Week 14 — Skills Check · Embellishment and the Outer Voices

Course: MUS 155 Aural Skills I · Kenosis College
Instructor: Professor Hemsworth
Unit: Learning Unit 14 of 15 (Week 14) · two sessions per week
Objectives tested: SLO 2 (track and match an outer voice from a heard two-staff texture) · SLO 3 (identify by ear, without notation)
Points: 8 (8 × 1) · Group: Skills checks (lowest 2 of 13 dropped) · In class, session 2, live stimulus, closed to AI. Answers go in through the Canvas quiz tool on your own device; every stimulus is performed live in the room.

The import-ready item file is rendered by the build system from _build/banks/lu-14.json; that bank also holds this unit's six pool items, which test the same skills with different stimuli and never appear on the weekly check. This page describes the check — the stimuli themselves exist only as session 2's live sound.

What it is

Eight questions, all ears, in the last quarter hour of session 2's studio — the final weekly check of the term, covering the week you just drilled: extra notes named by what they do, a held note that leans and falls, two staves heard one line at a time, and the shape of a melody at its peak. Professor Hemsworth performs every stimulus live, from a fixed script, announced by number, with a pause for answering after the final hearing.

Blueprint

The table maps the item families to what your ear does and the outcome each serves.

Wrong-answer options come from the real error classes and the week's real confusions — the neighbor that gets called passing, the bright third in a minor line, the peak placed a bar early. Everything here was drilled out loud in the same room this week.

Ground rules

Closed to AI, closed to notes, closed to neighbors (the human kind). Phones face-down except for answering; nothing is written during a hearing — listen first, answer after. Group-administered: everyone answers the same live hearings at the same moment, so it runs identically at four students or forty.

Absent for session 2?

The primary make-up is a live administration in office hours — same script, same hearings, performed for you by Professor Hemsworth. Email her to schedule it as soon as you can.

Self-administered variant (only where scheduling truly cannot work): the check holds a parallel stimulus set for exactly this case. Recruit a musician who can play short two-staff fragments accurately from a card — a pianist helps this week. Your partner contacts Professor Hemsworth directly and receives the performance cards (they never pass through your hands), performs each stimulus per its script — announced by number, scripted hearings, pause, answer — while you take the parallel items through the same Canvas tool; your partner signs the attestation line confirming the stimuli were performed as scripted and unseen by you. Process and honesty are the graded substance; the ear it certifies is still yours. If no partner is available, arrange an office-hours make-up hearing instead — the late-work policy's standing path.

Canvas placement block

canvas_object    = classic assessment, delivered via the Canvas quiz tool
title            = "Unit 14 Skills Check — Embellishment and the Outer Voices"
assignment_group = "Skills checks"
points_possible  = 8
allowed_attempts = 1
access           = opens in session 2; live administration only
published        = true