Category Archives: aural training

With just six days to go until her Grade 8 exam, I gave my piano pupil her first lesson on the aural tests; in fact, her first lesson on ABRSM aural tests in two years. She will pass the aural with flying colours*, one of those candidates where the examiner will smile to herself and think “at last, a real musician!”

To be fair, she is an able pupil. But my point is that my aim has always been to teach her to be a musician first and foremost, not just a pianist.

Singing back the bass line is not a problem for her. She can sing just about every line in every piece which she has learned, so why should a simple Grade 8 aural test phase her? Not only that, but when we learn a new piece, she fully expects to be asked to sing the melody whilst she plays the bass line, or the other way around. From memory. Well why not? It’s not easy the first time of course, but five years down the line it has simply become a skill which she has developed and now takes in her stride. Having memorised sonata movements by Scarlatti and Beethoven, and a harmonically complex Brahms Intermezzo, how hard can a simple tonic/dominant bass line be?

Identifying chords, cadences and modulations? Don’t you need to be able to do that to play Beethoven? On one level, I suppose not. If, however, you are looking to develop the musician as well as the pianist, then it’s vitally important that we learn the implications of chords and modulations, and indeed the entire harmonic structure of a Classical sonata movement – or any other piece for that matter. Drawing out these instincts should begin in the very first lesson, not  a month before the exam when we realise we haven’t looked at the Grade 8 aural tests yet! And yet I regularly see students at this point, to ‘do’ the aural test bit, who just look blankly at me when I mention the word modulation. Realistically, what chance have they got? It’s just too late.

Sight-singing? Ok, so she has had the advantage of singing in our a cappella Chamber Choir for the past year or so, and so holding her own vocal line, whilst still challenging, is nothing new. And she is perfectly used to pitching intervals; in every piano lesson I will ask her at some point to sing the third in this or that chord. Grade 8 sight-singing tests are strongly harmonic; you can learn to sight-sing by pitching alone, but it is so much easier if the pupil has good harmonic understanding. See above. Sight-singing is not guess work, far from it – it requires understanding. And understanding is laid down over time, not in a few desperate last minute aural classes.

Features of the music/style and period. We talk about these things all the time – no really, all the time! I don’t generally say ‘Let’s go from the top of the second page’, but rather ‘Let’s go from the second subject’ or ‘Let’s pick it up at the beginning of the G minor passage.’ Where’s that? ‘Good question!’ Develop an enquiring mind; in my experience, students enjoy being challenged.

I run aural classes each term to give extra support to our instrumental teachers, and yes, some straight forward exam technique can turn a daunting task into a very simple one. But the best way to teach aural, I believe, is in the context of the instrumental/singing lesson. In this way it becomes an integral part of their learning, not some extra chore to be dealt with in exams. They will also become self-sufficient, thinking musicians.

[*Postscript – marks just in, full marks for the aural tests, and a distinction overall! :D]

I often begin my piano/musicianship lessons with a little mental warm-up, and one of my favourites is this: I sing a note (do) and ask the pupil to complete the major triad, first with mi (the major third) and then so (the fifth). Although most students know full well what a major arpeggio sounds like, plucking one out of thin air, unaided, can be surprisingly difficult at first. This is a great way of developing inner hearing; I ask the pupil to imagine the sound of an arpeggio, or perhaps even to put their fingers over the keys and imagine playing it. Somewhere inside their head is that ‘sound bite’ of an arpeggio, and often is not so much that they don’t know the sound, but more a question of not being able to recall it. Once they have found it, I go on to sing a variety of different pitches and ask the student to sing mi and so above it.

Once they have the hang of this, I move the goalposts by singing them so, and asking them to sing down the rest of the major triad, mi and do. This is more of a challenge; we are used to hearing/singing arpeggios from the root upwards, but not from the fifth downwards. Most find do first, and then fill in the gap with mi; with the more able student I will insist that they sing so, mi, do (in that order) which might mean doing some ‘sums’ in their head before presenting their final answer out loud. The ultimate challenge is for me to sing the third (mi), and for the pupil to find the root (do) and the fifth (so).

Most students are surprised to discover that a major triad consists both of a major third (from do to mi) and a minor third (from mi to so).  It is this element – learning to distinguish between and to pitch major and minor thirds, up and down – which makes this such a focusing exercise, and it’s what I like to call musical mental arithmetic. Arpeggios needn’t just be meaningless technical exercises – far from it in fact; adding this aural/theory/solfa dimension immediately gives them so much more value.

With a piano pupil this might be a three minute ‘game’ (fun eh?!), with a musicianship pupil it might lead into some sight singing exercises – after all, once we know where do, mi and so are, we have a strong internal framework for finding other notes; la is just above so, ti is just below do etc. Solfa is such a useful tool, and having used it now for the past couple of years in my teaching, I would never choose to be without it. Most noteworthy, if you’ll forgive the pun, is that at no point does either pupil or teacher even need to touch a musical instrument. In my book that is proper aural training.

I have discovered the most wonderful resource for musicianship training – canons! So much can be covered with the simplest of four bar canons, and perhaps the greatest beauty of all is that you need nothing more than two voices.

Take the following example:

The first objective should be to sight-sing the melody using solfa. I insist that my pupils do this, for two reasons. Firstly, it gives each note its place value in the key. And secondly, it is extremely focusing to be thinking about both pitch and syllable  – there is no room for passive participation here! Initially even a simple melody may prove quite testing, but this active engagement of the brain, this constant thinking ahead, is an excellent skill to be developing right alongside the aural skills.

Alternatively, or perhaps after an initial attempt at sight-singing, you can learn to sing it from memory, perhaps in two halves at first, but still using solfa.

With a more able pupil, you might dive in straight away and ask them to sing after you, in canon. This allows them either to read the notes as they sing, or else to memorize what you sung and follow that way – or ideally a combination of both. Still in solfa. They might get the notes right but a few syllables wrong – don’t allow them to get off lightly! Even if they get the melody perfectly correct, insist that the solfa is correct too, even if it takes a few more attempts.

And then there are the hand signs! These can be introduced whilst you are just singing in unison, and your pupil should sign too. The ultimate test, of course, is to sing the canon whilst signing the second part a bar later. But be warned, make sure you have practised this before you demonstrate in front of your pupil – it’s not easy!

A quick glance down the aural test requirements for the early ABRSM grades will show you just how much a little of the above covers:

• Pulse. Singing together and in canon enhances an awareness of both rhythm and pulse.
• Echo responses. Memorizing short phrases.
• Recognising changes. Singing in canon requires careful listening to both rhythm and pitch, and students will soon be identifing their own errors.
• Sight-singing notes in free time (Grades 4 & 5). The key here is solfa, and learning a few tuneful canons in this way will soon make the ABRSM tests seem insultingly easy.
• Sing back a phrase. No problem – your student can now sing back a phrase at the same time as listening to how it continues!
• Tonality. The place value which solfa brings (you just can’t sing mi without having worked out that it is the 3rd of the chord) is excellent for developing a sense of key, and singing in canon also encourages the student to listen carefully to the harmonies produced between the voices.
• Singing back the lower/upper part. Once you have practised a few example, see whether your pupil can sing in canon without sight of the music; this really does develop their ability to hear one part and sing another.

I find teaching the ABRSM tests in order to pass the exam to be a pretty painful experience – but just learning and singing together a simple canon, even for a few minutes each lesson, is quite the opposite. Delightfully pure and simple, but incredibly focusing for both pupil and teacher alike. Let’s put the instrument down, or step away from the piano for a few moments, and sing!

This canon is the very first in a book of 109 canons selected by David Vinden in ‘Two-part hearing development” which is available here.

Plus …. a fab solfa video here!

For as long as I can remember I have been able to sight-sing with confidence, doubtless due to my early training as a chorister and subsequent involvement with choirs for many years since. It still remains, for me, the most important thing for any musician – to be able to sing.

Three years ago I signed up for a British Kodàly Academy Spring Course. I can’t quite remember why, but one of the things which did interest me was the knowledge that the Kodàly approach uses solfège, the naming of each note of the scale as do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do. I was interested to see whether there was anything in it, since I had my doubts – after all, I could sight-sing perfectly adequately without, so what possible use could giving all the notes funny names be to me? As I soon discovered, I was missing the point.

The first event of Day One was choir. We learned a song from memory by repeating back phrases sung by our director, which was challenging for one reason only – we were expected to sing in solfa! For me pitching the notes was easy, but remembering which solfa name to sing them to was not, and immediately I found my brain racing to keep up. And it was relentless! Just as I thought I had the hang of it, we cut to something different – learning another melody, or clapping and/or stamping a complex syncopated rhythm. And then (I should have seen it coming!) we put all of them together; melody, rhythm, others singing the countermelody, and the solfa! By the time the hour was up I felt like I’d done a day’s mental workout. They say that music uses both sides of the brain – definitely!

And then on to musicianship training. I was aware that there are different hand signs for each of the solfa syllables, but was not yet aware of their full potential. We learned some relatively simple pentatonic melodies from memory, and again the most difficult element was singing the solfa names. By now I realised that I was becoming much more actively aware of the relative position of each note in the scale, rather than just pitching each note from the previous one. The latter system still worked for the pitch, of course, just not for the name. Interesting. And then we were asked to perform a melody in canon. First at the piano; play first, and start singing a bar later (in solfa). Challenging, but manageable, and I have to say I felt very proud of myself for negotiating the task successfully, albeit with my brain running at full tilt. And then with hand signs. That’s right, sing first (in solfa) and then sign the canon a bar later with the solfa hand signs. “You’ve got to be joking” I said to Klara, the delightful Hungarian lady who was taking our class. Evidently she wasn’t. As encouragement, she performed the canon in three parts, using both hands, without even breaking a sweat! Respect.

Back in choir, I soon discovered that when the music changes key, do moves too – and so of course does everything else! Never before have I been so intensely aware of the place value of each note in a melody, and in observing every modulation as it occurs. I realised that much of the time I sight-sing on autopilot; yes, I am constantly listening, but perhaps not always thinking so hard. On the other hand, solfa actively forces you to listen and to analyse, and the intensity of this experience is actually very surprising. It is an amazingly powerful tool for teaching complete novices (as my Choir who can’t sing will testify) right through to analysing Schubert symphonies in detail, which I did on this year’s Spring Course.

This approach to musicianship is so refreshingly rigorous, and I love it!

The third of my five ‘E’s for outstanding instrumental teaching is developing an Enquiring mind. I think that it is vital that the teacher gets into the habit of asking questions rather than answering them, so that the student quickly learns that he is expected to work things out for himself. A simple example: “don’t forget the E flat in bar 5” becomes “which note did you play wrong in bar 5?” It is so easy to fall into the trap of giving the answers, but telling is not teaching and we should not be in so much of a hurry to teach a piece of music that we forget to teach the student.

Assuming the student answered the question correctly, let’s make the next question a little more difficult: “Can you sing me the E flat please?” At this point, in 9 out of 10 cases, the student will reach for an E flat on the piano – if they get the chance that is, because I’m ready for them! “No, don’t play it, sing it.” For me, this really gets to the crux of the problem. Sitting at a piano is like having a calculator in an arithmetic exam, but easier; if you want to know an answer, just press the relevant key and the answer is immediate.

At the simplest level, this is going to test the student’s aural memory. Can they remember, in their inner ear, any of the notes which they have been playing in the last few moments? The questions which they need to ask themselves are going to be the equivalent of a mathematician showing how they reached the answer – if they think that you are just expecting them to pull an E flat out of the air then of course they have every reason to panic!

A few more leading questions might help; “The phrase started on a B flat, can you remember what that sounded like? Yes? Well, can you sing me a B flat then?” Once they have sung the B flat, a little theory might be required: “How far away is E flat from B flat? Ok, sing up a four note scale from the B flat and we should get there!”

My piano pupils are used to this type of questioning, resigned to it perhaps! They realise that I am serious, however, and although in the early days some will just dig their heels in and refuse to sing – I had a pupil once who took weeks and weeks even to pluck up the courage to proffer a single squeak – they all know that it is an expectation. The benefit, of course, is that they are using their ears, and they soon realise that it can be quite helpful to have their ears connected up with what their fingers are doing.

This style of teaching encourages the student to use their brain, their memory, their ears, their knowledge of theory, their voice …. and sometimes diversionary tactics! The alternative “don’t forget the E flat in bar 5” seems unhelpful in comparison.

I was fortunate enough to gain a place as a chorister in a parish church at the age of eight, and received five years of the most wonderful musical training. In fact, there was a series of very specific tests which we were expected to work through, and success was rewarded with a coloured drawing pin on a chart. Wow! (Actually, I was hooked from day one!)

More specifically, there were 7 blue, 15 red, 5 green and 5 purple tests. The blue ones were along the lines of ‘read a hymn’ (Immortal, invisible, God only wise,
In light inaccessible hid from our eyes!), sing a scale G to G etc – all things which a seven/eight year old needed to get to grips with if he was going to progress to becoming a ‘full chorister.’ It was a very simple system, but the tests became increasingly demanding – I can’t remember what any of the purple ones were, but they were probably along the lines of ‘process down the nave of the church with a candle in one hand, whilst sight-reading the alto line of Stanford in G with the music upside down!’

However, I do remember several red ones, including ‘sight-read no jumps’. Our assistant choirmaster, Mr Baker, would draw a stave, a treble clef, and a major scale from middle C to top G, on the back of a scrap of paper. All that was required was to be able to sing up and down the scale, by step, as he pointed to each note, but changing direction occasionally. The aural equivalent of going up or down a ladder, one rung at a time. Looking back, we must have learned

• the ‘sound world’ of the major scale
• where the tones and semitones were
• that next door notes move either from line to space, or from space to line

Not too tricky once you got the hang of it, but nevertheless something which needed practise and familiarity. Sight-read jumps, on the other hand, was fiendish, and the test board, all neatly organised in rows and columns, had a notably empty column under this heading – the few boys with a red drawing pin at this point were held in great esteem, and quite rightly! In short, if you can do this, you can do anything, and I do mean that quite sincerely.

Sight read no jumps is not difficult, but I believe that it is necessary for all musicians to practise it and master it. I regularly encounter young musicians (and also older ones) who quite simply can’t sing from one note to the next. I find it difficult to allow them to justify why not – scales are the alphabet which we work with, and we must have a basic working knowledge of the scale. They might not like it, but when I ask my piano pupils to sing a musical line in lessons, they know that I’m serious and they just get on with it. After all, the ears need just as much training as the fingers.