Harmonic dictation trains the ear to identify a chord progression and notate its outer voices

Harmonic dictation is the practice of listening to a short passage and writing out the underlying chord progression — identifying each chord’s root, quality (major/minor/diminished), and function (tonic, subdominant, dominant) by ear, and often notating the soprano and bass voices. It extends interval training into the harmonic dimension: instead of one interval, the learner must simultaneously perceive the bass line, harmonic quality, and relationships between successive chords. Teoria.com offers two-voice and four-voice harmonic dictation formats, plus harmonic analysis of short excerpts. This skill is directly applicable to music production: a producer who can notate a progression by ear can reconstruct and riff on source material without a chord-detection plugin.

Examples

Listen to a four-bar progression and transcribe it as I-IV-V-I; verify against the playback. In four-voice dictation, write soprano and bass lines first, then infer inner voices from the implied harmony.

Assessment

Transcribe a four-chord progression in C major heard twice; identify whether the second chord is IV or ii by explaining the bass-note difference that distinguishes them.