Aural Skills

Knowledge in Music Theory, Creativity, Expert Techniques, or Perseverance are some of the important skills that a musician should have. All of the skills mentioned are crucial to the development of any musician who really wants to become an excellent musician. But the single most important skill that most musicians or guitar players don’t have, and don’t know how to practice, is Aural Skills or Ear Training. Most of the musicians nowadays have poor aural skills or their ears are still not as good as they could be and should be. So in this study, we plan to make an E-Learning system in improving a person’s aural skill.

In this study, our primary goal is to help everyone to improve aural skill by doing an E-Learning system. There are two effective ways in teaching aural skills. The First one is Dictation, which teaches musicians to be able to see what they’re hearing and to visualize and write down the notated music for melodies, chords, rhythms, complex chorales, and other musical elements. And other one is Sight Singing, teaching musicians to be able to hear what they’re seeing. It’s relatively easy to sit down and push the keys, press the valves, or pluck the strings, but a much taller order is to be able to look at a piece of printed music, hear in your mind exactly what it will sound like when played, and sing those notes out of thin air with no accompaniment to check yourself against.

Dictation and Sight Singing will be used in our E-Learning System. The E-Learning system that we plan to do covers a range of lessons and ear training topics to improve musicianship skills and aural awareness. In this System, a user account is needed so that the user’s progression on the Ear Training Course will be saved in the database and can be continued every time. Every time a user finishes a certain lesson, he/she must finish the lesson tests to be able to continue to the next lessons. We will include in our system a sound recognition technology. In some of the tests, there’s an instance that the user should use an instrument or voice to be able to repeat the sound that’s played by the system. The system will check if the sound is correct. Statement of the Problem:

The study intends to help a person in improving his/her musical ear or aural skill especially those who have an interest in music. The study seeks to help a person to learn to identify, by hearing, pitches, intervals, melody, chords, and rhythms. Assumptions and Hypothesis:

The thesis assumes that a person will improve his/her aural skill through the E-learning system. Significance of study:
For most musicians who just started to pick up learning their instrument, it is very common that they dive straight to learning music theory or even technical aspects of playing the instrument. Very often, the ear training of the musician is neglected. Many musicians do not understand that when they are playing music, the most important aspect is to be able to hear and understand what they are playing. None of this can be achieved without good ear training skills. The importance of improving aural skill is obvious. The importance of ear training is obvious is that you can play what you can hear and what you read.

Definition of Terms:
E-Learning – includes all forms of electronically supported learning and teaching, including educational technology. Aural Skill – is a skill by which musicians learn to identify, solely by hearing, pitches, intervals, melody, chords,rhythms, and other basic elements of music. Pitch – are compared as “higher” and “lower” in the sense associated with musical melodieswhich require sound whose frequency is clear and stable enough to distinguish from noise. Interval – is the difference between two pitches.

Melody – is a linear succession of musical tones that the listener perceives as a single entity. Chords – is any harmonic set of three or more notes that is heard as if sounding simultaneously. Rhythm – the pattern of regular or irregular pulses caused in music of strong or weak melodic and harmonic beats.