Scales and Triads: Ear Training for Honor Choir Auditions

Scales and Triads

Solfège is the part of an honor choir audition singers leave to luck

Students polish the prepared piece and hope the scales go fine. A panel hears your major scale, your triads and your chromatic scale in about a minute, and those are the fastest points to lose. Audition sheets differ between CCDA regional, All-State and a district honor choir audition, so read yours first and let it overrule me.

This course runs on the microphone. You sing, every pitch is scored against its target in cents, and a gold line follows your voice as you sing. A slide counts as done at 70 percent. Pick soprano, alto, tenor or bass and the keys follow the voice part.

What you practice

Five chapters, in the order I teach them.

  • Why Solfege? The job of every syllable from home Do to high Do, then one lesson each on audiation, singing in tune with no piano, sight reading, learning music fast, and writing music by ear.
  • Major Scale. Build it, hear where the half steps fall, label the scale degrees with Curwen hand signs, then drill it ascending, descending and round trip.
  • Triads. Major and minor are one perfect fifth with one changing middle note: Do Mi So against Do Me So, then telling them apart by ear.
  • Chromatic Scale. Twelve tiny steps, all the same size, learned five notes at a time with the raised and lowered syllables.
  • Mock-Audition. A cadence, one starting pitch, two silent prep beats, then you sing with nothing playing underneath you.

What Judge Mode scores

The last lesson runs the whole audition in order: major scale up and down, major triad, parallel minor triad, chromatic scale up and down. Four items, fifteen points, no syllables on screen, no retries, no feedback until it is over. The bar is 13. The chromatic scale carries 5 of those points and is the item singers drill least.

The habit it catches fastest is the scoop. Singers slide up into the third of a triad instead of leaping to it, and a scooped interval reads as flat to a panel and to the scorer here. Leap, do not slide.

Chapter 1 is free and needs no account. Chapters 2 and up need a premium session.

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