Practical Tools to Foster Harmonic Understanding

Abstract

Among the elements required to develop a comprehensive understanding of music is students’ ability to perceive, recognize, and label the harmonies they hear. Harmonic dictation is among the strategies that teachers have traditionally chosen to help students develop harmonic awareness. However, the highly idiosyncratic ways that students approach harmonic dictation have often left music teachers at a loss for well-developed strategies to make this task transparent for students. To help students develop harmonic awareness, this article presents (a) a system of singing arpeggiated chords to guide and increase student accuracy through harmonic dictation exercises, (b) a set of part-writing procedures to help students organize common part-writing strategies, (c) a review of research supporting these strategies, and (d) potential applications of this model in large-ensemble instruction. The ultimate goal of this article is to help teachers demystify the process of teaching harmonic dictation while increasing their ability to use singing and dictation as tools to improve students’ musicianship.