Viewed in terms of what has actu¬ally happened in classrooms, most of us have em¬phasized the facilitation of communication and meaning and de-emphasized the teaching of forms. As we did so, we noticed with pride the im¬provement in student fluency and with dismay the corresponding loss of accuracy. Some of our best, most fluent students received disappointing scores on the test that was so important to them. | DIRECTIONS AND EXAMPLES FOR LISTENING QUESTIONS 45 Here is an example of a talk and some questions Music Theory narrator Listen to part of a talk in a music theory class. Volume Help Confirm Next professor I m sure if I asked you you d be able to tell me the common meaning of the word interval. 46 REVIEW OF LISTENING professor An interval is the period of time between two events. For example buses might stop at a certain location every ten minutes that is at ten minute intervals. In the typical sense of the word an interval is a period of time. But in music theory the word has a different meaning. A musical interval is the distance between two notes. So if two notes are far apart the musical interval between them is large. If two notes sound close together the musical interval is small. The smallest musical interval is actually no distance at all between two notes. It s called the unison and that s the interval when two notes are exactly the same. professor Today I d like to focus on a way of analyzing musical intervals by looking at the precise mathematical relationship that exists between musical notes. To do this I ve made some sounding boxes. DIRECTIONS AND EXAMPLES FOR LISTENING QUESTIONS 47 professor As you can see they re just boxes made of wood with strings wrapped around two nails on the top. Now the only difference between these two sounding boxes is the length of the string. I made the strings two different lengths to show you how this affects the sound. In fact if you measured the length of the two strings you d see that the long string is exactly twice the length of the short string. So the ratio between the short string and the long string is one to two. That s a pretty basic ratio mathematically and it produces one of the most basic intervals in Western music the octave. After the talk you will read
