07. Flawless Ear Training: Unit 7 (Audio)

The new interval is the major sixth. Nine half steps. Sing it above a note, then below, then find it next to a fifth and a fourth, then pick it out over a drone.

Intervals now come three at a time. You hear all three, hold them, then name them in order. Melodic dictation comes back as numbers: zero, nine, two. And you sing whole triads, major, augmented, minor and diminished, from a single starting pitch.

Two chords are new. The augmented triad, and the augmented sixth chord, which you learn to feel as tension before you can name it.

The pace is faster than Unit 6 and the silences are shorter. You'll make mistakes in every lesson. Keep going. In the lessons the score doesn't matter, and I explain why before the final.

Block 1 is intervals and the sixth. The chromatic scale in half steps, interval singing with the numbers, then the major sixth from every angle.

Block 2 is triads and augmented sixth chords. Predicting tension, tracking key shifts, hearing the augmented sixth pull toward its resolution.

Block 3 is one, three, five, one and the block patterns. You sing each triad quality, then follow the bass through short progressions. Root position only, always starting on one.

Block 4 is quartal against quintal. Chords in fourths next to chords in fifths, then the perfect fourth and fifth pulled out from inside them.

The final is four parts, and each part needs 100 percent before the next. Up to two attempts a day, spaced apart. Morning and evening, never back to back.

It won't grade the lessons. In the lessons the score doesn't matter at all. You go straight through. No time stamps, no repeating the hard section. Exposure, repetition, time. Your ear improves while you think you're failing.

The final is the opposite. 100 percent per part. The lessons tune the ear and the final locks it in. You need both, and neither works alone.

It won't make the minor sixth the subject. It shows up in the warm-ups from Unit 8 on, and Unit 9 is where it gets locked in.

If Unit 7 feels easy, you've learned what I wanted you to learn by now. If it feels hard, the final is where the accuracy gets locked in before Unit 8.