Week 1 — Drill Plan · Ear Before Eye
Course: MUS 155 Aural Skills I · Kenosis College
Instructor: Professor Hemsworth
Unit: Learning Unit 1 of 15 (Week 1) · two sessions per week
Objectives: SLO 3 · SLO 4 · SLO 5
Sessions: session 1 · session 2 (Skills Check 1 in the last quarter hour of session 2)
Instructor-facing. This file is excluded from the student cartridge. Every stimulus named below is notated, with its performance script, in
_keys/KEY-stimulus-sheet-week-01.md— nothing musical is spelled out here.
Named in Music Theory I: the staff, clefs, letter names, octave numbers, half and whole steps, accidentals, enharmonic spelling — the map of what you already hear.
First time teaching this
The point of the LU: before any page enters the room, prove to the students that their ears already work — they can hold a pulse, hear how beats group, match a pitch, echo a shape, and find and keep a home tone. Everything after Unit 1 is names and notation attached to abilities certified today.
The one thing that must land: the home tone. A student who leaves session 2 able to find do, sing it, lose it, and re-land on it has the anchor every later skill hangs from.
The most common way it goes wrong: talking. The temptation is to explain; the design is to sound. Say less, play more, and never let a drill stall while you describe it. Second trap: vocabulary. This week the class says "grouped in twos" and "grouped in fours" — the classification words, the syllable system, and degree numbers all arrive in later weeks, the morning the theory class names them. One borrowed label is legal now, because you'll use it daily: musicians call the home tone do. Everything is sung on neutral syllables — "loo" or "bah."
Nothing this week requires reading to pass — that is a design decision, not an accident. These students play by ear; meet them there.
The do ritual
The single key-establishment ritual for all fifteen units, defined here once. Every session of the semester opens with it, and it precedes any drill in a new key:
- Play I–IV–V–I at the piano in the day's key — unhurried, about 76 BPM, roughly one chord per two beats.
- Sing "do" on the tonic and hold it a full breath.
- The class sings the home-tone shape back — the arch notated as the ritual stimulus (fence 1 of the keys sheet).
Through the neutral weeks (this one through Unit 3), the class's response is that shape sung on "loo." From Unit 4, the week solfège arrives from the theory class, the identical response is sung as do–mi–sol–mi–do on syllables — same ritual, same shape, new words. Later drill plans reference all of this as "the do ritual" plus one line.
Words to say the first time (session 1, minute one): "This chord pattern is how every session starts, all semester. It plants a home tone in your ear. I'll sing the home tone; you sing this shape back on 'loo' — any octave that fits your voice is right."
Drill sequence
Session 1 — the table gives minute markers, stimuli by keys-sheet name, tempi, repetitions, and the words to say.
| Time | Segment | Stimulus / tempo | Reps | Words to say |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0:00–0:04 | The do ritual, defined | Ritual (fence 1), 76 BPM | 2 full cycles | script above |
| 0:04–0:15 | Steady-beat walk + pass-the-pulse circle | body only, 60 BPM, then 76 BPM, then 92 BPM | 8+ bars each tempo | "Walk the beat. When I point, YOUR clap carries it — pass it around the circle without a bump." |
| 0:15–0:27 | Grouping by ear | G1 at 76 BPM, G2 at 76 BPM; revisit both at 92 BPM | 2 hearings per answer | "Where does the weight come back? Show me on fingers — twos or fours. Don't count, feel." |
| 0:27–0:40 | Pitch matching | T1, T2, T3 — held tones, ~60 BPM pulse | 2 rounds each | "Sing my tone on 'loo.' Any octave that fits your voice is a match — that's the rule all term." |
| 0:40–0:58 | Echo ladder, rungs 1–4 | E1–E4 at 76 BPM | 2 play–echo cycles each | "I play, you're my echo. Breathe together, land together." |
| 0:58–1:08 | Finding do — first hunt | ritual key, then E1 replayed | 3 attempts | "I'll play the pattern; when it ends, hum the note that feels like home. Check: I'll play home." |
| 1:08–1:15 | Close + assignments | — | — | "Ten minutes a day beats an hour on the weekend — the practice page shows you exactly what to do. Tutorial before session 2." |
Session 2 — echo at full width, do under pressure, then the check.
| Time | Segment | Stimulus / tempo | Reps | Words to say |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0:00–0:03 | The do ritual | Ritual, 76 BPM | 1 cycle | "Same door, every session." |
| 0:03–0:15 | Echo ladder, rungs 5–8 | E5–E6 at 76 BPM; E7–E8 at 80 BPM (new dos — ritual in each new key first) | 2 cycles each | "New home tone — listen for the door chords, then sing home." |
| 0:15–0:28 | Hold your do | Distraction line (fence 13), 72 BPM | 2 full passes | "Sing home and defend it. I'm going to argue with you — keep your note. Re-land together at the end." |
| 0:28–0:38 | Grouping, mixed | G1/G2 shuffled, 92 BPM | 1 hearing per answer | "One hearing this time. Commit." |
| 0:38–0:50 | Echo + change spotting (check warm-up) | E2 then E2 with one note altered on the spot | 3 pairs | "Same or different? If different — beginning, middle, or end?" |
| 0:50–0:55 | Check setup | — | — | administration script, keys sheet |
| 0:55–1:09 | Skills Check 1 | Stimuli 1–8 per script, 66–84 BPM | scripted | script only — identical administration matters |
| 1:09–1:15 | Close | ritual, once, all together | 1 | "You found home and held it under fire. That's the skill everything else this term stands on. Recordings and practice close at the end of the week." |
When they miss it
Per drill: what the miss sounds like, and the immediate corrective — a specific next sound, never a re-explanation.
| Drill | Error mode — what it sounds like | Immediate corrective |
|---|---|---|
| Pitch matching | "I can't sing" — the voice is breathy or thin, but the pitch is actually close | Say it plainly: matching is not tone quality; the rubric never grades timbre. Have them match ONE tone, confirm it, move on before self-consciousness sets in. |
| Pitch matching | Octave match — a low voice lands the tone an octave down | Nothing is wrong. Say so — "that's the same tone in your octave, full credit" — and use it to teach the any-octave rule. |
| Pitch matching | Fifth-match — the singer locks a fifth away and holds it confidently | Play the two tones in alternation, slowly, twice; then have them slide from their note to yours. Don't name the interval — the slide is the teacher. |
| Echo ladder | Contour right, size wrong — the shape rises and falls correctly but lands wide | Shrink the material: replay only the two notes around the wide landing, echo just that pair, then rebuild the whole pattern. |
| Echo ladder | Pulse lost at the join — the echo starts late or rushes its first note | You clap the pulse through their whole echo once; then hand the clap to them and echo again. |
| Grouping | Twos heard as fours (or the reverse) — half the room shows the wrong fingers | Exaggerate: replay with the strong attack almost banged, others whispered. Then replay at normal weight. Two rounds of that fixes most rooms. |
| Hold your do | Drift — the held do slides toward whatever you're playing | Stop the distraction line, re-sound do alone, rebuild: hold against ONE distractor note, then two, then the full line. |
Escalation path
If a drill is failing room-wide: drop one rung — the echo ladder falls back to E1 (the gentlest rung), grouping falls back to G1 with exaggerated weight, hold-your-do falls back to plain pitch matching (T1–T3). Re-establish tonic the same way every time: stop, run the do ritual once, resume. Abandon criterion: if a segment is still failing after two escalated attempts, bank it — say "your ears will own this by next week; the seed is planted; moving on" — and log which drill you banked. The named pick-up hook: every Unit 1 drill returns inside Unit 2 — the echo ladder returns as the rhythm echo ladder, grouping-by-ear returns as meter-by-ear (where twos and fours finally get their names), and pitch matching runs as maintenance in every Unit 2 session. A banked Unit 1 drill re-enters there at floor difficulty; nothing is lost.
Tempo table
| Drill | First pass | Target |
|---|---|---|
| The do ritual | 76 BPM | 76 BPM (never varies) |
| Steady-beat walk / pass-the-pulse | 60 BPM | 92 BPM (via 76 BPM) |
| Grouping G1–G2 | 76 BPM | 92 BPM |
| Pitch matching T1–T3 | 60 BPM (held tones) | 60 BPM |
| Echo ladder E1–E6 | 76 BPM | 76 BPM |
| Echo ladder E7–E8 | 76 BPM | 80 BPM |
| Hold-your-do distraction line | 72 BPM | 72 BPM |
| Skills-check stimuli | as scripted, 66–84 BPM | fixed by script |
Rotation note (P states it to students): solo hearings begin this week inside the pitch-matching and do-hunt segments — 6 to 8 students heard individually per session means every student is heard solo roughly every two and a half weeks at a full section of 36; in a small room, everyone, every session. Keep the ledger of who has been heard; the Unit 7 check assumes the rotation has touched everyone twice.
~ Professor Hemsworth's edition · Kenosis College · built with thecoursemaker.com