Week 3: "My Heart Will Go On" and Daily Listening

For my Simple Song Assignment, I chose a more challenging song that contained leaps and more intricate melodic lines. To prepare to sing the Solfège, I hummed the song through and took notes of the melodic structure (I noticed that the song either jumped around the tonic, leaped, or passed through the striking fourth degree: fa.This ability to identify these key patterns made it easier for me to sing the Solfège; I didn't see the music as a random collection of notes, I recognized it as a modified scale, making the Solfège easy to figure out.

My process for identifying the chords within the songs or pieces were simple: after hearing a specific chord, I related the sound to the tonic to find out where the chord sat. For example, for the bIII chord, without immediately identifying the pitch, I noted that it sounded a minor third above the tonic. I followed a similar process for the V6 chord in the second example. After hearing the chord, it sounded very close to the tonic — but it wasn't a legitimate V chord. So, after hearing that the root was a half step below the tonic, I figured out that it was a V6 chord. In the end, I really enjoyed this exercise as it related ear-training concepts to real musical situations! This is something that a lot of modern classical music curriculums fail to do. I really felt that I was having fun listening to my favourite while developing my aural skills.