Ear Training
Recommended Books
In the print Music Collection, books on aural skills can be found in MT 35, "Notation. General works," and MT 870, "Sight-singing." Also be sure to run subject searches for terms like ear training, sight-reading, sight-singing, listening, musical dictation, and musical notation. The recommended books below are sorted by their call numbers. Hover over the info icon to see a description of the book.
The Mind's Ear: Exercises for Improving the Musical Imagination for Performers, Listeners, and Composers by
The Mind's Ear offers a unique approach to stimulating the musical imagination and inspiring creativity, as well as providing detailed exercises aimed at improving the ability to read and imagine music in silence, in the "mind's ear." Modeling his exercises on those used in theater games and acting classes, and drawing upon years of experience with improvisation and composition, Bruce Adolphe has written a compelling, valuable, and practical guide to musical creativity that can benefit music students at all levels and help music teachers be more effective and inspiring. The book also provides provocative ideas and useful tools for professional performers and composers, as well as offering games and exercises to serious listeners that can increase their musical understanding and level of engagement with music in a variety of ways.
Call Number: MT35 .A2 1991Publication Date: 1991
Writing Down Music by
This practical guide to the principles and practice of preparing legible and correct music manuscript is intended for students, scholars, teachers, composers, arrangers, and copyists, indeed for anyone who has to write music on paper. Part I thoroughly deals with basic matters such as materials and symbols. Part II covers all types of scores and part-writing and includes advice on checking and proofreading.
Call Number: MT35 .B79Publication Date: 1976
Ear Training for Twentieth-Century Music by
Michael Friedmann's Ear Training for Twentieth-Century Music is a skills text: using non-tonal materials, students are asked to improvise at the keyboard, sing at sight, take dictation, memorize melodies by rote, and identify selected set classes by eye and ear.
Call Number: MT35 .F87 1990Publication Date: 1990
Aural Skills Acquisition: The Development of Listening, Reading, and Performing Skills in College-Level Musicians by
This book is a hands-on investigation of the stages musicians go through as they learn to hear, read, and perform music. It draws on the latest research in music perception and cognition, music theory, and pedagogy, along with centuries of insight from music theorists, composers, and performers. The first part explores the development of music listening skills, including such broader activities as dictation and transcription, and specific abilities such as meter perception, short-term musical memory, and tonic inference. The second part then examines the skills involved in reading and performing music. It looks at such physical skills as vocal production and eye movements and at such complex integrated tasks as sight-singing transpositions and modulations. Throughout the book the author presents these skills in their musical contexts and emphasizes their roles in the general development of musicality. Aural Skills Acquisition builds important bridges between music theory, cognitive psychology, and pedagogy. It subjects ideas from music theory to the rigors of psychological testing and combines findings from the psychology of learning with ideas and methods of contemporary music theory. It will prove an invaluable guide for music teachers, music theorists, and psychologists interested in music perception and cognition.
Call Number: MT35 .K186 2000Publication Date: 2000
Aural Awareness: Principles and Practice by
Traditional aural training is heavily biased towards the perception and identification of pitch and rhythm. But George Pratt argues in this book that in these days of CDs and cassette recorders much of this area of the subject can best be worked on alone. He demonstrates how, by tailoring tasks to individual needs, every student can make some encouraging progress in these aspects of music. But this also makes time available for developing the perception of other musical elements just as significant yet often neglected because of their more abstract and qualitative nature--elements such as timbre, texture, and density; compass, range, and tessitura; dynamics and articulation; ordering music in structures and placing it in space. The chapters on these areas break new ground. They demonstrate how these 'elements', once perceived and analyzed, are incorporated into the skills which musicians need--to notate sound quality accurately, to read or 'image' the implications of notation beyond though including pitch and rhythm; to play and sing by ear; to improvise and to memorize, not only 'right notes' but the subtle qualities and nuances which bind them into coherent music.
Call Number: MT35 .P89 1998Publication Date: 1998
Beginning Ear Training by
These time-tested exercises will help you to play by ear. This book with online audio recordings introduces the core skills of ear training. Step by step, you will learn to use solfege to help you internalize the music you hear and then easily transpose melodies to different keys. Learn to hear a melody and then write it down. Develop your memory for melodies and rhythms. Transcribe live performances and recordings. Listening is the most important skill in music, and this book will help you to listen better. Gilson Schachnik teaches ear training at Berklee College of Music. He is an active keyboardist, composer, and arranger, and has performed with Claudio Roditti, Mick Goodrick, Bill Pierce, and Antonio Sanchez. The audio is accessed online using the unique code inside each book and can be streamed or downloaded. The audio files include PLAYBACK+, a multi-functional audio player that allows you to slow down audio without changing pitch, set loop points, change keys, and pan left or right.
Call Number: MT35.S33 B4 2007Publication Date: 2007
Aural Skills for Conductors by
Aural Skills for Conductors is the first text designed to help students integrate skills learned in traditional ear-training courses with conducting skills. Over 100 excerpts from choral, wind, and string works are included as exercises that present specific challenges in detecting: note errors, rhythmic errors, intonation errors, balance/dynamic errors, and articulation errors.
Call Number: MT85 .B14 1992Publication Date: 1992
The Routledge Companion to Aural Skills Pedagogy: Before, In, and Beyond Higher Education by
The Routledge Companion to Aural Skills Pedagogy offers a comprehensive survey of issues, practice, and current developments in the teaching of aural skills. The volume regards aural training as a lifelong skill that is engaged with before, during, and after university or conservatoire studies in music, central to the holistic training of the contemporary musician. With an international array of contributors, the volume captures diverse perspectives on aural-skills pedagogy, and enables conversation between different regions. It addresses key new developments such as the use of technology for aural training and the use of popular music. This book will be an essential resource and reference for all university and conservatoire instructors in aural skills, as well as students preparing for teaching careers in music.
Call Number: MT90 .R79 2021Publication Date: 2021
Rhythm and Pitch: An Integrated Approach to Sightsinging by
A complete two year sightsinging text that develops better music reading skills by coordinating the study of rhythm and pitch. Integrated approach begins with simple melody and rhythmic elements and progresses to complex rhythmic and tonal melodic material.
Call Number: MT870 .S827 1986Publication Date: 1986
Foundations of Aural Skills (eBook) by
Foundations of Aural Skills is a research-based, accessible, relevant, creative, inclusive, empowering textbook for teaching introductory aural skills. The first seven chapters provide thorough instruction in aural fundamentals, allowing students to build their foundations from a variety of starting points. The following chapters address the traditional tasks of sight-reading and dictation, but also improvisation, mimicking music you hear (“playback”), transcription, and ensemble skills. The final two chapters add some basic form- and chord-listening skills. Every section includes creative activities that learners can try out on their own or do in class. Embedded playlists for practicing listening skills include a diverse range of music that will connect with students’ preferences and allow them to experience music they haven’t worked with before. While the text is primarily designed for a first semester or year of instruction, it also includes some instruction on modulation, chromaticism, and mixed meter, and future additions/development will make these advanced applications more robust.
Call Number: Pressbooks (open access)Publication Date: 2022
Interlibrary Loan
Users are encouraged to search for items beyond University Libraries' catalog via RILM Abstracts of Music Literature and WorldCat. Materials not available in print or online may be requested through Interlibrary Loan. Please allow up to seven days for electronic delivery and up to fourteen days for delivery of physical items.