Week 5 — Drill Plan · Minor, Three Ways, by Ear
Course: MUS 155 Aural Skills I · Kenosis College
Instructor: Professor Hemsworth
Unit: Learning Unit 5 of 15 (Week 5) · two sessions per week
Objectives: SLO 1 · SLO 2 · SLO 3
Sessions: session 1 · session 2 (Skills Check 5 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-05.md; the three-forms scales, the degree ladder, and the sight-singing set SS1–SS4 are notated in this unit's P page (they are student material, not secrets). Nothing musical is spelled out here.
Named in Music Theory I: relative and parallel minor, the three minor forms, minor key signatures, scale-degree names, subtonic vs leading tone, do-based minor solfège with raised 6 and 7, the enharmonic minor pairs — the dark half of the map, spelled this morning, sung and heard here an hour later.
First time teaching this
The point of the LU: minor is not a new planet — it is the same do with three notes lowered. Because this course sings do-based minor, the payoff is immediate and audible: take a tune everyone owns, keep the tonic exactly where it is, and flip mi→me, la→le, ti→te. The color changes; home does not move. Then the three forms differentiate by ear: natural keeps le and te, harmonic lifts te to ti so the pull home sharpens, melodic climbs la–ti and relaxes back down te–le.
The one thing that must land: the flip. A student who can sing the same phrase in major and in parallel minor on the same do, and hear which three syllables moved, owns mode identification for life. Everything else this week — form ID, minor dictation, te-vs-ti — is that flip, applied.
The most common way it goes wrong: treating minor as "sad major" and singing it by mood instead of by syllable. The mood is real, but the mechanism is three specific half steps, and the drills keep pointing at them. Second trap: the raised 7. Students hear ti in a minor phrase and assume someone made a mistake, or they write the dictation without its accidental. Say early and often: the signature spells natural minor; la and ti are honest visitors and every visit gets written down. Third trap: vocabulary drift — relative minor belongs to the theory page work this week; here everything is parallel (same do). Don't let the two get blurred out loud.
The do ritual
Defined in full in Unit 1's B; referenced by name ever since. This week it runs in minor for the first time: play the same four door chords in the day's minor key — lower the third of the home-colored chords, and lean the last chord before home by raising the seventh scale step inside it so the pull is audible — sing "do," and the class sings the response arch do–me–sol–me–do (Ritual-m, keys fence 1). Say it once, in session 1: "Same door, darker room. Home hasn't moved — listen to what did."
Drill sequence
Session 1 — minute markers, stimuli by keys-sheet name, tempi, repetitions, words to say.
| Time | Segment | Stimulus / tempo | Reps | Words to say |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0:00–0:04 | The do ritual, minor | Ritual-m in a minor, 76 BPM | 2 cycles | "Same door, darker room. Home hasn't moved." |
| 0:04–0:18 | The flip game | FL1–FL3 pairs at 72→80 BPM; then the whole Twinkle tune from memory, major then minor, same do | 2 play–sing cycles per pair | "Same do, same shape. Three syllables move: mi to me, la to le, ti to te. Sing the major line; now flip only what must flip." |
| 0:18–0:32 | Three forms on solfège | P scales (d minor), 60→72 BPM | each form ×2, then back-to-back | "Natural is the signature, honest. Harmonic lifts one note — hear the pull home. Melodic climbs la–ti and comes down te–le." |
| 0:32–0:44 | Minor echo ladder | E1–E4, 69→76 BPM (ritual first in each new key) | 2 cycles each | "I play, you echo on syllables. If a note feels lifted, it probably is — trust that feeling, we're naming it all week." |
| 0:44–0:56 | Mode ID | M1 pair, M2 pair, 76 BPM, shuffled | 2 hearings per call | "Major or minor? Don't vote by mood — hunt the third. Show thumbs: up major, down minor." |
| 0:56–1:07 | te vs ti · le vs la | T1, T2 at 66→72 BPM; E4 revisited | 2 hearings per call | "Two kinds of neighbor under do: the whole-step one that strolls, the half-step one that pulls. Which did you hear?" |
| 1:07–1:15 | Close + assignments | — | — | "Practice page has your daily flips. Tutorial's conversions feed session 2's dictation. Ten minutes a day, out loud." |
Session 2 — forms owned by students, degree names, dictation, real music, then the check.
| Time | Segment | Stimulus / tempo | Reps | Words to say |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0:00–0:03 | The do ritual, minor | Ritual-m in g minor, 76 BPM | 1 cycle | "Darker door, same home." |
| 0:03–0:13 | Three forms, handed over | P scales, 72 BPM, solo turns on the rotation | each form ×1 per singer | "You conduct the corner: point at te or ti before you sing it." |
| 0:13–0:22 | Degree names | Degree ladder (P fence 4), 60→66 BPM | 3 rounds | "New names arrived in the theory session. Sing from do to the note I name: the dominant... now the leading tone — feel the half-step lean." |
| 0:22–0:37 | Guided dictation | D1 at 66 BPM, then D2 at 66 BPM; three hearings each, hear–sing–write | scripted | "Name the form first, then notate. If your ear caught ti, your pencil owes it a sharp — the signature won't write it for you." |
| 0:37–0:47 | Real music | R1 at 69 BPM, R2 at 76 BPM | 2 hearings each | "Two songs older than anyone's grandmother. Which form? Where does the leading tone lift?" |
| 0:47–0:55 | Sight-singing circle + warm-up | SS1–SS4 from the P page, 60→69–72 BPM | round-robin | "Audiate first — hear it before you sing it. Any octave that fits." |
| 0:55–1:09 | Skills Check 5 | Stimuli 1–8 per script, 66–76 BPM | scripted | script only — identical administration matters |
| 1:09–1:15 | Close | Ritual-m, once, all together | 1 | "You can hear the difference between three kinds of dark now. 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Flip game | Partial flip — me arrives but la and ti stay bright, so the line curdles halfway | Isolate the two notes that didn't flip: play the major pair, then the minor pair, echo just that pair, then rebuild the whole line. |
| Flip game | Do drifts under the flip — the "minor version" is really a new key | Stop, run the ritual once in the same key, re-sing the major line, flip again. Home first, color second. |
| Three forms | Melodic won't come down — la–ti persists in the descent | Sing only the top four notes down (do–te–le–sol), twice, then the full descent. The reversion is a muscle, not a rule. |
| Three forms | The harmonic corner smears — le→ti arrives as a slide, not two pitches | Play le, play ti, silence between; class sings the pair staccato; then reconnect at tempo. |
| Mode ID | Voting by mood — "it sounded sad" gets minor called on a slow major line | Replay the pair's third alone: mi then me. Then the full lines. The vote is about that note, not the weather. |
| Dictation | Ti written without its sharp — the sound was heard, the accidental wasn't written | Hold the page up: play what they wrote (with te), then what they heard (with ti). The wince teaches; then they correct the page. |
| te vs ti | Both neighbors sound alike — te and ti called interchangeably | Drop to the pair alone at half tempo: do–te–do, do–ti–do. Whole step strolls, half step pulls. Rebuild from there. |
Escalation path
If a drill fails room-wide: the flip game drops to a single pair on one breath — do–mi–do flipped to do–me–do — before any full line; the three forms drop to natural only (the signature form) with harmonic and melodic banked; mode ID drops to the M1 pair played back-to-back with the third exaggerated; dictation drops to D1 with the form announced in advance. Re-establish tonic the same way every time: stop, run the do ritual in the day's minor key, resume. Abandon criterion: a segment still failing after two escalated attempts gets banked — "your ears have the seed; it flowers next week" — and logged. The named pick-up hooks: Unit 6's interval echo sings these same flip pairs as named intervals; Unit 8's consolidation week is deliberately minor-weighted, and every banked Unit 5 drill re-enters there at floor difficulty inside the cumulative medley.
Tempo table
| Drill | First pass | Target |
|---|---|---|
| The do ritual (minor) | 76 BPM | 76 BPM (never varies) |
| Flip game FL1–FL3 | 72 BPM | 80 BPM |
| Three forms (P scales) | 60 BPM | 72 BPM |
| Minor echo ladder E1–E4 | 69 BPM | 76 BPM |
| Mode ID M1–M2 | 76 BPM | 76 BPM |
| T1–T2 discrimination | 66 BPM | 72 BPM |
| Degree ladder | 60 BPM | 66 BPM |
| Guided dictation D1–D2 | 66 BPM | 66 BPM |
| Real music R1 / R2 | 69 / 76 BPM | 69 / 76 BPM |
| Sight-singing SS1–SS4 | 60 BPM | 69–72 BPM |
| Skills-check stimuli | as scripted, 66–76 BPM | fixed by script |
Rotation note (P states it to students): solo hearings continue inside the three-forms handover and the sight-singing circle — 6 to 8 students heard individually per session keeps every voice 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 current; the Unit 7 check assumes the rotation has touched everyone twice by then.
~ Professor Hemsworth's edition · Kenosis College · built with thecoursemaker.com