World Music Ear Training

This course focuses on a variety of rhythmic patterns, percussive ostinatos, and melodic repertoire from around the world, with an emphasis on African, Caribbean, and South American traditional and popular music, as well as South Indian classical, Balkan, and Middle Eastern genres. In-class activity includes vocalization and rhythmic externalization exercises based on particular musical examples, general listening and aural analysis, and transcription of selected elements of a musical texture. Students examine music from the perspective of musical cognition, including the potential impact of cultural background on the formation of one's mental representation and the analysis of ambiguous musical structures. Homework assignments entail full or partial transcriptions of rhythmic and melodic elements, as well as exercises involving melodic solfege and rhythmic recitation designed to enhance a student's internal sense of time, pitch, and physical independence through singing or speaking of melody and rhythm in the context of its underlying essential metrical structure.