EAR TRAINING PRACTICAL

Exercises for Ear Training (I)

To begin building this important skill, the teacher should start to:

Play a tonic note for students, and then ask them to hum the sound as you play.

Play the notes of this major scale slowly one after the other, and then ask students to sing the solfa loud until they are able to sing them very well.

In order for students to gain speed, however,  it is important to:

(i) ask them to identify the notes they hear as you play randomly.

(ii) notice if there are particular scale degrees they have trouble identifying — such as, say 6 and 4.

(ii) sing those notes as you play them simultaneously; use this to start to recognize the feel of the more ‘difficult’ scale degrees.

After these exercises, ask the students to write solfa notations of any 20 common songs including Nigerian National Anthem and School Anthem. They should sing the solfa notations and as well play it on any of their musical instrument.