A Listening Exercise

In 2000, we asked composer and Herb Alpert Artist Steve Coleman for a "listening exercise."

The single most important thing that you can do to develop a more sophisticated musical ear is to work on melody and rhythm memory.

The following exercise will help with melody memory and eventually allow you to enjoy listening to music with improved perception for melodic detail.  This is the familiar song that little children sing when expressing one-upmanship while playing a game with friends.  The syllables are expressed in relative pitch (and height) to each other.

If any of you are musicians or have a musical instrument at hand you can use the following pitches.

Assume that the five syllables are numbered 1 through 5.  Try memorizing the pitches (and the corresponding numbers), then try singing them in the following sequences:

2  1  3  4  5

5  4  3  2  1

2  1  2  3

2  1  3

2  3  2  3  4

2  1  2  1  3  3  2

...and any other combination that you can think of.

Try this with a friend:  Sing one of the above pitch orders and have the friend tell you the corresponding numbers.  In this case the person singing should try to 'hear' the melody in your head and memorize the corresponding numbers before you sing it.

Also try using different rhythms.