We have now covered the first three chapters of H&VL. These three chapters are the essential ingredients for understanding western tonal music. We will now have three consecutive quizes. The first one will be on Chapter One and will look very much like the homework assignment from the workbook for that chapter. However, you will not have the luxury of time. It will be critical that you know all the scales and keys in both major and minor and understand how to alter the natural minor scale to form the harmonic minor and melodic minor witthout much contemplation. Be sure you know how to figure out the scale degrees in any key. If I tell you Eb is the 6th scale degree in harmonic minor, you should know the natural key signature is 2 flats.
I anticipate between 50-75 questions within 20-30 minutes.
YOU WILL NOT BE ASKED ANY QUESTIONS THAT REQUIRE A KNOWLEGE OF INTERVALS UNTIL THE 2ND QUIZ.
For key recognition, A great way to check your speed is by going to the Flash Based Key Trainer . You should average between 20-30 seconds
Modify the settings to
all major and minor,
all sharps and flats,
allow 7 accidentals,
ask for relative key and
"just tell me major or minor"
HOMEWORK: Prepare Sightsinging 01 and Rhythmic Singing 01
HOMEWORK Due: Previously Assigned Workbook Chapters 1 & 2
Solfege
In music and sight singing solfege or solmization is a way of assigning syllables to scale degrees. In order, they are: Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So(l), La, Ti (or Si), and Do (for the octave).
"Solfege" came from French solfège in the 1910s. (In French, solfège refers to musical technical skills as a whole: sight reading, writing the score of the music one hears, singing in tune, etc.) The French word in turn came from the Italian solfeggio, which is a combination of sol and fa. Its equivalent since Early Modern English is sol-fa.
Variations
There are two main types of solfege: moveable Do, in which each syllable corresponds with a scale degree, and fixed Do, in which the syllables correspond to fixed pitches. In this class WE WILL BE USING FIXED Do
Rhythmic Singing
In addition to singing pitch via Sofege, we will also sing rhythm. In these excersizes you need only speak the word "tah" in time given a specific tempo and meter.
Procedure
Each week I will post solfege excersizes that you should prepare as part of your homework. We will then go around the class and you will be asked to perform a few measures from the weekly assignments.
For those of you that have prior sofeg or choir experience the first few weeks should be easy. I promise it will get harder ;-)
For those of you that have no prior sofeg or choir experience dont worry. I am not trying to create great singers. This portion of theory is designed to develop your ear. We want you to be able to look at a piece of music and know what it sounds like. Your voice need not sound pretty.
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