Solfege at your fingertips 4

Welcome to the fourth course of the series of MOOCs: Solfege at your fingertips.

This series of free and online courses focuses on music theory and its practical application through solfege.

High school music programs often focus on ensemble playing with less emphasis on music theory. Moreover, with many available music software options, it is easier to create music without mastering and understanding the mechanics of tonal music. This leads to losing out on all the richness of colors and the possibilities that it brings. Whether you want to pursue studies in music or you are an amateur musician, you can take your game up a notch by fully mastering the language of music!

• The first MOOC in this series will focus on writing the pitch of sounds, the names of notes and accidentals, as well as understanding intervals, i.e. the relationship between two notes.
• The second MOOC will focus on tonality, the major scale and the different minor scales.
• In the third MOOC, we will see the construction of 3 tone chords, 4 tone chords and tonal harmony.
• In the fourth MOOC, we will discover the writing of rhythms, simple and compound meters as well as simple and compound beats.

Preparation for music theory and dictation :

Throughout these courses, we will also offer you many solfege video capsules during which you can work on your sight reading with our students, as well as a series of video capsules where you will be guided step by step during musical dictations. These video capsules were prepared by Sylvie Ouellette, who has been teaching ear training for more than 20 years at Cégep Marie-Victorin. Each capsule will be accompanied by exercises. Thanks to this incredible tool, you will be able to put into practice all the theoretical notions learned and be ready for your auditions at CÉGEP or university.

We hope that this series will help you demystify music theory so that you can read a music sheet with as much pleasure as you might have in reading a good novel!

Module 1 – The basics

The basics: Note shapes, rest shapes, the direction of stems, dotted notes and ties, pulse and the three types of meter

Module 2 – Time signature and the bar

Time signatures, simple and compound meters, the bar

Module 3 – Simple meters and simple pulsee

Time signatures in simple meters, division levels simple pulse, different divisions of a simple pulse, rhythmic patterns simple

Module 4 – Compound measures and compound pulse

Time signatures in compound measures, division levels compound pulse, rhythmic patterns compound

Module 5 – Odd meters, the triplet, the duplet