Week 6 — Drill Studio · Intervals Outward I

Course: MUS 155 Aural Skills I · Kenosis College
Instructor: Professor Hemsworth
Unit: Learning Unit 6 of 15 (Week 6) · two sessions per week
Objectives: SLO 1 · SLO 3 · SLO 4
Drill Studio 6 · 20 points · Drill-studio group · In session, both meetings (session 1 and session 2) · documented make-up path below, full credit, submit by the end of the week
Format: ears, voice, and — new this week — a page of melodies that leap. Bring a pencil for session 2's dictation.

Named in Music Theory I: interval size from letters, quality from semitones, P/M/m/A/d, the intervals above the tonic in a major scale, spelling below a given note. An hour later, the gaps stop being measurements and start being sounds you recognize on arrival.

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Part 1 — The big picture

Every melody you have ever sung is a chain of gaps. This week six of them get names your ear can use: minor and major second, minor and major third, perfect fourth, perfect fifth. The move that makes them yours is one you already own — the scale. Do to fa is the perfect fourth; mi to fa is the minor second. We sing the gap on syllables first, then say its name, and by session 2 you'll catch yourself recognizing fourths in the hallway.

The singing rule also grows: melodies may now leap as far as a fifth. The house pattern is leap, then step back — jump the gap, walk home.

Part 2 — What we do

The interval ladder (both days). Professor Hemsworth plays a two-note-and-home figure; you echo it on syllables, then the room names the gap. Seconds and thirds come in two sizes each — the small one leans, the large one opens — and fourths and fifths are the perfect, open frames. Rungs start from do, then move to other scale tones, then flip to minor: do to me is the minor third with the same do underneath.

Up or down (session 1). Two tones sound. Point the direction, sing the pair back, name the gap. A falling fourth is the same fourth upside down; your hand tracing the shape keeps the label honest.

Name that gap (session 1). Intervals live in songs you already know. The opening leap of Twinkle, Twinkle jumps do up to sol — a perfect fifth. Amazing Grace opens by rising a perfect fourth into its home tone. Ode to Joy walks in seconds. Swing Low, Sweet Chariot falls a major third on its first two words, and the first rise of Greensleeves is a minor third. Keep your own pegs too — plenty of movie themes open with a bold perfect fifth, and one famous two-note shark needs only a minor second — but the room's shared set is the one above.

Sing from a given note (session 2, solo turns). A note sounds; the call is "major third up" or "fourth down." Down is the new direction — this morning's class spelled below a given note; now your voice does it. Solo turns rotate as always: 6–8 voices per session means everyone solos about every two and a half weeks at a full section of 36; in a small room, everyone, every time.

Interval-isolating dictation (session 2). Two-bar melodies, each built around one featured leap, three hearings, the standing protocol: hear, sing it inside, write after. Find do, land the leap, let the steps carry the rest.

Leap-then-step sight-singing (both days). The week's four melodies are below — audiate the leap before you sing it.

Melody 1 stays in C major: a stepwise climb, one clean fourth up to the high do, then a walk back down.

KEY: C major    METER: 4/4    CLEF: treble
| C4/q D4/q E4/q F4/q | G4/h C5/h | B4/q A4/q G4/q F4/q | E4/q D4/q C4/h |

Melody 2, in G major, opens with the week's widest legal leap — do straight up to sol — and recovers by step; a smaller fourth echoes it in bar three.

KEY: G major    METER: 3/4    CLEF: treble
| G4/q D5/q C5/q | B4/h A4/q | G4/q C5/q B4/q | A4/q G4/h |

Melody 3 keeps minor in play: d minor, a major third rising from me straight to sol, then a fifth-leap from do up to sol across the barline and the long walk home.

KEY: d minor    METER: 4/4    CLEF: treble
| D4/q E4/q F4/q A4/q | G4/q F4/q E4/q D4/q | A4/h G4/q F4/q | E4/h D4/h |

Melody 4 swings in 6/8: F major, a perfect fifth up on the first two beats, and a fourth-leap rise in bar three — the lilt from Unit 3, now with leaps.

KEY: F major    METER: 6/8    CLEF: treble
| F4/q. C5/q. | Bb4/q A4/e G4/q F4/e | G4/q. C5/q. | A4/q G4/e F4/q. |

Part 3 — Before session 1 (the prep step)

Run Tutorial 6 first. It hands you the two-step naming strategy — letter distance first, then quality — plus the conversion moves (interval to solfège pair to semitone count and back) the studio assumes, and it works the one trap everyone falls into once.

Part 4 — What counts, and how

Participation is the grade: sing the rungs, vote the directions, guess wrong out loud, fix it by re-listening. 20 points, graded in session across the two meetings.

Criterion weights: perception 50 · realization 35 · labeling 15

A student who sings the right pitches with the wrong syllables loses only the labeling points. A student who sings the right syllables on the wrong pitches fails the item.

Any octave that fits your voice earns full credit, sung or played — the standing rules hold.

Criterion	Full	Partial	None
Perception — direction calls, quality calls, and dictation shapes show real listening; misses get revised by re-hearing (10)	9–10	5–8	0–4
Realization — echoed intervals and sight-sung leaps land the right size, in any octave that fits, sung or played (7)	7	4–6	0–3
Labeling — interval names and syllable pairs applied rightly to what you heard (3)	3	2	0–1

Part 5 — Missed a session? The make-up path

Full credit, no penalty, by the end of the week. At home: (1) run the practice page's daily loop for the missed days; (2) record two clips — one interval ladder sung from any comfortable do (second, third, fourth, fifth, each up and back), one sight-singing pass of a melody above; (3) write three sentences diagnosing your clips with the error classes — contour right, leap mis-sized is the one on duty this week. Submit clips + sentences in Canvas under this studio's make-up assignment.

Why this makes you a better musician

The harmony part you want to sing sits a gap away from the melody — and "somewhere up there" isn't an address. After this week you can hear that the gap is a sixth-versus-a-fifth kind of question, sing a named interval from any starting note, and tune a line by knowing its distances instead of hunting for them. That's the difference between finding your note and owning it.

Canvas placement block

canvas_object    = Assignment
title            = "Unit 6 Drill Studio — Intervals Outward I"
assignment_group = "Drill studios"
points_possible  = 20
grading_type     = points
submission_types = [on_paper]        # graded in session; make-up: online_upload (clips + sentences)
due              = in session, both meetings; make-up by the end of the week
published        = true

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