I hope someone will be able to help with the above question (taken from the pink, older version of MT in P)

The question gives two lines of music, each with a key signature of 3 flats. and then asks what key each line is in. The top line has several accidentals.

Daughter and I have agreed that the options are F minor or Ab major. But after much debate we cannot decide what the right answer should be.

Can anyone give the answer to this question ( and hopefully explain how they reached that conclusion)

Many thanks

If it's 3 flats, check your key sigs and it must be Eb major or C minor. (Ab maj/F min has four flats.) I'm guessing that the accidentals are A naturals and B naturals, which will be the clues that it's in the minor (C minor), as they are the 6th & 7th degrees of the melodic minor scale.

Hello jellywobble

I did G3 last year and I've got the book you mentioned. I'll have a go at explaining...


Firstly, neither of the extracts can be F Minor or Ab Major because both those keys have 4 flats whereas the extracts have only 3 flats.

The two keys which have 3 flats are C Minor and Eb Major, so the extracts must be either of those keys.

The accidentals help you identify the key of each extract.

In the first extract, the accidentals indicate that it is a minor key, which as stated above, can only be C Minor.
You would look to see if the 7th note had been sharpened, which it has (Bb has been turned by the accidental into B Natural).
You can also see that Ab - the 6th note of C Minor - has been sharpened too.
This all fits with the melodic version of the C Minor scale, so the answer is C Minor.


In the second extract, there are no accidentals - Bb and Ab have not been sharpened.
This would indicate a major scale, which we know from the earlier statement must be Eb Major.

If you're still not clear, do ask again

Waaaaaaaaa .....

Another, "lets treat this as an exercise in formal symbol bashing" question. I understand why people need help with this kind of thing (and the first reply gives it). But I blame an exam syllabus and practice questions that encourage a "get the right answer" approach rather than an "understand what keys and tonality are all about" approach. See this other current thread

That may be true, but on the basis of what we know from the thread so far it is not the only possibility. Note that if the Bb and Ab occurred in a descending context, they could be part of a C minor melodic scale.

The question asks "what key is the music in". The safest answer for a G3 student to give, in my opinion, is Eb Major. That is unequivocally correct whereas the answer "C minor" for the second extract is more likely to look like the student had got it wrong. They don't ask for the student to explain their thought process, so in my opinion C minor would not be a safe answer to give.

Eb major may be the only correct answer: it must be if the question is well-posed. However, a beginner reading this thread without access to the full question might be confused into thinking that it is a necessary consequence of the information we have read here, which is not the case IMO.

That's true but at that stage of learning it's all that is needed.

Many thanks everyone - sorry for the misleading guesses at key sig - I must have counted 4 flats not 3.

It is starting to sink in (very slowly) I think. But it can be so useful just to know what the answers to these exercises should be.

As it's school hols for another few weeks, daughter is trying to work through the theory books. I'm trying to keep up (!) and also to check her answers where I can, by seeing if we agree.

Anyway, thanks again. We'll have more questions I'm sure.

Just as a matter of interest, what would everybody think about using the opening bar as check-guide *after you've worked it out from the accidentals etc*? (Not the "end" bar of an extract in these instances because in the exercises it's often open-ended so it would be less reliable.)

In Exercise 34 of the OP's book, for example, the keysig is one flat and you're asked to name the key. So it could be F Major or D Minor. The C has been sharpened by an accidental so you would choose D Minor. But it gives you a nice warm glow when you see that the opening 3 notes of the extract are D-F-A, the tonic triad of D Minor so you can be even more certain that you've got it right.

It's not always as clear-cut as this so it can't always be used for reassurance. In the exercise the OP asked about, the second extract has Eb-F-G as the first 3 notes so it doesn't provide any reassurance at all because Eb and G appear in both C minor and Eb Major.

In the first extract though, the first 3 notes are G-C-C. This combination appears in the tonic triad of C minor but not Eb Major, so is it fair to say that it would be reassuring to think you'd got the right answer if you'd worked out from the accidentals that it was C minor.

Just wondered what everybody thought about using this "belt and braces" approach where it was possible to do so - for reassurance, as a double-check, not to work it out by using this approach. And if it didn't tally, it would give you a clue that you might have got it wrong and you could go back and work it out again.


NB. I haven't mentioned inversions etc because you don't get those at G3.

Ideally you should sing it to yourself, and then it's usually obvious whether it's major or minor, but that may be a stretch for people doing grade 3 theory (unfortunately). I tend to agree with MadTom that in the end it's what it sounds like that is most important, and that while the "mathematical" approach will probably get you the right answer, it's not enough to make you a good musician.
So I would explain all the tricks and rules of thumb to get to the answer, but at the same time try to make sure that the student listens to what it sounds like and understands it as music.

Chris

Yes! some instruments (e.g. horn) help you to become a good sight singer, but internalising pitch notation is a vital skill for every musician, often neglected by instrumental teachers.

Trinity/Guildhall aural tests at Grade 3 already include one in which the candidate follows a part sheet for a melody that s/he hears played correctly and then with an alteration. S/he has to indicate the bar in which the alteration occurs. At higher grades, more precise information is required. In my Part I aural exam, I heard a performance with errors (many of them, some of pitch, some of rhythm) twice, and had to mark a score with what I heard. Of all the aural tests that I have ever taken, this one corresponds most closely to what I do when I am conducting, coaching or playing chamber music. I recommend tests along the lines of the T/G ones to the ABRSM.