Week 9 — Drill Studio · Triads by Ear

Course: MUS 155 Aural Skills I · Kenosis College
Instructor: Professor Hemsworth
Unit: Learning Unit 9 of 15 (Week 9) · two sessions per week
Objectives: SLO 1 · SLO 3 · SLO 4
Drill Studio 9 · 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: voice, ears, pencil, and the printed shapes below. Bring your Tutorial 9 conversion work; the studio stands on it.

Named in Music Theory I: the triad — stacked thirds, four qualities, the diatonic triads, inversions, chord symbols. An hour later you sing, as a named thing, the shape you've been singing for five weeks.

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Part 1 — The big picture

Here is what happens this morning, and it is the whole course in one beat. Every session since day one has opened the same way: chords, "do," and you singing do–mi–sol–mi–do back — on "loo" at first, on syllables since Unit 4. Nobody ever told you what that shape was. This morning the theory class finally named it: a triad — three notes stacked in thirds — and yours is the tonic triad, root position, major quality. An hour later you will sing it again, exactly as always, except now you know what you're saying.

Sit with that order for a second: you owned the sound — for five weeks by syllable, since day one by ear — before the name existed. That's not an accident — it's the claim this course made in Unit 1, kept. Every name the theory class hands over from here lands on something your ear already does.

This week the one shape becomes four: major and minor you can sing on syllables; diminished — the shrunk one that leans — you can sing too; augmented — the stretched one — has no syllable path in our system, so it stays a color you identify, echoed on "loo." You'll also pull single members out of a blocked chord on request, and start hearing which member sits on the bottom — the skill Unit 11's bass lines are built on.

Part 2 — What we do

The do ritual, named. Same ritual, every session, through the final — but from today the response has a title. Same door, same shape, new nameplate.

The quality ladder (both days). The shape cards below are your practice set. First the major shape, then the same shape from the same do with its middle lowered — the week-5 flip, now a change of chord quality:

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

Same do, same frame, middle drops a half step — major becomes minor:

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

The diminished shape lives naturally on ti — a shrunk frame that leans hard toward home. Sing it slowly, feel the lean:

KEY: G major    METER: 4/4    CLEF: treble
| F#4/h A4/h | C5/h A4/h | F#4/w |

The fourth quality, augmented, is deliberately not printed for singing: its stretched fifth has no name in our solfège (that vocabulary belongs to Aural Skills II). In the studio Professor Hemsworth plays it; you echo it on "loo" and learn its color — floating, unresolved, neither major nor minor.

Quality ID (both days). A chord sounds blocked, then rolled. You call its quality in one word. The ear cue that works: the outer frame first (perfect? shrunk? stretched?), then the middle (high third or low?).

Sing the third, sing the fifth (session 1). The whole chord sounds; you sing only the member asked for. This is a working musician's reflex — "gimme the third" is a real sentence on real gigs.

The neighborhood tour (session 1). Every scale degree hosts its own triad. We sing do's chord, fa's chord, and sol's chord as shapes inside one octave — the major key's home, away, and doorway chords, by ear.

Root position or not (session 2). Same three notes, different bottom. You call what's in the bass: root, third, or fifth. An inversion is not a new chord — it's the same chord standing on a different foot, and you can hear it.

Compound echo, wider (session 2). Unit 3's lilt returns at two new widths — 9/8 (three big beats) and 12/8 (four). SS4 below puts the triad shape into the 12/8 ballad feel directly.

Sight-singing (both days). The week's set. The skips are chord shapes now — audiate bar one, read shapes, not single notes.

SS1 — C major; the tonic triad becomes melody, with sol's chord answering in bar two:

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

SS2 — G major, in three; the shape climbs, steps answer, and the dotted figure from Unit 4 returns:

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

SS3 — a minor; the minor triad sung as a line, me giving it the color:

KEY: a minor    METER: 4/4    CLEF: treble
| A4/q C5/q E5/q C5/q | B4/q C5/q A4/h | C5/q D5/q E5/q C5/q | B4/q A4/h. |

SS4 — F major, in 12/8; the triad shape wearing the ballad lilt — count four dotted-quarter beats:

KEY: F major    METER: 12/8    CLEF: treble
| F4/q. A4/q. C5/q. A4/q. | G4/q. A4/e G4/e F4/e F4/q. F4/q. |

Dictation with triadic skips (session 2). Two bars, three hearings, the standing protocol: tap, sing it inside, write. New move: when a bar outlines a chord shape, write it as a shape.

Solo hearings. The rotation continues inside extraction and sight-singing: 6–8 solo turns per session, so at a full section of 36 every voice is heard about once every two and a half weeks; in a smaller room, everyone, every time.

Part 3 — Before session 1 (the prep step)

Run Tutorial 9 first. It drills the conversion this week runs on — chord symbol ⟷ quality ⟷ the two stacked thirds — so that when a chord sounds in the studio, your ear has a grid to file it in. The studio assumes it.

Part 4 — What counts, and how

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.

That rule has carried every week since Unit 1, and this week is why it exists: the triad was real in your voice five weeks before its name arrived.

Criterion	Full	Partial	None
Perception — quality calls, member calls, and bass-member calls show real listening; dictation tracks what sounded (10)	9–10	5–8	0–4
Realization — arpeggios, extractions, and sight-singing land in tune and in time, any octave that fits, sung or played (7)	7	4–6	0–3
Labeling — quality names, member names, and syllables attached correctly to what you sang and 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 the quality ladder — major, minor, and the diminished lean from the cards above, plus your augmented attempt on "loo" checked against the tone generator; (3) record one melody from the sight-singing set; (4) write three sentences naming, in the error classes, what went right or wrong. Submit clips + sentences in Canvas under this studio's make-up assignment.

Why this makes you a better musician

On a gig, chord quality is the information: the chart says one thing, the keys play another, and the player who hears major-versus-minor-versus-that-stretched-thing catches it in one bar. This week your ear starts filing chords by structure instead of vibe — and when the leader turns and says "sing the third," you find it because you've pulled members out of blocked chords on purpose, in this room.

Canvas placement block

canvas_object    = Assignment
title            = "Unit 9 Drill Studio — Triads by Ear"
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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