As mentioned in my previous blog entry, one of the classes I took during my first term with Berklee Online was “Basic Ear Training 1”. While I had done some ear training previously this was my first “full dose” and I’m glad I took it.

We did a bunch of exercises conducting while singing in various time signatures, as well as learning to read and sing notation via Solfege, with a lot of work focused on hearing & identifying interval relationships/chord types/chord progressions/song forms and towards the latter part of the course we did a fair amount of transcription.

For me the most exciting area of development was transcribing via solfege. Not too long ago this seemed like a fantasy to me. Being able to write music free of an instrument for reference seemed like something that only someone like Quincy Jones could do. It truly was a really great moment for me in my musical life when I realized that I was doing it without trying. Granted, I wasn’t super fast with it and the melodies were rather simple, just the same I was doing it.

I still have a ways to go for all of this to be second nature but I’m happy to know that I can do it. Looking forward to the next ear training class that I’ll be taking in the upcoming term: “Harmonic Ear Training”.

Here is the daily exercise that I came up with as part of my final assignments.