Improve Your Aural! Grade 4 (Revised): Book & CD

This workbook tackles ear training systematically without the tedium students usually associate with it. The integration of listening, singing, writing, and playing gives your students multiple entry points to develop aural skills, so the content reinforces itself across their daily practice and playing.

Interactive and encouraging rather than clinical. The combination of activities keeps students engaged; they're not just listening and writing answers, but singing and creating, which makes the work feel musical and purposeful.

Students at Grade 4 level (ABRSM or equivalent) who are ready to deepen their musical perception beyond reading notation. This works especially well for players who have solid technical skills but benefit from explicit ear-training scaffolding.

• Play the CD excerpts multiple times before asking students to complete the activities; repetition builds confidence and makes the listening less intimidating.
• Use the singing and composing exercises as full-group warm-ups to build ownership of the concepts before students tackle individual written work.
• Connect the listening activities directly to repertoire your ensemble is studying; recognizing intervals or harmonic progressions in music they're actually performing makes the training stick.

Assign chapters as focused listening homework throughout the year, or dedicate 10 minutes of rehearsal time each week to a single activity from the book. Many teachers use this as a bridge between casual listening and formal music theory study, working through it alongside their existing curriculum.

• Interval recognition and discrimination
• Chord identification by ear
• Rhythmic notation accuracy from listening
• Melodic dictation at Grade 4 level
• Harmonic progression awareness
• Singing pitch accuracy to reinforce aural memory
• Composing short melodies using heard patterns