16. Flawless Ear Training: Unit 16 (Audio)

Four voices, and this time all of them move. That's the tapestry. Four threads crossing at once, and you follow one without dropping the other three. The soprano was the easy voice in Unit 15, the highest and the slowest. Here it runs two notes against one, all unit long, and it climbs into its real register. You've been calling a tenth a third since the first ruler. That was deliberate. Unit 16 takes the training wheel off in the first four minutes.

Lesson 6 brings every suspension back at once. Four three, seven six, nine eight, two three, mixed at random, and you name the type and the voice. In Lesson 11 one of them turns upside down. The retardation holds a note and resolves it up, and it sounds like effort where the others sounded like release.

Lesson 13 is the first real modulation in the course. The piece starts in C and pivots into G while you listen, on a chord that belongs to both keys. From Lesson 11 on, one instrument plays all four voices. Tone color stops separating the threads for you. What's left is where a line sits and how it moves, which is all a chorale has ever given anybody.

Six four-voice pieces: C, G, A minor, F, D, and one that starts in C and ends in G. Lessons 1 through 5 set the top line moving over the first two pieces and pull the alto and tenor out from inside. Lessons 6 through 10 run every suspension at speed. Lessons 11 through 15 turn one upside down, move the key under you, and finish with a cold run.

The final is called The Final Thread. Intervals, chords, harmony in context, then a fresh four-voice piece you haven't heard, sealed until the exam. It never tells you whether you were right. Real music doesn't either.

It runs the way Unit 15 ran. You identify before the answer, and you audiate after it. Lessons 1 through 5 give each voice its own instrument. Lessons 6 through 10 mix them. From Lesson 11 on it's one sound for all four. Six of the lessons end with transposed passes.

It won't hold the top line still. In Unit 15 it was the voice your ear rested on. Here it's the voice that moves the most, and it's still the one your ear grabs first.

It won't check your work. There are no composition drills and no answer keys in this unit, Lesson 15 runs cold, and the final gives no answers. The room you walk into after this course has no answer track in it, so the last unit doesn't either.

It won't work without Unit 15. Four voices at tempo is assumed on day one.