Whilst I know the whole subject of aural tests is a perennial favourite / old chestnut [delete as appropriate ], I've been thinking again about them, since I am currently labouring away at improving my Gr 5 aurals, and had some thoughts which I wanted to put out there for discussion.

My questions are:

1) What essential / useful musical skills (if any) are aural tests intended to assess (and therefore encourage / develop)?

2) Do the aural tests currently operated by ABRSM actually assess those skills at all accurately?

To lay my cards on the table, my view is that even if there are some important musical skills which aural tests should be assessing, the current ABRSM test formats do not necessarily assess the intended skills.

For example, take the "spot the difference" test. The usual rationale given for this test is that it is important for a musician to be able to listen accurately to musical details, and to identify differences in pitch and rhythm.

Now, I'll buy that rationale (I think). However, the testing mechanism is flawed, since it is possible to fail the test not because you are incapable of identifying a change in pitch or rhythm, but because your musical memory is poor, and therefore you cannot retain accurately in memory the first playing, which is the reference point used for identification of the change. So a "fail" here does not accurately reflect the presence or absence of the skill being assessed. But if the candidate were to be given the score by way of reference point, and then had to identify the change in the playing of the score, that would be a genuine test of ability to identify alteration in pitch or rhythm.

Of course, one could argue (and I would argue vehemently the other way ) that musical memory is also an important skill. But the "echo singing" test (and the "clap a rhythm" test at Gr4+) both test musical memory already. Why do we need more than one test of musical memory?

What are people's thoughts?

Good question! I am sure someone here would give you an informative answer.

I have an additional question: What is the purpose of the sight-singing in Aural test?

I am learning an instrument and not singing and I fail to see the usefulness of this test...I can't control my voice to a tone/semi-tone differnce!

I'd say, in a word, internalisation. The ability to look at written music and know what it sounds like.

Plus, if you're ever going to be an all-round musician, at some point you'll almost certainly need to be able tom reproduce vocally some musical phrase or other and it's often not a lot of use if you can't pitch it properly.

Add those two together, and you get sight-singing. You can have as groany or growly a voice as you like, it's not going to test the quality of it. But what wold you think if you were rehearsing in an ensemble or a band and the director sung half a phrase to demonstrate something and his voice was a bit grating? You'd probably think, good job he isn't a singer. And then what would you think if he tried to demonstrate it vocally and he couldn't get the right pitch?

Hpwever, you don't say you can't pitch at all, you say you can't get tones and semitones right. I wud think a little bit out of tune won't matyter very much. It's a long time since I saw these tests, but they're not usually very chromatic, are they?

All musicians should be able to sing; not prettily, but near enough so that it's recognisable. And if you can get within a semitone, you are finding the right range, and it's not your voice you can't control, it's the coordination between your voice and your ear, and that can be improved with practice.

Just to add, knowing how a phrase sounds is very important in my opinion, even if at the wrong pitch (octave lower for example). Sometimes there is just not enough time to have a go on the instrument to hear what an augmented fourth, or passage should sound like, before it has to be played - very useful in the orchestra, or sight-reading. I think it's more important to instruments which do not have a unique finger position to play a note, such as a brass instrument or string instrument. But all instruments have their instrinsic reasons for pitching. At some point in playing, you may get lost in a passage, and an arppegio needs to be played. It's great to know what it looks like, but the sound may come out wrong. If you can associate the sound with the positions needed to play, it might be easier to play.

Thank you!

Sorry for hijacking your thread! It's gone a bit

As a player, I don't care if a teacher can sing at all, it doesn't help me with the phrase. Admittedly as a flautist, it's highly unlikely that anyone would be able to sing an orchestral/band part at pitch and the notes/intervals are unlikely to be the issue. If I'm making a mess of a note, it will be a fingering issue, whether it be inability to move in the right order, or a timing glitch, or a lazy finger not coming off or going on when required, or needing an alternative fingering (more rare on the flute than any other woodwinds from what I gather). I'm far more likely to get the rhythm wrong

Singing a phrase isn't going to help me much, playing it to me will be much more helpful. Admittedly singing/saying the music in the correct rhythm (i.e. the clapping back test) will be quicker than picking up the instrument and is a way to simplify the problem. First make sure you can clap the rhythm (no note changes required) then try and play all the notes

Going back to the OP...

I'd guess that the major musicianship skills would be:

Pitching
Keeping hold of one's own part/hearing a selected part
Musical memory (rhythm and pitch)
Awareness of and recognising musical devices (cadences etc)
Discussing music in general

Given I'm preparing for grade 8, my answers are biased towards those tests - limited memory of previous exam aural elements, apart from finding memorising hard.

A. Sing back lowest part of 3. Covers memory, hearing and holding onto lowest part of 3 and pitching intervals. Cadences + recognition of chords - recognising musical stuff in practice (applying theory)
B. Sight singing (with higher accompaniment). Pitching, holding own part.
C. Modulations - recognise musical devices
D. Discussing music in general.

I think that vocal pitching is probably overemphasised as it affects two tests almost entirely. Struggling to pitch a note will cause the rest to wobble. In the vast majority of instruments you have to be able to pitch your instrument anyway - can't think of anything other than the piano where intonation is set for you. A complete inability to pitch notes would show up on the instrumental testing, without making people who hate it sing.

I do see the point of the two singing based tests though - it took me a lot of work learning to hear the lower parts of anything (playing 4th flute/Alto at flute choir, listening for A/T/B at church etc) as until I actually made the effort to learn it, everything I did was based on being the highest part (flute/sop1 in school choir). Sight singing mostly tests the ability to hold onto your own line while someone tries to distract you, which is a very useful skill to have for all sorts of ensemble stuff. No other practical way of testing it in an exam. Still hate singing to anyone though - church is fine - one of many, not keen on being too audible though as I am self conscious about my voice.

Oh, it does and for all instruments including piano. It's more helpful when you do know the notes and rhythm but can help there too.

Singing a phrase is often the best way to really tell where it's going. Somehow the natural shaping of a phrase happens when singing more than when playing.
My teachers both sing when needed and I do for my students. The accompanist I've recently begun working with is a singer, a fact which made my clarinet teacher very happy. He sometimes demonstrates phrase shaping by singing and it really is clearer than hearing it played on an instrument however well played.

Yes, that is a useful skill for any musician and a vital one for a teacher, conductor, or chamber music coach.

I agree entirely. The better test that you describe was part of the general musicianship exam in Part I Music at Reading University in the days that it still had a Music Department,* and I believe something very similar is used for grade exams by Trinity /Guildhall.

* We also notated music from dictation, and had to write about anonymous heard music, but never had to memorise heard phrases.

Again, I tend to agree with you. Musical memory is important in playing jazz. It is also helpful to a conductor not to have to keep looking at the score when s/he ought to be looking at the musicians, but a conductor does not need to memorise on one hearing, nor entirely by ear.

We don't; the ABRSM overtests a moderately useful skill.

I've got some history on this one. To cut a long story short, what I view as the muddled thinking behind the AB aural tests is one reason I no longer do AB exams with my pupils. There are a couple of threads in which I was quite heavily involved, where I think all the main arguments were aired pretty extensively:

http://www.abrsm.org/forum/index.php?showt...27849&st=0

http://www.abrsm.org/forum/index.php?showt...=38375&hl=0

And here's the Chief Examiner's unsurprising but disappointing response:

http://www.abrsm.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=39198&hl=

What certain posters seemed unwilling to accept is that I can both be passionately enthusiastic about singing, and encourage pupils to use their voice, but be equally passionate about not believing it to be the best way to assess aural skills, or that using it in that way in aural tests to be the best way encourage people to enjoy singing.

I think TG have got it just about spot-on in their tests. They are both fair and practical. They do test musical memory - but the evidence is not presented by the singing voice, and is backed up by relating it to musical notation. Of course, if you're going to be a jazz musician, memory occupies a much more central place in the necessary skills. But these aren't jazz exams.

Thanks for the links, briantrumpet. (I thought I was probably raking over old ground, but I can never find anything via the search function on the forum!)

It would be interesting to see what the key skills are supposed to be on a test-by-test basis, and whether ABRSM has properly considered whether the test used accurately assesses the presence or absence of that skill (without the risk of false negatives). I didn't get the impression from the AB's response that this level of analysis had really gone into the design of the current test: it all seemed a bit - well - waffly. It was also only really looking at the sight-singing element of the test, whereas my doubts about the value of the aural tests go wider...

Well indeed. Wider still and wider. My impression from the response was that it was to justify the status quo. I'm very happy to say that since my extensive input into those threads the main school where I teach now offers the choice of TG, so, not surprisingly, that's the board I use, given the AB's unwillingness to entertain the notion that their aural tests (amongst other things) might be flawed.

I think that the overarching problem with the AB instrumental exams is that they are still predicated on the idea that they are preparing musicians for entry into music conservatoires (so everyone must follow the same recipe of dozens of scales and aural that really needs singing and keyboard experience); TG, on the other hand, have grasped the nettle that there is a rather wider range of musicians for whom exams can be a useful learning experience.

I thought it still did. They still offer a Masters degree in Music.

If you mean the MA Music Teaching in Professional Practice,* this is led by Mr Nils Franke, who is a member of the Institute of Education. When I was at Reading, the Department of Education, as it was then, was very strong in music and had better facilities, including performance spaces, than the Music Department. However, its emphasis was on performance rather than history, analysis or composition.

* This was all I could find on the web site.