Ear Training - Introduction to Melodic Dictation

Introduction to Melodic Dictation

Melodic dictation can seem daunting at first, but it’s not as hard as it looks. Remember that the examples we will study in this class are both repetitive and predictable. This is not a bad thing. If you know what to expect, you can make educated guesses even if you aren’t sure of the answer.

Things all the melodic dictations this week will do:

• They will contain tones from the tonic (I) triad, that is, do, mi, and/or sol, at the beginning of the phrase. You will usually find tones from the tonic triad at the end of the dictation too. Why? Because this is how a melody establishes a key and implies a cadence.
• They will very likely outline tones from the dominant (V) triad, sol-ti-re, too. A variant of this chord is, of course, V7: sol-ti-re-fa. Commit the solfege of the dominant triad and dominant seventh chord to memory, because they will be used a lot in this class.
• They will be repetitive. In both period structure and sentence structure – concepts we will study in depth both in this class and in Theory III – basic melodic ideas are often repeated, sometimes in fragments. Listen hard for things that seem the same. We can often predict what’s going to happen in a melody before we even hear it.

First steps in practicing melodic dictation:

• Listen to the tonic triad.
• Sing up and down the scale of that key, using solfege.
• Sing up and down the tonic triad: “Do-mi-sol-mi-do.”
• On scratch paper, write down which tones correspond to the solfege syllables, i.e. in G major do-mi-sol will be G, B, and D. Remember these – they will be important to you when you have to do this quickly.
• Once you feel comfortable with the tonic triad, sing the dominant triad: *“Sol-ti-re.”In G major, for example, the tones will be D, F-sharp, and A. Remember these – they will help you write down the right pitches.

How NOT to do it:

Don’t “separate out” rhythm and pitch by deciding to do your first hearing “rhythm only.” The rhythms in these examples will not be complicated, and if you waste an entire hearing getting “rhythm only,” you may miss the pitches. Get your pitches in the staff right away.

Sample Melodic Dictations:

You may know some nursery rhymes and folk songs well. Most well-known songs do all the repetitive, predictable things mentioned above.

• The nursery rhyme “Hot Cross Buns” has sentence structure. The mi-re-do scalar pattern establishes the key and the basic idea.

• Another children’s song, “Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush,” has period structure. Its basic idea is built around do, mi, and sol = the tonic triad. In the contrasting idea, it implies dominant harmony by using the tones of the dominant triad: sol, ti, and re. The consequent has an exact repeat of the basic idea from measure one, but this time it varies the contrasting idea so that we can have a perfect cadence at the end instead of the half cadence we had before.

Developing Your Skills Further

In your own practice, think of some other well-known songs that fall into predictable melodic patterns: nursery rhymes, folk songs, and so on. Try to write down a song you know well from memory. Then analyze it according to the principles we studied today. Look for tones from the tonic and dominant triads, and for repetitive melodic patterns.

Some suggestions:

• “Itsy Bitsy Spider”
• “Old McDonald Had a Farm”
• “I Saw Three Ships”