Week 15 — Drill Plan · Cumulative: The Movable Frame + The Final

Course: MUS 155 Aural Skills I · Kenosis College
Instructor: Professor Hemsworth
Unit: Learning Unit 15 of 15 (Week 15) · two sessions per week
Objectives: SLO 1 · SLO 2 · SLO 3 · SLO 4 · SLO 5
Sessions: session 1 (movable-frame studio → FINAL response part → first hearings block) · session 2 (FINAL hearings, second block, and the close of the term)

Instructor-facing. Excluded from the student cartridge. Every stimulus named below is notated, with its performance script, in _keys/KEY-stimulus-sheet-week-15.md; the final's full administration script — both parts, both sessions, timing, rotation — lives at the end of that sheet. The three-dos frame tune is printed in the studio page (students sing it from notation); the prepared set has lived in the Unit 13 studio page since it shipped.

Named in Music Theory I: transposition by interval, by key, for instruments and for singers; lead-sheet reading; chord-symbol realization; Nashville numbers; the chart roadmap.

First time teaching this

The point of the LU: close the loop the course opened in Unit 1. The morning's chart work says a tune can change clothes and keep its identity; this room proves it with the voice — the same melody sung from three different dos, the same solfège line every time. Then the final certifies fifteen weeks of hearing, in the friendliest possible format: the same drills, administered.

The one thing that must land: do travels, the tune survives. When the room sings the frame tune from its third do and notices the syllables never changed, transposition stops being arithmetic and becomes something they have done. Everything on the theory chart page is that experience written down.

The most common way it goes wrong: treating session 1 as a test day with a warm-up attached. It is the reverse — a high-energy studio that happens to end in certification. Students walk in nine days removed from the last session; the first fifteen minutes exist to reconnect ear and voice before anything is scored, and the break log is received with thanks, never audited. Second trap: inverting the singer's move. When a singer says the tune sits too high, the frame moves down — say it plainly, drill it that way, and never let "transpose it for the singer" drift upward.

The do ritual

As always — and three times in quick succession in session 1, because the ritual IS the week's content: play I–IV–V–I, sing do, the class sings do–mi–sol–mi–do back (defined in Unit 1's plan). Every new do gets its own ritual: the door chords are how a key announces itself, and this week the class watches the door move. Run it before every pitched final stimulus as well.

Drill sequence

Session 1 — the movable frame, then the final begins.

Session 2 — hearings to the end, then the term closes.

When they miss it

Escalation path

If the three-dos game wobbles room-wide, drop to the frame tune's first bar only — do–mi–sol is the oldest sound in the course — cycle it through all three keys, then rebuild the full tune. If Nashville roots collapse, retreat to Unit 11's do–fa–sol–do under I–IV–V–I, then re-attach the numbers. Re-establish tonic the standard way: stop, ritual, resume. Abandon criterion: session 1's studio segments yield to the clock — the final's timing is fixed, so a drill still failing after one escalated attempt gets banked with a smile ("your ears own this; the chart page will remind you"). The named pick-up hook: this is Unit 15 — there is no next unit, and that is the point. What gets banked here gets picked up in Aural Skills II, on the student's own gigs, and in every rehearsal where someone says "take it down a step" and they simply do it.

Tempo table

Rotation note (the arithmetic, stated rather than discovered): hearings split across both sessions — at a full section of 36, roughly 14 in session 1 and 22 in session 2, about two and a half minutes per singer (one prepared melody from the Unit 13 set + one fresh at-sight card): the on-deck chair is what makes that rate honest, because the next student takes their thirty seconds of silent audiation while the current student finishes. Any remainder still unheard at the cap is heard in office hours before grades close — scheduled that day, warmly, never skipped. At 4 students, all hearings fit inside session 1, and session 2 becomes pure celebration and polish. Six at-sight cards rotate so adjacent students in line never hold the same melody. Keep the posted roster; nobody is surprised by their slot.