This week in aural skills, we are covering embellishing tones. This topic is tough, because I can never remember the difference between an appoggiatura and an escape tone without looking it up, but it’s on the syllabus, so I have to try. In previous semesters, I have approached it by having students identify examples from songs. That can be productive, especially when we talk about ambiguities and edge cases, but it’s too easy for people to zone out. I wanted something more active and creative.

My general principle with music theory and aural skills is that the only way to internalize the concepts is to use them for your own music making; otherwise, you won’t retain them past the end of the semester (or the end of the day). To understand melodic embellishments, the students should ideally be improvising their own melodic embellishments. So my plan is to provide them with some nice simple unembellished melodies, give them clear examples of the different embellishing techniques we’re expecting them to learn, and then see what they come up with in the moment.
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