Activities

• Learn the Chord Spelling Song: Sing along with Dr. Newman and the solfège choir.  Here's a link to the audio and to the lyrics to use for the sing along. 

• Listening for Chord Changes: Listen to excerpts from popular music that include only I and V chords played by your instructor. Conduct while you listen and transcribe the chords you hear in each bar. As an example, for a 4-bar phrase, you might transcribe:  |  I  |   V  |  V  |  I  | . 

  • • Instructors: Find the playlist with solutions in the instructor anthology here. 

    • Discuss different strategies as a class (or in groups) for hearing the chord changes based on your discussion above. A few ideas include: 

      • • 1) Listen to the bassline: If you hear Do, it's a I chord; if you hear Sol, it's a V chord. Try singing along with the bassline in the examples played. 

        • 2) Try the "Do-Ti Test." Sing Do and hold it while you listen. If Do seems to fit the harmony, it's a I chord. If you feel like you need to slide down to Ti to get the note you're singing to fit the chord, it's a V chord.

• Improvisation Fill-in-the-Blank: Use the exercises from the reading to practice filling in the empty measures with improvisations on tonic and dominant. 

  • • Start with tonic chords: See pp. 75–78 in Developing Musicianship here.

    • Then, try dominant chords: See pp. 195–197 in Developing Musicianship here.

• Improvising Melody & Harmony Together: Open up the I-V-I-V chord grid to use as a visual. Treat each chord as 1 measure in length. Have your instructor or a classmate block each chord on the piano as the class improves. You may improvise melodies individually or everyone can sing together at the same time (or in smaller groups) to create harmony out of the layered melodies.

  • • Rules for the game: You can start on any note. Move as smoothly as possible from one note to the next when moving between chords (e.g. Mi-Re, Do-Ti, Sol-Sol, but not Re-Sol). If you land on a triangle (Ti), your next note should follow the direction of the triangle (e.g. resolve up to Do). Everyone sings their independent melodic lines simultaneously in harmony. 

    • The Variations: 

      • • Single Tone Improv: For each chord played, sing one note and sustain it. 

        • Two-Note Improv: Skip between two different chord tones within each chord, using any rhythm you like.  End with one chord tone in the final measure. Try this exercise in 2/4 or 4/4 first to give each note an equal rhythmic value, then try other meters and other rhythms. 

        • Stepwise embellishment: Start on a chord tone then move by step to another chord tone during the same chord. As an example for the tonic, you might sing Do-Re-Mi, Mi-Re-Mi, or Sol-Fal-Mi in m. 1 before moving to the dominant. Try this exercise in 3/4 meter first to give each note one beat, then experiment with other meters and other rhythms. 

    • Experiment with different accompaniment patterns (e.g. a waltz accompaniment or alberti bass) or have a few members of the class add a simple drum pattern during the performance or a repeated rhythmic pattern on the bass notes for each chord (Do and Sol). 

    • Consider picking a few rhythmic patterns that you're working on this week to use as the rhythmic motive for your improvisation. 

• Call & Response over I & V: Using the chord grid from the activity above, each student takes a turn improvising a solo melody on a neutral syllables while the class sings the bass of each chord (Do and Sol). Everyone then sings back the melody they just heard using solfege syllables. 

•  Listen for Cadences: Listen to examples from the repertoire and practice identifying cadences as authentic or half cadences (see the link to the anthology below). Discuss strategies for aurally differentiating between each type of cadence. 

Want to learn more? 

A different exploration on the nature of tonal tension in Western equal temperament from music theorists Lex Rozin & Mark Rimple

• Tonal Tension - Rozin & Rimple