<< Chapter < Page Chapter >> Page >

Aural knowledge

Musicians often refer to aural knowledge as "ear." In many traditions, musicians "play by ear," learning everything they need to know about the music simply by listening carefully and learning how to reproduce what they hear. "Ear" can also refer to the ability to distinguish whether a performance is correct, for example, whether a note is the correct pitch, played in tune with good tone quality and accurate rhythm and style. "Ear" can also refer to recognizing information about the piece, such as the style, genre, instruments used, chord progression, meter, and key, simply by listening to it. Musicians who have music literacy skills, as well as a highly developed ear, can accurately write down a piece of music they have just heard.

Even if you have had no formal ear training, your ear is almost certainly trained to "understand" familiar music; you have trained it just by listening regularly to your favorite music. If you can tell when a piece is being played out of tune, or with wrong notes and rhythms, that is aural knowledge. It is also "ear" that tells you that you are listening to the beginning of the second verse of a song, or that a recording was interrupted rather than reaching its proper end.

Music literacy

Like any other literacy, music literacy refers to how well you can read and write in this medium. Formal music education in common practice traditions tend to focus on music literacy; many other traditions focus instead on ear training but may include written forms as practice aids. How useful music literacy is to you will depend on what you want to do. For example, if you want to play Western classical music, literacy will be necessary. If you want to play popular music it would be useful but maybe not necessary. If you want to play folk music, literacy may not even be particularly useful.

Common notation is the most widely used way to write down music. However, there are many other kinds of music notation and "shorthand"-type ways to write down music that you may find useful. Some (for example, figured bass) are most useful within particular music traditions, while others (for example, tablature) are most useful when playing particular instruments. (See How to Read Music if you are not certain what kind of music-reading to pursue.)

If you have tried at all to follow written forms of music, you may be more literate than you realize. For example, If you cannot read a D seventh chord written in common notation, but you know what to play when you see "D7" written above a staff, that is a kind of music literacy. If you learned long ago how to read music notation but have not practiced since then, you may still know a lot of useful information (for example, what a note or rest looks like).

Theoretical knowledge

You can play a piece of music beautifully with no formal theoretical knowledge about music, just as you can add, subtract, and multiply accurately without any formal theoretical knowledge about math. However, at higher levels of math, instruction focuses more and more on the general principles that underlie mathematics and the ways that different types of math problems are related to each other (for example, the ways that subtraction and multiplication are related to addition). The better you understand those general principles and relationships, the easier it is for you to deal with math problems you've never seen before.

Get Jobilize Job Search Mobile App in your pocket Now!

Get it on Google Play Download on the App Store Now




Source:  OpenStax, Music inquiry. OpenStax CNX. Mar 18, 2013 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11455/1.4
Google Play and the Google Play logo are trademarks of Google Inc.

Notification Switch

Would you like to follow the 'Music inquiry' conversation and receive update notifications?

Ask