Learning from Mistakes

Mistakes, mistakes and more mistakes.

That was the kind of thing that I had faced for my very first music theory class of the year. Thank goodness that my music theory tutor gave the permission for one to make mistakes and to learn from them. This, I think is very important.

I showed my theory tutor the harmony exercises that I was to show him for today's lesson. He went through, and found a few minor mistakes. I corrected them accordingly.

Now, the thing is, in the enthuasiasm to practise on doing more harmony exercises, I had actually went ahead of the lesson plan and did the homework that was only to be given to me after today's lesson. I was hoping to show my tutor my work in hope that he could affirm that I was on the right track. Yet, it was the contrary. I have made mistakes for almost all the eight exercises from that piece of work that I had done a little ahead in advance.

The eight exercises required me to add soprano, alto and tenor parts to the given bass parts. I did not realised that I have written my parts in such a way that I was trying to make it pretty difficult for myself to abide to the rules of harmony in the end.

There was a tendency for me to write the soprano parts a little too low. I tend to write the tenor parts "too close" to the bass parts. As such, in the end, I tend to end up with overlaps (for example the bass G note rises above the tenor F note in the previous chord). This meant that I would tend to break the rules, and that in harmony exercises at this level, is similar to making a mistake.

The most tricky thing is that I was not too good at spotting that I have made a mistake of overlapping the parts as yet. As such, I could be making that mistake happily without knowing.

Now I have to do the same eight exercises again, but now bearing in mind some of the practical suggestions that my music theory teacher has offered. Yet, I must be strange to think that this is getting fun. But it is. Hopefully, I can learn from my mistake and get the exercises done.

Next week, I am supposed to learn about cadences. I was just trying to read the first few pages on cadences on my own, but I was confused already when I was at the topic of plagal cadences. Gosh, I hope my doubts would soon be clarified.

By the way, how does one train one's ears to be aware of what kind of cadence is used at the end of a certain passage?