Course Syllabus
Course: MUSC 2140
Division: Fine Arts, Comm, and New MediaDepartment: Music
Title: Sight Sing/Ear Training IV
Semester Approved: Fall 2019
Five-Year Review Semester: Summer 2025
End Semester: Summer 2025
Catalog Description: This course is required of music majors. Students develop and improve the ability to sing music at sight, notate melodies and rhythms as dictated, identify and notate chordal harmonies as dictated, improve keyboard skills, and improvise music. This course must be taken in sequence, and concurrently with MUSC 2120.
Semesters Offered: Spring
Credit/Time Requirement: Credit: 1; Lecture: 2; Lab: 0
Prerequisites: Completion of MUSC 2130 with a grade of C-
Corequisites: MUSC 2120
Justification: This course, required of music majors in all university programs certified by the National Association of Schools of Music (NASM), prepares music majors for transfer to Utah's colleges and universities which are all NASM accredited. It will also serve to develop music literacy in the non-major. Statewide articulation agreements stipulate the transfer of this course with a grade of C or better.
Student Learning Outcomes:
Students will demonstrate the ability to detect errors in melodic dictation. This outcome will be assessed via written assignments, sight singing exams, and dictation exams.
Students will demonstrate the ability to sing and identify major and minor scales, and chromatic chords. This outcome will be assessed via written assignments, sight singing exams, and dictation exams.
Students will demonstrate the ability to accurately sightsing assigned and unfamiliar modulating and chromatic melodies of advancing difficulty. This outcome will be assessed via written assignments, sight singing exams, and dictation exams.
Students will demonstrate the ability to accurately and fluently count rhythms of advancing difficulty. This outcome will be assessed via written assignments, sight singing exams, and dictation exams.
Students will demonstrate the ability to accurately take both melodic and harmonic dictations which include modulations and altered chords. This outcome will be assessed via written assignments, sight singing exams, and dictation exams.
Content:
• sight singing of unfamiliar melodies
• dictation of melodies
• intervals (simple and compound)
• chords with extensions
• scales and modes
• irregular rhythms
• advanced harmonic progressions
• an introduction to 20th-century and contemporary era techniques
Key Performance Indicators:
Students will be assessed in the following ways:
Participation rates: attendance at class sessions; 5 to 15%
Written assignments: Dictation assignments and notation assignments; 15 to 25%
Sight Singing Exams 30 to 40%
Dictation Exams 30 to 40%
Representative Text and/or Supplies:
Beginning Tonal Dictation, current edition, Thomas Durham
A New Approach to Sight Singing, current edition, Berkowitz, Fontrier, Kraft, Goldstein, and Smaldone
Pedagogy Statement:
This course will utilize direct lecture, student participation at the board, exercises singing and on individual instruments, and assignments based on the real world such as dictating pop melodies and chord progressions.
Instructional Mediums:
Lecture
Maximum Class Size: 20
Optimum Class Size: 15