Stop Hearing Notes. Hear Shapes.

Day 1 | 20 to 25 minutes

Draw the melody with your hand

Focus: hear the geometry of the flowing instrumental line.

• Listen once with no mandolin and follow only the familiar flowing melody.
• On a second listen, move your hand upward when the melody rises, downward when it falls, and sideways when it stays in the same region.
• Hum the opening after the recording stops. Keep the shape even if the exact pitches are not perfect.
• Describe the contour in plain language: rise, fall, arc, repeat, or return.

• Rise. Fall. Stay. Return.

What to notice: music has geometry. You can recognize and remember a melodic path before you can name any of its pitches.

• Jesus bleibet meine Freude, chorale from Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben, BWV 147Cantores Carmeli Linz, Collegium Instrumentale Carmeli, Michael Stenov, 2012, choir and orchestraFree to hear, in the recordings list on the page that holds the score: a live performance of the chorale movement, No. 10. Today, follow only the flowing line that runs under and around the choir.Listenhttps://imslp.org/wiki/Herz_und_Mund_und_Tat_und_Leben,_BWV_147_(Bach,_Johann_Sebastian)

Day 2 | about 30 minutes

Hear steps and leaps

Focus: replace random note hunting with direction and approximate distance.

• Play G to A and hear a second. G to B is a third, G to C a fourth, G to D a fifth.
• Sing each destination before playing it again. Notice how the distances differ.
• Reduce the first listening decision to step or leap. A step reaches a neighboring scale tone. A leap skips one or more.
• Return to Bach and pause after short fragments. Ask: up or down? Step or leap?

• Starting pitch, then up or down, then step or leap.

A solvable problem: instead of asking "What note is that?", determine its direction and distance from the note you already know.

Day 3 | 30 to 40 minutes

Find Bach by ear

Focus: rebuild the opening phrase from relationships instead of trial and error.

• Hum the opening phrase until you can begin it without the recording.
• Find only the first note on the mandolin.
• Before searching for note two, decide whether it is higher or lower.
• Decide whether the motion is a step or a leap, then test your prediction.
• Repeat for each note: hear it, predict the relationship, play it, and correct it.

• Start, then direction, then interval, then destination.

Fretboard shift: the neck stops being a row of numbered locations and becomes a map of musical relationships.

Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring on this siteThe flowing line is written out there for mandolin, with tab under the notes and playback. Open it only after your ear has found the phrase by relationship, to check what you found.mandolintrainer.com/tunes/jesu-joy/

Day 4 | 25 to 35 minutes

The melody is not alone

Focus: switch attention between the flowing line and the broad chorale.

• Choose a choral-orchestral performance of the movement.
• Listen first to the familiar active instrumental line and ignore everything else.
• Listen again for the chorale melody. Follow its broader rhythm and longer notes.
• On a third listen, switch attention on purpose: flowing line, chorale, flowing line, chorale.
• Attempt to hold both in awareness for one short passage.

• The active instrumental line, and the broad chorale melody.

Week 3 returns: independent melodic layers can coexist. Neither is reduced to a mere background when your attention learns to follow both.

• Jesus bleibet meine Freude, chorale from Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben, BWV 147Cantores Carmeli Linz, Collegium Instrumentale Carmeli, Michael Stenov, 2012, choir and orchestraMonday's recording, and the one choir-and-orchestra performance of the movement on IMSLP's page for the cantata: the chorale movement, No. 10, live in the Karmelitenkirche Linz. The choir sings a Christmas text, "Hört, es singt und klingt mit Schalle", to the chorale melody. The words differ from the cantata's. The two layers are the same.Listenhttps://imslp.org/wiki/Herz_und_Mund_und_Tat_und_Leben,_BWV_147_(Bach,_Johann_Sebastian)

Day 5 | 25 to 35 minutes

Where are the chord tones?

Focus: hear stable destinations inside a moving melodic line.

• Choose a small portion of the flowing melody and determine its underlying harmony.
• Inspect the notes that receive emphasis or feel like arrivals.
• Classify several as root, third, fifth, or passing tone against the current chord.
• Play the stable chord tones alone, then restore the passing motion between them.
• Listen for departure, travel, and arrival rather than a list of pitch names.

• Stable chord tone, then passing motion, then stable chord tone.

Implied harmony grows up: melody often travels through instability toward a chord-tone destination. The path moves. The arrival settles it.

Day 6 | 25 to 35 minutes

Remove the rhythm

Focus: test how pitch contour and rhythmic shape combine to create identity.

• Take the opening melody you found by ear.
• Play every pitch at the same duration, with no original phrasing.
• Notice how much remains recognizable from contour alone.
• Restore Bach's rhythm and compare the result immediately.
• Record both versions. Listen back without watching your hands.

• Pitch shape and rhythmic shape together make melodic identity.

Week 5 meets Week 6: contour carries part of the tune, but rhythm groups the pitches into the specific musical gesture your memory recognizes.

Day 7 | 25 to 35 minutes

The Bach "whoa"

Focus: perceive two melodic layers moving at different rhythmic rates.

• Listen to the complete movement without the score.
• Follow the active instrumental contour: its rises, falls, steps, leaps, and chord-tone arrivals.
• Shift to the broad chorale and feel its slower rate of motion.
• Hold both layers in attention for as long as possible without forcing it.
• Notice that Bach runs multiple musical clocks at once while keeping the whole movement coherent.

The transformation: what first sounded like one famous melody now reveals contour, interval, harmony, counterpoint, and layers of time running at once.

• Jesus bleibet meine Freude, chorale from Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben, BWV 147Cantores Carmeli Linz, Collegium Instrumentale Carmeli, Michael Stenov, 2012, choir and orchestraThe recording from Monday and Thursday, heard straight through from the first note to the last.Listenhttps://imslp.org/wiki/Herz_und_Mund_und_Tat_und_Leben,_BWV_147_(Bach,_Johann_Sebastian)