
Let's now ad a minor 2nd and a tritone (aug 4 / dim 5) to your intervals training, giving us ALL of the intervals within one octave.
Here I can quiz you on all intervals within 1 octave. Let's see how well you can hear these distances, and rememebr to try to hear them as solfege with Do on the bottom so that you can connect what you're hearing with the solfege we've learned.
No new chords this round. I want to finish this beginner series with you being quite comfortable with major, minor, augmented, diminished 7, and dominant 7 chords. At the intermediate level we'll start to introduce new chords such as major 7th, minor 7th, and more!
I'll play some major and minor chords and you'll be expected to find Do, and I'll then instruct you to sing the root, third or fifth of that chord.
Now I'll play some notes alongside chords and you'll be expected to guess what I'm playing.
I'll play/sing some mixed solfege examples, and you'll sing them back. I'll take 4 beats, then you get 4.
I'll be playing some short melodic phrases from various scales, and you'll be expected to take a guess at what I'm playing. Remember, you can pause as needed, and take this class several times to build confidence and really hear this minor solfege.
I'll be stating some solfege based around the options from major and minor scales. You'll then pause the video, try to sing the answer, and unpause to hear the answer. Remember, C is always 'Do'.
If you made it this far, great job!
Let's discuss what we've learned up to this point, and what's to come in the next course series.
Have you ever wondered how to think of melodies in a way where you can make sense of the notes?
Are you sick of melodic information being vague and unfamiliar?
Are you looking to expand your musicianship and learn the vocabulary of solfege to help you gain context for your melodic decisions?
You've come to the right place!
We're going to expand from our previous courses on major and minor scale, and now work on them in a mixed environment. Now I can give you examples that use major, natural minor, or harmonic minor solfege. Building these courses in small chunks has allowed to saturate in each scale's environment, learning it's colors and characteristics, and then expanding their knowledge with each additional course. That's why it's recommended you take the previous courses before jumping into this course.
This beginner course offers all of the information you'll need before progressing into the intermediate level where we will start to introduce modes, pentatonic scales, and the melodic minor scale. We are now going to develop our understanding of ALL intervals within one octave, and continue to develop your understanding of major, minor, augmented, diminished 7 and dominant 7 chords. The number of ear tests in this course is HUGE, so get ready to be tested on numerous ways of hearing harmonic minor solfege, and it's relation to chords.
Designed to teach absolute beginners, or help fill in some knowledge of intermediate level students, this course is worth going through even if you think you know the basics well. You never know which rock you'll overturn to find out something new within this vast topic of solfege!
Solfege helped me personally as a musician, as it gave me a language to make sense of how I was coloring my jazz chords as a pianist, and gave me an understandable vocabulary as a soloist so that my improvisations had intent and confidence behind them. Solfege is now always available to me to better understand and demystify the music I listen to, as well as inform my decisions as a composer and performer.
You don't have to be a pro singer to take these courses, BUT being able to sing on pitch is a solid benefit. You can think of understanding pitch sort of like understanding a language. If you only ever read it or think it, you can still understand it, but as you get speaking it your understanding of the language becomes more developed and confident. So, even if you don't sing well, at least try your best during the ear test portions.
This course is NOT a course on sight singing. While the material covered will certainly help you improve your ability to sight sing, providing you have separate instruction as to how to develop that specific skill, these classes will not cover any form of music notation at this stage. From taking these courses you will eventually be able to understand note selection in melodies of songs you hear, and have more confidence when writing your own melodies. However, singing music off of a staff will not be developed until later courses.
So, if you're ready to demystify melodies, improve your musicianship, and improve your understanding of scales and solfege, then this course is for you.