Comprehensive Aural Skills by Justin Merritt

Comprehensive Aural Skills by Justin Merritt

Comprehensive Aural Skills is a complete suite of material for both performance and dictation, covering the wide range of sight singing and ear training skills required for undergraduate courses of study. It provides a series of instructional modules on rhythm, melody, and harmony, and blends musical examples from the common-practice repertory with original examples composed to specifically address particular skills and concepts. Each module includes material for classroom performance, self-directed study, and homework assignments.

Features

• • A complete suite of aural skills material: Comprehensive Aural Skills is a combined sight singing and ear training textbook, audio, and companion website package.
  • Fully modular, customizable organization: Instructors can choose freely from the set of exercises in the book and supplemental material on the companion website to appropriately tailor the curriculum based on their students’ needs.
  • Engaging and idiomatic musical examples: Examples are selected and composed specifically for the didactic context of an aural skills classroom.
  • Dictation exercises for practice and assignment: Practice exercises include an answer key so students can work independently and receive immediate feedback, while homework assignments are given without a key.

• • Audio examples for dictation: The website hosts live recordings of acoustic instruments performed by professional musicians for each dictation exercise and homework assignment.
  • Supplemental Materials for Instructors: A wealth of material for class use and assignment can be found on the companion website.
  • Teachers Guide: The guide includes answers for every homework assignment, brief commentary on each module’s content, tips for integrating written theory, and strategies on how to effectively teach new concepts and skills.

The companion website for Comprehensive Aural Skills includes a wealth of additional examples in all areas of aural skills and at every level of difficulty represented in the text. Students have access to additional dictation examples with recordings and answer keys, allowing them to directly reinforce their classroom experience and practice dictation on their own time.

“Comprehensive Aural Skills lives up to its name; together, the book and the companion website contain all the materials needed for an aural-skills curriculum… Comprehensive Aural Skills effectively combines singing and dictation activities in rhythm, melody, and harmony into a single book, and the high quality of the recordings makes Merritt and Castro’s print-plus-digital package far more attractive than many automated dictation programs with low-quality MIDI. The inclusion of answer keys at the back of the book also makes this a viable resource for supplemental practice or even independent study … nearly everything else needed for a four-semester curriculum is provided.”

— Samantha M. Inman, Music Theory Online, vol. 23, no. 3