Well, I do remember the first year music school theory classes that did include Interval Recognition Drills, which back then tied up two students at a time so that one could play the intervals while the other attempted to identify them.

Of course, Band in a Box solved that problem with the wonderful Ear Trainer, today a single student can work on learning to identify those all important intervals all by themselves and also in record time, its like playing a game. Ten to twenty minutes a day is all it takes and in no time that critical skill can be mastered.

There was another set of classes which was involved with taking Music Dictation. In this one, the prof would play a Melody on the piano and the students had to write out that melody on the staff paper. At first the Melodies were simple and the prof would also give us the Key in advance. After a few weeks of doing that just about daily, we were not told the key signature in advance and those who could hear the key would write it out as they heard it in the right key, but those who could not could write it out in any chosen key signature without losing points, the grading was on getting the melody right as to intervals, rhythm figures, etc.

IT IS ALSO IMPERATIVE TO KNOW THE MAJOR SCALE when doing these things. I'd say better than 90% of Western Music melodies are based on the Major Scale. The minor scale comes next, of course, I usually start a student off on that route by getting them to fully realize that the Natural minor scale is nuthin' but the 6 to 13 of the Major Scale.

IMO it is *always* critical to establish and know the Tonic (the Root of the key).

I'm always telling improvisation students that they should always be able to SING the tonic throughout a piece.

And then I'm also telling them not to PLAY it while soloing...


--Mac

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