Syllabus
Musical concepts and fluency
The goal of this course is musical fluency: that is, the successful depositing of musical information into readily-accessible long-term memory, and the successful cognitive assimilation of musical concepts and structures.
We will seek fluency in the following conceptual areas and skills (which will serve as assessment criteria):
- Standard rhythms in simple and compound meters (to the subdivision level; Kazez, Unit I)
- Irregular division of the beat in simple and compound meters (Kazez, Unit II)
- Diatonicism in tonal melodies
- Chromaticism in tonal melodies (centered around the German Lied)
- Modulation to closely related keys in tonal melodies
- Functional diatonicism in tonal harmonic progressions
- Functional chromaticism in tonal harmonic progressions
- Performance
- Transcription
- Dictation
- Professionalism
That fluency will be practiced and/or assessed through the following tasks:
- Performance with practice
- Performance from sight
- Error detection
- Aural identification of basic structures from a recording
- Self-paced transcription
- Live, instructor-paced dictation
Units of study
The concepts and tasks listed above overlap significantly, so any unit boundaries will necessarily be fluid. In general, though, the course will progress from performance to transcription to listening/aural analysis for each concept, with rhythm coming first, then melody, then harmonic progressions. Class activities will progress according to the following rough outline.
- Unit I: Performance of rhythm
- Unit II: Transcription of rhythm; performance of melody
- Unit III: Dictation of rhythm; transcription of melody and bass lines; performance of harmonic progressions
- Unit IV: Dictation of melody and bass lines; transcription of harmonic progressions
- Unit V: Dictation/aural analysis of harmonic progressions
See courswork document for information on end-of-unit assessments.
Course materials
Required
- A free Google account (for maintaining self-evaluations on Google Drive)—if you already have a Gmail address, you already have this.
- A free account to Piazza.
- A web-enabled device that can be brought to each class meeting (laptop, tablet, smartphone, web-friendly eReader, iPod Touch, etc.).
- An account for Spotify (a free account should be sufficient for this course).
- Kazez, Daniel. Rhythm Reading, 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1997.
- Berkowitz, Sol et al. A New Approach to Sight Singing. New York: W.W. Norton, 2011.
- Shaffer section only: A semester account for Learning Catalytics.
All other required class materials will be posted or linked to on the course website.
About this syllabus
This syllabus is a summary of course objectives and content, not a contract or a collection of policies and assessment information. Course policies and assessment practices are contained in separate documents. All information in this syllabus (except for the “General course description”) is subject to change, with sufficient advanced notice provided by the instructor.