Auralia

For more information on Auralia, including a demo, visit our web site at http://kellysmusic.ca/auralia.asp  Auralia is available for both Mac and PC.

Auralia is a practice and testing program for ear training.  Although the on-line help for each activity and level provides some brief instruction in a section entitled “info” it’s strength is in the wide range of exercises students can practice.  With an eclectic combination of drills, Auralia includes a range of activities from simple interval identification to chord clusters, and from cadences to jazz chord progressions.

Although Auralia can be used on its own, it is designed to be integrated with Musition, Rising Software’s theory program.  We will cover Musition in the next article in this series.  For now, it should be mentioned that both programs will share the same database for student results and progress.  Even more impressive, however, is how teachers can use this database to create their own tests in either program, including custom terms, definitions and exercises.

Activities

Auralia is divided into four main activities: Intervals & Scales, Chords, Rhythm, Pitch & Melody.  Each area has a number of activities with a wide range of levels.

Intervals & Scales

Activities in the Intervals & Scales section include Interval Comparison, Interval Recognition, Interval Singing, Scales, Scale Singing, Advanced Scales and Advanced Scale Singing. 

The Interval Recognition activity can be customized to include only certain intervals, up to two octaves.  You can also choose between ascending, descending and both and between harmonic or melodic intervals.  The Interval Singing, along with all of the scale activities can also be customized.  Advanced scales include such scales as bebop, Spanish and halftone-wholetone. 

In the Interval Singing, Auralia will play the starting pitch and asks you to sing the specified interval up or down from the starting pitch.  You are only required to sing the second pitch, and it only “listens” when you click the start button, so it easy to cheat – just sing up a scale to the interval you want, sing it and press start!  Auralia does include a useful feature not found in other programs, as it will tell you what you really sang if you were wrong.

Unfortunately, I did not have any success in the Scale Singing exercise.  No matter how perfectly I sang the first few notes, it always marked me as incorrect. 

Chords

The chords section includes activities for cadences, chord recognition, and chord singing.   All types of cadences are included in the exercise, with the higher levels including cadences in the middle of the examples.  The chord recognition and singing cover major, minor, augmented, diminished and seventh chords in all inversions.

I also experienced problems with the Chord Singing.   Sometimes it would tell me that I sung all three incorrectly when in fact I had only sung the first pitch (and I’m sure it was correct!)

Other activities in this section include chord progressions, and advanced chord progressions where you are required to enter the function and inversion of each chord in the progression.  The Chords section also includes exercises on cluster chords and jazz chords.   The Jazz Chords Progression exercise is unique to Auralia – I have yet to see another ear training program that covers jazz, and with such a wide range of jazz progressions!

Rhythm

The Rhythm section of Auralia includes meter recognition, rhythm dictation, rhythm elements, rhythm element dictation, rhythm imitation and rhythm styles.

Meter Recognition is another exercise not found in other programs.  Auralia plays a percussive or melodic excerpt and asks you to identify the meter from a number of choices.

The Rhythm Dictation exercise is similar to those found in other programs.  By default, Auralia plays a metronome during the exercise, using a different pitch for the downbeat.  I had to turn the metronome off, as I found the pitch and instrument used to be incredibly irritating!  I also found it irksome that the program uses a huge staff with only one bar per line for entering rhythms.  Rhythms are played on a single pitch or unpitched percussion instrument.

Rhythm Elements and Rhythm Elements Dictation present short, one-beat patterns to help build the student’s repertoire of rhythms.  Rhythm Imitation involves tapping back rhythms, and in Rhythm Styles you listen to a rhythm section play and identify the style of the music.  Styles range from swing to bop and salsa to disco.

Pitch & Melody

The Pitch & Melody section of Auralia includes exercises on Counter Point Singing, Melodic Dictation, Note Recognition, and Tuning.

In the Counter Point Singing module, students listen to a short two voice melody and counterpoint.  They are then asked to sing one of the parts while it plays the other.  I experienced more success in this activity with the microphone than I did in some of the other exercises.  I would still recommend taking Auralia’s marks with a grain of salt, as it occasionally misread my singing by adding or removing notes.

Melodic Dictation is exactly what it’s name implies, requiring you to enter both the pitches and rhythms played.  Fortunately, melodies are tonal in nature, and not random (as is the case in Play It By Ear.)

Note Recognition involves listening to a chord and singing back one of the chord tones.

In Tuning, students are presented with two unison pitches that are out of tune with each other.  Using a slider, you must tune the second note to the first one by eliminating the beats.  Although this is an excellent exercise in developing intonation, it does not require the students to actually play in tune.

Levels

Each activity in Auralia has a different number of levels.  The number of levels depends on the activity.  If you are not happy with the preset levels, Auralia does give you the ability to customize some activities according to your needs.  In many cases, Auralia seems to add too many new concepts between levels, but customizing the level can rectify this.  Typical activities include 6-12 levels, whereas a program such as MusicLab Melody has 40 levels.

Summary

Auralia has the widest range of activities of any other ear-training program.  It has many unique exercises, such as the jazz chord progressions and drum styles.  For some there may actually be too many exercises, as there really is not any sequence between the activities.  Auralia does not offer any suggestions as to what order the exercises should be practiced in, or what level you should be in.  While Level One in one activity may be perfect for a student, they might need to work in Level Five of another activity.  In this regard, MusicLab offers a better sequence of instruction.

Auralia, however, is much more colourful and exciting than MusicLab.  Personally, I was glad to discover that I could turn off the annoying “Yes you are right!” and “No you are wrong” sounds that came on after every answer.  Although it was encouraging at first to receive such hearty congratulations after answering a question, I quickly found myself longing for the down to business approach of MusicLab, where a correct answer only brought another question to tackle!

(c) 2003, Kelly's Music & Computers