Music Dictation Instructions

“Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” is the musical equivalent to “A is for Apple, B is for Bear… Z is for Zebra”.

First make sure you can sing this using “do re mi” while conducting time. It should sound like this: “do do sol sol la la sol — fa fa mi mi re re do —… Then, if you’ve never done music dictation before, try to write the melody for Twinkle Twinkle by hand, completely from memory and based on your understanding. You can search online for examples to see how close you are.

There are two other music dictation exercises, #1 and #2. Listen to the audio and note the singer is using named syllables to identify the pitches. Figure out how many beats per measure, and try to write down the music. There is both a handwritten solution and full solution for both of these exercises (the only time this will be given). You may want to use a pencil for handwriting music. Note the handwritten solutions are in pen, meaning mistakes need to be crossed out.

Another approach is to take a piece of music you may have learned early on and memorized — for example, a simple, short piano work. See if you can write it in sheet music form, then compare this with your sheet music and see how close you are.

If you are considerably more advanced and play the piano, take the first music dictation audio example for Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and try to figure it out by ear on a piano keyboard. Maybe even try to write down the sheet music.