Melodic Dictation on Chord Progressions

[bm]

I have found the Melodic Dictation exercise to be a useful complement to David Lucas Burge's Relative Pitch Supercourse.
However, it seems to me the Melodic Dictation exercise is not operating correctly when it comes to Chord Progressions.
Could someone please explain how it operates, or release a corrected update, please?

[Quentin]

Hello,
To which extent do you find it not operating correctly?
regards,
Quentin

[bm]

I've just started Exercise 29. EM5 selected C major, for which I understand the IV chord to include the notes F, A and C; the V chord to include the notes G, B and D and the I chord to include the notes C, E and G. However, the dictation passage is A-D'-E'-A-G-F-G. The first note and the last three notes in this particular passage seem fine to me, but I can't see how the D' fits the IV chord, or how the E' and the A fit the V chord. If the chord changes on each note (and the sequence repeats), the last four notes in the passage don't fit. I hope this explains my confusion.

[Hans]

Lesson 29 is based on the IV-V-I progression. The 7 tones in the question is divided on the 3 chords in different ways for each question, i.e. there can be 1 to 5 tones with the IV chord and the same for V and I.

You should not think about what chords are behind the melody. It is a melodic dictation exercise not a chord identification exercise. EarMaster does not play the other tones in the chord, so it is very difficult to find out what chord is behind each tone in the melody.

Best regards,
Hans Jakobsen
EarMaster

[bm]

Thank you for your explanation, Hans.

[bm]

There's an intermittent error on Melodic Dictation lesson 29: 'Could not make a melody with the current settings!'. The melody then selected seems to be the previous one, and often the notes on the staff are labelled '??'. It seems to be associated with having the 'Auto new question' feature enabled.

Any suggestions as to how to overcome this without disabling 'Auto new question', please?

[Quentin]

Hi,

This error may (rarely) happen when the program is attempting to compose a melodic line according to the set up rules and comes to a point where it can't use any valid tone during the process.

It doesn't have anything to do with "Auto New Question" so you don't need to disable it. This error should not occur often and hopefully it won't disturb your progression too much.

The only solution to fix that would be to write a whole new algorithm.

[bm]

Hi Quentin, thank you for letting me know about this error. It's reassuring to know you're aware of it. As you said, it doesn't happen very often.

Best wishes

[muurgsi]

Hello,

I realize 6 years have passed since the last post to this thread.

I get the error message "could not generate a melody with current settings" all the time in the Module 13 "Melodies in Am". If I click ok Earmaster Pro will play the root note and then notes with a very low, for the human ear unidentifyable notes. It happens like 3 times out of 10 (which doesn't not qualify as "very rarely).

Is there any way around this? Help would be much appreciated.

Thanks

David

[Quentin]

Hi David,

Is this happening in a specific lesson of module 13? I have not been able to reproduce the error yet.