March/April 1998:Playing By Ear

Dear reader:

I have been remiss and apologize. I neglected to post the March "Lesson Of The Month" so following are two units covering March and April. Time is indeed a fleeting thing...

Playing By Ear - Unit 3 - Skips

Last month we experimented with tracking movement (up, down or the same) in a melody and trying to reproduce the tune finding a reasonable key in which to work. We made fleeting mention of skips in the melody but we need to address that subject a little further.

The distance between two notes in music is called an INTERVAL. There are a lot of ways to learn to hear and identify intervals. Let's try the following exercise:

1) Find a moderately low note that is comfortable in your voice range and sing it using the word "One" .

2) Sing a major scale upward from "One" to the next "One" as follows :

• "One - Two - Three - Four - Five - Six - Seven - One" (e.g. C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C)

The numbers represent the steps of the scale and in classical music there is a system called "solfeggio" that assigns the following syllables to those steps:

• Do - Re - Mi - Fa - Sol - La - Ti - Do (1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8(octave))

The syllables are easier to sing than the numerical words because of the vowels but if you prefer to use the numbers by all means do so.

MOVING UPWARD by solfeggio names:

• Do to Re = an interval of a 2nd
• Do to Mi = an interval of a 3rd
• Do to Fa = a 4th
• Do to Sol = a 5th
• Do to La = a 6th
• Do to Ti = a 7th
• Do to the next highest Do = an octave (8th)

3) Practice singing the various intervals aloud while mentally hearing the steps in between the two sounds you sing. Work at it until your ear begins to recognize the intervals.

4) Now start on the upper Do ( or "one") and learn to sing the intervals going downward. The concept is the same - you mentally hear the steps in between the sounds that you sing BUT if you use the solfeggio names - they DO NOT reverse.

MOVING DOWNWARD in solfeggio:

• Do to Ti = an interval of a 2nd
• Do to La = an interval of a 3rd
• Do to Sol = a 4th
• Do to Fa = a 5th
• Do to Mi = a 6th
• Do to Re = a 7th
• Do to the next lowest Do = an octave (8th)

NOTE: For singing intervals downward it really is easier to say the number names. They do NOT reverse as do the solfeggio names.

Playing By Ear - Unit 4 - Finding Skips In A Melody

In the March lesson you learned to sing two notes and determine how far apart they were by singing your way from one to the next along the scale lines. The same thing can be done to skips that occur within a melody.

Let's use the tune of "Amazing Grace". If you start to sing it you will notice that there is a skip between the first two notes.

1) Sing the first 2 notes. Go back and forth between them. Then, saying "one" for the first note count your way up to the next one:

• One (two-three) four

You have now determined that there is a fourth between those two notes so if you started on a C the next note would be F.

2) The distance between the second and third notes of the tune can be found in the same way but again you have to say "one" for the first and count your way to the next.

• One (two) three

Once you have determined the size of the interval you must attach note names to the notes. You can do that by singing the names and then by playing them on the harp.

Make a list of familiar tunes that you would enjoy playing. It is best to stay with simple folk tunes at first. Try to find the notes and the various intervals by the means suggested above. Have fun!

See you next month for Unit 5.

Stephanie

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