Music instructors unanimously affirm the importance of aural skills in music education. The ability to hear with the eye and see with the ear separates the most able musicians from the average ones. Dictation exercises prevail as the best gauge of aural acuity. Designed for second-year college music ear training programs, Advanced Tonal Dictation contains a regulated group of pitch, rhythm, melodic, and harmonic dictation exercises designed for use in and out of the classroom. This workbook differs from other ear training books because students can check their work immediately by covering the answer to the left with a piece of scratch paper and removing it to verify if their answer is correct.

The exercises target three basic skills: writing out a rhythmic succession, a melodic succession, and a harmonic progression—leaving other peripheral exercises to alternative sources. Each of the ten chapters concentrates on a particular intervallic, rhythmic, metric and harmonic concept. Students hear the instructor play an example, write out what was played, then compare their answers with the Instructor Key. An accompanying CD contains recordings of all the odd-numbered exercises found in the book for practice outside of the classroom.