What are aural skills?
Aural means "to do with hearing". Aural skills are the listening skills a musician needs: hearing a note and knowing where it sits, hearing two notes and knowing the gap, hearing a rhythm and clapping it back. Ear training is the practice that builds these skills.
There are two kinds of pitch sense. Relative pitch means you can judge a note against another one (most musicians learn this). Perfect (absolute) pitch means naming a note with no reference; very few people have it, and you do not need it.
Hearing pitch and intervals
Pitch depends on how fast the sound vibrates (frequency, in hertz, Hz). A higher frequency sounds higher. Middle C is about 262 Hz; the C one octave up is about 523 Hz (twice as fast).
An interval is the distance between two notes. Count the letter names (or solfa names) from the lower note to the upper one, counting both ends: do–re is a 2nd, do–mi a 3rd, do–fa a 4th, do–so a 5th, do–do' an octave.
How to practise
- Sing the scale slowly and hold each note.
- Link each interval to a song you know.
- Say if two notes go up or down, then how far.
- Tell major (bright) from minor (darker) chords.
Rhythm: hearing and clapping
The beat (pulse) is the steady tick under the music. Rhythm is the pattern of long and short notes on top of it. Rhythm syllables help: "ta" for a 1-beat note, "ta-a" for a 2-beat note, "ti-ti" for two half-beat notes. In Indian music, the same idea is counted in matras on a taal cycle.
Practice: tap the beat with your foot and clap the rhythm with your hands at the same time.
Sight-singing step by step
Sight-singing is singing a written melody without hearing it first. Many teachers use solfa: do re mi fa so la ti do (movable do, where do is the home note of the key), or sargam: Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni.
- Look at the key and time signature. Find do (the home note).
- Look for patterns: steps (next note), skips (jumps) and repeats.
- Tap the rhythm first, without pitch.
- Hear do in your head (or play it), then sing slowly in solfa.
- Keep going after a mistake; never stop the beat.
Quick figure: a 3rd skips one note, a 5th skips three notes on the stave (line to line or space to space).
Dictation: writing what you hear
In dictation a short tune or rhythm is played a few times and you write it down. Work in layers:
- Shape: draw the contour (up, down, same).
- Rhythm: write the note lengths and bar lines.
- Pitches: start from the given first note and name each interval.
- Check: sing back what you wrote and compare.
Exams also ask for rhythm dictation, interval and chord recognition, and spotting a wrong note in a printed tune.
Key formulas and definitions
- Pitch ↑ when frequency (Hz) ↑; octave = frequency × 2
- Interval number = count of note names from lower to upper, both included
- Solfa: do re mi fa so la ti do' = Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni Sa'
- Rhythm syllables: ta = 1 beat, ta-a = 2 beats, ti-ti = 2 half beats
- Dictation order: shape → rhythm → pitches → check
Worked examples
1. Name the interval from do up to la.
Count: do (1), re (2), mi (3), fa (4), so (5), la (6). It is a 6th.
2. A tune goes so – so – la – so – do' – ti. Write its contour.
same, up, down, up, down. Writing the contour first helps you catch the pitches in dictation.
3. A bar in 4/4 has the rhythm ta ta ta-a. Does it fill the bar?
ta (1) + ta (1) + ta-a (2) = 4 beats. Yes, it fills one bar of 4/4 exactly.
Common mistakes
- Counting an interval without including the first note: do to mi is a 3rd, not a 2nd.
- Singing the notes but losing the beat. Rhythm matters as much as pitch.
- Trying to write every note on the first hearing. Catch the shape and rhythm first.
- Thinking you need perfect pitch. Relative pitch is what musicians train and use.