Developing Musicianship Through Aural Skills

A textbook for learning to hear, sing, understand, and use the foundations of music as a part of an integrated curriculum for musicians. It provides you with the musical terms, progressions, resolutions, and devices that you can draw upon as a functional and usable musical vocabulary.

This book is about thinking in music. Music listeners who understand what they hear are thinking in music. Music readers who understand and visualize what they read are thinking in music. This book investigates the various ways musicians acquire those skills through an examination of the latest research in music perception and cognition, music theory, along with centuries of insight from music theorists, composers, and performers. Aural skills are the focus; the author also works with common problems in both skills teaching and skills acquisition.

The Routledge Companion to Aural Skills Pedagogy offers a comprehensive survey of issues, practice, and current developments in the teaching of aural skills. The volume regards aural training as a lifelong skill that is engaged with before, during, and after university or conservatoire studies in music, central to the holistic training of the contemporary musician. With an international array of contributors, the volume captures diverse perspectives on aural-skills pedagogy, and enables conversation between different regions. It addresses key new developments such as the use of technology for aural training and the use of popular music. This book will be an essential resource and reference for all university and conservatoire instructors in aural skills, as well as students preparing for teaching careers in music.

Inspired by Dalcroze-eurhythmics, this book is a practical guide for teachers and students interested in integrating the moving body into the aural skills classroom. Author Diane J. Urista focuses on movement-to-music as a tool for developing musical perception and the kinesthetic aspects of performance. As this book demonstrates, moving to music and watching others move cultivates an active, multi-sensory learning experience in which students learn by discovery and from each other. The book features a wealth of exercises that teach rhythmic, melodic, harmonic and formal concepts, including improvisation and expressive exercises. These exercises not only develop the ear, but also awaken the muscular and nervous system, foster mind-body connections, strengthen the powers of concentration, develop inner-hearing, short- and long-term memory, multi-tasking skills, limb autonomy, and expressive freedom. Exercises are presented in a graded but flexible order allowing readers to select individual exercises in any sequence. Activities involve movement through space as well as movement in place for those teaching in small classrooms. The book can be used as a teacher's manual, a supplementary aural-skills textbook, or as a stand-alone reference in a course dedicated to eurhythmics. Many exercises also provide an effective aural/sensory tool in the music theory classroom to complement verbal explanations. The approach integrates easily into any traditional college or conservatory classroom and is compatible with fixed do, moveable do, and scale degrees. A companion website features undergraduate students performing select exercises. Visit the companion website at www.oup.com/us/movingbodyauralskillsclassroom

The Musician’s Guide to Theory and Analysis is a complete package of theory and aural skills resources that covers every topic commonly taught in the undergraduate sequence. The package can be mixed and matched for every classroom, and with Norton’s new Know It? Show It! online pedagogy, students can watch video tutorials as they read the text, access formative online quizzes, and tackle workbook assignments in print or online. In its third edition, The Musician’s Guide retains the same student-friendly prose and emphasis on real music that has made it popular with professors and students alike.

Research indicates that aural skills are vital in developing musical expertise, yet the precise nature of those skills and the emphasis placed upon them in educational contexts merit closer attention and exploration. This book assesses the relevance of aural in a university music degree and as a preparation for the professional career of a classical musician. By way of the discussion of four empirical studies, two main areas are investigated: firstly, the relationship between university music students aural ability and their overall success on a music degree programme, and, secondly, the views of music students and professional musicians about aural and its relevance to their career are analysed. The subject is investigated particularly in the light of the current socio-educational background of the past fifty years, which has greatly influenced the participation of music and the study and development of musicianship. Many related issues are touched upon as part of the research for this project, and these emerge as relevant topics in the discussion of aural. Apart from students and musicians views on training and singing, aspects considered include the role of improvisation, memorisation and notation, examinations, absolute pitch and the affinity with language, all of which have a part to play in the debate about the importance of aural.