1 Foreword

Integrated Aural Skills is the consolidation of materials I created for teaching sophomore-level aural skills at the University of Idaho Lionel Hampton School of Music. As part of an institutional move away from traditional textbooks, whose expense was prohibitive to our students, the University of Idaho Library announced they would offer Think Open Fellowships to faculty interested in creating open-access educational resources (OERs).

One recipient of this fellowship was Sean Butterfield, who created an OER for sophomore music theory, Integrated Music Theory. The project quickly achieved his goal of increasing student achievement through resources that were both accessible and engaging. The success of Dr. Butterfield’s OER made me eager to create a parallel resource, Integrated Aural Skills, that could be used together with Integrated Music Theory. Together, we determined the order in which we wanted to introduce new topics and deliberately kept aural skills a week or two behind theory. This gave students a chance to process new information before applying it to ear training and sight singing.

Dr. Butterfield and I agreed that we didn’t want to teach the concepts of musical theory in isolated or abstract ways. Rather, we preferred to think of theory fundamentals as the brushstrokes of a larger work of art. We felt that effective theory teaching integrates fundamental concepts into an always-visible “big picture,” in part so that students understand the practical applications of the subject.  In many cases, students were already familiar with what certain intervals, chords, and so on sounded like in context, even if they didn’t know the terminology. We aimed to integrate their existing knowledge into active learning of theory terms and procedures. Hence Integrated Musicianship, the umbrella title of our combined resources.

For several years, Dr. Butterfield’s and my course materials appeared side by side at the same GitHub site. In 2020, however, I stopped teaching sophomore aural skills and therefore stopped updating my part of the resource. At the suggestion of digital humanities librarian Evan Williamson, I started revising my course materials into a more permanent form. This e-book is the result.

Integrated Aural Skills is not a traditional all-in-one aural skills resource. It does not contain the lesson plans, quizzes, or exams I used in my classes, nor does it supply homework assignments in ear training. For these, I recommend using ear training software programs. Over the course of several years, I tried out a few, generally picking the one that would cost students the least. These programs change so often that I won’t recommend one here. In any case, they’re all good, and will continue to get better as technology improves.

What this e-book does is to provide step-by-step instructions for success in concepts of ear training and sight singing. Over ten years in the aural skills classroom, I noticed time and again that even some of the best performers and composers struggled with ear training. This problem wasn’t unique to our regional research university; acquaintances at highly selective institutions reported similar experiences. Interval recognition was a particular sticking point for many students, and this caused a lot of other problems with other topics such as melodic and harmonic dictations. Having started studying music at a very young age, I couldn’t remember a time when I couldn’t tell the difference between a perfect fourth and a perfect fifth. As part of my own development as a teacher, I learned to empathize better by imagining every problem or question students new to the subject might face.

Integrated Aural Skills shares the step-by-step methods I developed to help students master ear training and sight singing concepts. These include exercises for singing and piano practice, tables, and flow charts. At every turn, I aim to show the learner that much music is pattern-based, and that knowledge of patterns helps to eliminate wrong answers. Just one example of this is the identification of common contexts for intervals. Early on, I noticed that many students were trying—unsuccessfully—to identify intervals by assuming the lowest pitch to be do. It wasn’t always easy to convince them that for contextual reasons, sol-mi is a much easier way to internalize and identify a major sixth than do-la, but when they gave this approach a chance they made better progress. For this reason, I’ve tried in this resource to relate theory concepts to well-known pieces of music, and to reinforce concepts from the ear training class in the sight singing exercises.

Thought it’s normal for most aural skills students to find sight singing easier than ear training, this is not always the case. Some students who haven’t sung much before feel understandably self-conscious about singing in front of a professor for a grade. The musical “stepping stones” in Integrated Aural Skills help them build confidence as they learn to control the pitches of their voices to navigate intervals, scales, and chords.

I’m thrilled if this resource is helpful to other professors who, like me, aren’t theorists by training but due to departmental needs find themselves up in front of an aural skills class. All music professors, regardless of whether they’re academic or studio faculty, are on the same mission: to grow musicians who know how to interact with music with the eyes and ears of a professional. With this in mind, I hope the people using this resource will embrace the possibility that all learners, not just the “talented” ones, are capable of increasing their musicianship. Good musicianship isn’t a gift given randomly to some but not to others. It’s a step-by-step, explainable, rational, expansive, and hopefully even enjoyable journey.

Miranda Wilson