Melodic Dictation (Unit 8)

Hello and welcome back. I'm Joseph Hoffman.
Today we're going to be doing some melodic dictations together.
In our dictations today, you'll be hearing repeats, steps, and skips, so let's quickly review what all of these sound like.
First, let's sing our pentascale stepping up using solfège and hand signs.
Can you try this along with me?
DO RE MI FA SO
Good, let's try it one more time a little faster now, ready?
DO RE MI FA SO
Great, now let's try our pentascale stepping down starting on SO.
SO FA MI RE DO
Again, faster. SO FA MI RE DO
Great, now let's try skipping up the pentascale.
Ready, try it with me.
DO MI SO
Now faster.
DO MI SO
Now let's skip down.
SO MI DO
Great job.
Now, a repeat could be low: DO DO DO
Or high: SO SO SO
Or any of the other notes along the way.
All right, let's take a little quiz now.
I'm going to sing a pattern for you, and you tell me if you hear skipping up, skipping down,
stepping up, stepping down, or repeating on a high note, or repeating on a low note.
All right, here's your first one.
What did you hear?
If you said skipping up, you're correct.
Let's sing it in solfège. We did: DO MI SO
Here's your next one.
What did you hear?
If you said repeating on a low note, you're correct.
Let's try it. It was on DO.
DO DO DO
Great, here's your next one.
What did you hear?
If you said stepping down, you're correct.
Let's do it in solfège.
SO FA MI RE DO
Here's your next one.
What did you hear?
If you said skipping down, you're correct.
DO MI DO
How about this one?
What did you hear?
If you said stepping up, you're correct.
I just did three notes stepping up. Let's sing it.
DO RE MI
Here's one more.
What did you hear?
If you heard a repeating note up high, you're correct. SO SO SO
For the next part of this lesson, you'll need a pencil and some blank staff paper, which you can either find online and print, there are a lot of free options out there,
or you can use the staff paper that is included with the Hoffman Academy materials for this unit.
Press pause if you need some time to get your pencil and staff paper ready,
otherwise, let's get started with our first melodic dictation.
Today we're going to be drawing our dictations on the staff,
so make sure you have your paper and pencil ready,
and whatever I play, we're going to draw the note heads, and then for an extra challenge if you want to,
we're also going to try to add rhythm to our dictation. For example, if you hear a half note
then draw a half note. If you hear a quarter note,
you'll draw a quarter note. So we're paying attention to both melody and rhythm.
Here's the first one:
And I will give you a clue by telling you it's in 4/4 time,
and the first note
is
middle C. So if you want to go ahead and draw a middle C, that's a quarter note by the way,
and go ahead and draw that.
Now, the first note that you hear me play will be the note we just drew.
Here we go, I'll count 4 beats and then begin playing.
1 2 3 4
See if you can write that down.
In a few seconds, I'll play it a second time.
Here it is again.
1 2 3 4
All right, I'll draw the correct answer for you.
Here's what i just played.
C D E F F G
Since I held this E for 2 beats, and this G for two beat's, that's why I made them half notes.
Now is there anything missing from my dictation?
You may notice that I don't have any bar lines, so let's add them. Point to where I need a bar line.
Where's the first place?
If you're pointing right here, you're correct.
Since we, our top number is a four in our time signature, we have beat 1 2 3 4, then we need a bar line.
Where's the next place I need a bar line?
That's correct, right here at the end, and since it's the end we'll actually make it a double bar line.
In real sheet music the second line would often be thicker, but since we're just drawing it by hand just doing it this way is fine too.
All right, let's try another one together.
All right for this second dictation, my clue to you is that we will be in 3/4 time signature.
Let's go ahead and add that to your staff.
And
the first note will be
treble G.
All right, here's the melody.
1 2 3
Try and write it down.
Here it is a second time.
1 2 3
I'll draw the correct answer for you.
Does this match what you drew?
If so, congratulations.
Did you remember to put in your bar lines too?
We had skipping down, and then lots of repeats.
SO MI DO DO DO DO
Let's go on and try another one.
All right, let's do a melody in the bass clef.
This time we'll be in 4/4 time again,
an ...