Addressing the disparate levels of aural skills that students may have acquired through their daily musical experiences prior to formal schooling can be difficult. Placement tests within the Western classical musical tradition typically involve structural decoding and formal concepts of elementary music theory. In this manuscript, we discuss the…

To practice effectively, one must first know how to practice. The practice process is affected by one's ability to set goals, design strategies, self-assess, and to have an aural image of the music being learned. The author proposes a model reflecting the factors involved in practice and proposes a number of strategies that can be used to…

This article suggests that the development of listening skills should extend to the "soundscape" of nonspeech acoustical information. It presents a model for effective aural processing, identifies categories of information obtained from nonverbal sound, and explores "ear-tuning" or listening exercises that use sound to glean…