Week 8 — Drill Studio · Foundations, Consolidated in Minor

Course: MUS 155 Aural Skills I · Kenosis College
Instructor: Professor Hemsworth
Unit: Learning Unit 8 of 15 (Week 8) · two sessions per week
Objectives: SLO 1 · SLO 2 · SLO 3 · SLO 5
Drill Studio 8 · 20 points · Drill-studio group · In this week's ONE session (the paired theory course's exam week leaves one meeting) · documented make-up path below, full credit, submit by the end of the week
Format: one 75-minute session, straight from the theory midterm. Nothing new today — everything you've sung, clapped, and written for seven weeks, in one room, back to back. Skills Check 8 runs at the end of this same session.

Named in Music Theory I: the midterm — every name from the first seven weeks, certified in one sitting. An hour later the same seven units of sounds get certified too: sung, echoed, and taken in dictation. Two exams' worth of proof in one morning that the two courses built one literacy.

Part 1 — The big picture

You walk in having just certified the names. This session certifies the sounds — and it is built to feel like a release, not a second exam. High energy, all voice, zero new concepts: the steady beat from Unit 1, the split beat from Units 2–3, major from Unit 4, minor three ways from Unit 5, and the intervals, narrow and wide, from Units 6–7. The minor mode carries the most weight today, because it is the youngest skill and the one a quiet week erodes fastest.

Part 2 — What we do

The do ritual, both colors. The session opens with the ritual twice on the same do — major, then parallel minor. That one flip (mi→me, la→le, ti→te) is the week's thesis in five notes.

The cumulative echo medley. Eight echoes, seven weeks: pulse patterns, simple and compound rhythms, a major line and its minor flip, narrow intervals, then the wide leaps. Played once, sung right back. No thinking time — that's the point; fluency is accuracy at speed.

Minor fluency loops. The three forms on solfège, up and down, same do: natural (le and te), harmonic (te lifts to ti), melodic (la and ti going up, back to te and le coming down). You'll feel where the lift lives and where it doesn't.

The first 4-bar dictation — both modes. The week's centerpiece, and a real milestone: double last week's length, one melody in major and one in minor, at a moderate tempo with four hearings instead of three. Before the first hearing you'll hear the standing truth: the protocol beats memory span. Nobody remembers four bars; the ritual — whole shape first, then pulse and cadence, then the middle — writes them down for you.

Skills Check 8, after the drills. The last quarter hour of this same session. Everything on it will have sounded in the room within the previous hour.

Solo hearings. A few quick individual turns inside the loops, as every week — about six today given the check, roughly twenty seconds each. At a full section of 36 the running rotation still means every voice is heard solo about every two and a half weeks; in a small room, everyone, every time.

Part 3 — Before session 1 (the prep step)

Run Tutorial 8 first — it's the mixed-set conversion workout (solfège ⟷ degrees ⟷ letters, both modes; counting strings, both meters; interval names) that today's medley assumes. In a one-meeting week the tutorial is half your contact with the material; don't skip it.

Part 4 — The take-home flip pair

The one notated set this week, for the studio's sing-through and your recording at home. First, the major version — four bars in G major, stepwise with a skip pair up to sol, landing back on do:

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

Now the same tune in G's parallel minor — same do, same shape, one syllable changes color: every mi becomes me. Sing them back to back and hear the mode change while the melody survives:

KEY: g minor    METER: 4/4    CLEF: treble
| G4/q A4/q Bb4/q A4/q | G4/q Bb4/q D5/h | D5/q C5/q Bb4/q A4/q | G4/w |

Part 5 — What counts, and how

Participation is the grade: sing every echo, flip every mode, take both dictations, guess out loud, fix it out loud. 20 points, graded in this one session.

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.

Part 6 — Missed the session? The make-up path

One meeting means missing it costs the whole week's room time — the make-up restores all of it, full credit, by the end of the week: (1) run this week's practice loop daily; (2) record the three-forms loop and the flip pair above, both modes; (3) take one 4-bar self-dictation through any of the three protocols from your submission page; (4) three sentences of self-diagnosis in the error classes. Submit under this studio's make-up assignment in Canvas. The skills-check make-up is separate — see the check page.

Why this makes you a better musician

Fluency under mixed demand is the gig condition: nobody on a bandstand hands you one skill at a time. Today you answered seven weeks of sounds in any order, at speed, and wrote down four bars you heard once — proof the pieces became one ear.

Canvas placement block

canvas_object    = Assignment
title            = "Unit 8 Drill Studio — Foundations, Consolidated in Minor"
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 1 (the week's one meeting); make-up by the end of the week
published        = true