Melodic Dictation

From here the subject is transcription: reconstructing a melody you have heard as a sequence of notes.

Most people begin by writing one note at a time from the start, and that is the most failure-prone approach. It is worth establishing why first.

Do not fill in sequentially

Writing straight through stops the moment you stumble on a note. Everything after it goes unwritten, and the only thing that increases is the number of times you have to hear it again.

Place a skeleton instead.

1. Establish the key and meter — without knowing where the tonic is, degrees cannot be measured
2. Listen all the way through — without writing, just to grasp the contour. Does it rise or fall, and where is the peak
3. Place landmarks — the first note, the last note, the highest note, the note on each downbeat
4. Fill the gaps — deciding between stepwise motion and leaps between landmarks
5. Check it through — sound what you wrote in your head and compare against what you heard

This order lets you write the rest even when one spot remains unclear. Securing the overall contour first is the key.

Separate pitch from rhythm

A second principle: do not process pitch and rhythm simultaneously.

There is a limit to how much attention can be directed at once. Thinking about what the next note is and how long it lasts at the same time reduces the accuracy of both.

Listening for pitch on the first pass and rhythm on the second is faster and more accurate. With experience the two can be done together, but at the practice stage it pays to separate them deliberately.

Same pitches, different rhythms

▶Even▶Faster▶Slower

Check: All three have the identical pitch sequence C D E F G. Only the rhythm changes. Following pitch alone makes them indistinguishable; following rhythm alone makes them obviously different. Confirm that these are two independent streams of information — dictation goes faster when they are handled separately.

all the same length

Listen in scale degrees

What you count in your head while transcribing is scale degrees, not letter names. The “which position within the scale” framing from Unit 2 is applied directly to the ear. (Keep it distinct from interval size, which measures the distance between two notes.)

When E sounds in C major, register it not as “E” but as “three above the tonic.” Do that and the same melody in G major registers as the same “three.” Converting to letter names happens only when you write.

Move the melody of Fig. 1 to G major and it becomes G B D B G, while the degrees remain 1-3-5-3-1. Degrees are invariant under transposition, and that invariance is what relative listening consists of.

Check

A melody with the degrees 1-3-5 in C major, transferred to F major, becomes which notes?

F G AF Bb DF A CF Ab C

Check answer

Tie leaps to the harmony

Stepwise motion is easy to follow; leaps are hard. This is where Unit 6 pays off.

The skeleton of a melody is made of chord tones, and non-chord tones connect them by step.

Turned around, that means the landing point of a leap is very likely to be a chord tone. Seven candidates drop to three or four.

When you feel a leap during dictation, take the chord tones of the harmony sounding at that moment as your candidates first. If none of them fits, then suspect a non-chord tone.

Skeleton alone, and with the gaps filled

▶Skeleton only▶Gaps filled

Check: The first is a skeleton of chord tones only, moving in leaps. The second inserts stepwise notes between the same skeletal notes. Confirm that they share a contour. In dictation you grasp something like the first and then fill in the gaps. Doing it in the reverse order loses the contour.

chord tones only

Watch the seventh degree in minor

Melodic dictation in minor has a trap of its own: the sixth and seventh degrees are not fixed.

As Unit 2 established, minor has three scales. If the seventh degree in the melody is raised, the scale is harmonic (or melodic) minor; if not, it is natural minor.

In A minor the question is whether you heard G or G#. A to G# is a major 7th and A to G is a minor 7th. Hearing that single half step is the crux of melodic dictation in minor.

The cue is where the note goes next. A G# wants to rise a half step to the tonic A. A G more often descends instead. You can work backward from the motion.

Check

Listening to a melody in A minor, the seventh degree rises immediately to the tonic by a half step. Which note was it?

There is no way to tellF#G (natural minor)G# (harmonic minor)

Check answer

Change key when you practice

Finally, the design of the practice. The principle from the previous lesson applies again.

Draw every exercise from a different key.

Practicing in one key trains you to memorize actual pitches rather than scale degrees, which leaves you helpless the moment the key changes. When the key changes every time, distance from the tonic is all there is to rely on, and relative listening is trained by necessity.

To make that work, build the habit of sounding the tonic before you answer. Distance cannot be measured without a reference. In recitals and examinations alike, a tonic chord or a scale is always given before a dictation.

▶ Transcribe melodies in the dictation trainer The key is randomized every time. Press the tonic first to put the reference in your ear, then play the exercise. The introductory level uses stepwise motion only Dictation Trainer →

Melodic dictation is training at following one line. In the next lesson there are four. That is harmonic dictation.