Aural Skills and Ear Training

All the theory in the world matters little if you cannot connect it to sound. Aural skills—the ability to hear, identify, and reproduce musical elements—are the practical heart of musicianship and a thread running through every part of the Diploma course, from analysis to performance to composition. This lesson explains what to train and how.

From symbol to sound and back

Aural training builds a two-way bridge between notation and sound. Sight-singing asks you to look at notation and produce the correct pitches and rhythms with your voice; dictation asks you to hear music and write it down. Both strengthen the same inner skill: an audiation, or mental hearing, of music. Strong musicians can look at a score and hear it in their heads, and can hear a passage and know how it would be written.