Every exercise is written from scratch when you press New — never pulled from a bank. The four-part ones are checked against the voice-leading rules before you hear them.
Pitches only — this mode skips the rhythm. Scale degrees separated by spaces:
1 2 3 2 1. Raised degrees take a # (in minor the leading tone is #7).
Movable-do solfège works too: do re mi.
Roman numerals separated by spaces — I ii6 V7 I. Figures can be written
V65 or V6/5. For the cadential six-four, either I64 or V64 is accepted.
Nothing here is pre-written. A melodic dictation starts as a harmonic skeleton (one chord per bar), gets a rhythm assembled from metric cells, and then a pitch line is walked over the top starting on the tonic: chord tones on strong beats, steps and neighbours in between, leaps recovered by step in the opposite direction. Melodies that wander too far, repeat too much, or have no clear high point are thrown away and regenerated. In minor, ^7 is raised whenever it rises and left natural when it falls, and ^6 is raised when it steps up into a raised ^7 — so ascending lines come out as melodic minor and descending ones as natural minor.
A harmonic dictation starts with a randomised walk through a functional-harmony graph — tonic to predominant to dominant, with cadential six-fours, inversions and a required cadence at the end. Every chord is then expanded into every legal SATB voicing (correct doubling, no doubled leading tone or seventh, voices in range and correctly spaced), and the four-part setting is chosen with a shortest-path search where illegal moves cost infinity: parallel fifths and octaves, direct fifths and octaves into the outer voices, unresolved leading tones, sevenths that don't fall by step, augmented seconds, leaps that are too wide. The result is checked a second time by an independent verifier before it reaches you, and discarded if anything slipped through.
Melodic dictation gives you the first note and nothing else — you enter both the pitches and the rhythm, because the rhythm is worth roughly as many points as the pitches on the real exam. Pick a duration from the palette, then click the staff at the height of the pitch you hear. A note that would spill over a barline is refused, so the bars have to add up. Click a note to select it and click it again to let it go; once selected you can drag it, nudge it with the arrow keys or the ▲▼ buttons, change its duration, or delete it. Anything you do can be undone.
Harmonic dictation gives you the whole first chord — all four voices — and its roman numeral, then you supply the rest. You notate soprano and bass, which is what the exam asks for; tick alto & tenor if you want to write all four. The numeral under each chord is a dropdown with every triad and inversion in the key, so you're choosing from real alternatives rather than typing. The cadence stays hidden until you show the answer.
Accidentals are absolute: a note with no accidental takes whatever the key signature says. Checking marks each note green, amber (right pitch spelled differently, or right pitch but wrong duration) or red, and scores pitch and rhythm separately.
Major and minor up to four sharps or flats, or pick an exact key. Triads on every scale degree in root position and
first inversion, V7 in all four positions, vii°6, cadential six-fours, authentic and half
cadences, deceptive resolutions. Melodic dictations come in 4/4, 3/4, 2/4 and 6/8, four or eight bars; harmonic ones
in 4/4, 3/4 and 2/4. Rhythms run from whole notes down to sixteenths, including dotted values. In 6/8 the click
sounds all six eighths with the stress on beats one and four, so you can feel the two main beats and the
subdivisions under them.
space play · n new exercise · t tonic · r reveal · esc stop.
On the staff: ↑ ↓ move a note, ← → change which note is selected, − flat, = sharp, 0 natural, ⌫ deletes the selected note, ctrl/⌘ + Z undoes. Melodic only: 1–5 pick a duration (16th to whole), . dots it. Harmonic only: shift + ↑ ↓ switches voice.
On the exam you get the tonic and the starting pitch, then a fixed number of playings with pauses between them. Press Tonic, then Play excerpt, and stop yourself after three.