3 2 1 To practice the fifth degree, sing: 1 7 1 5 3 1 To practice the sixth degree, sing: 1 7 1 6 5 3 1 And to practice the 7 above the tonic, sing: 1 7 1 7 1 You may have trouble finding the first note after each 1 7 1. For example, if you are working on scale degree 6 and are having trouble jumping up to the 6, sing the scale to fill in the distance, e.g. 1 7 1 (2 3 4 5) 6 5 3 1. This is a good way to check to see if you are actually doing it correctly. Eventually you will drop this step. Look in your workbook for more examples. You can practice these tails all day. I found them particularly effective while driving. You don't need any materials, just a place where singing softly won't bother anyone.

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