From Zero to Mozart
Stage 4Scales & musicianshipLesson 63 of 70 · ReadingNEXT

The musicianship check

You've been through the whole first layer of musicianship — scales, keys, the circle of fifths, minor, intervals, chords, harmony, cadences, phrases, arpeggios, the physics. This is a check, and an honest word about what "done" means here.

Name these

The musicianship check

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  5. 5
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One cold, from the page

80 bpm
Before revealing: name the key. Name the degree of each note. What chord does bar 1 outline? What cadence ends it? Is this a whole phrase or half of one? Then check your fingering.

(Answers: G major. Degrees ^1 ^3 ^5 ^3 · ^4 ^2 ^7 ^2 · ^1. Bar 1 is a G major arpeggio — the tonic, I. The last three notes are V7 → I: a perfect cadence. It's one complete phrase — a question and its own answer.)

What "done" means

Reading all of this — naming the key, the degrees, the chord, the cadence, the phrase — is done. That's the skill this stage builds, and it's real progress toward the whole point of the course: opening an unfamiliar score and making sense of it.

Hearing all of it fluently by ear — that's an ongoing project, and Stage 8's ear gym is where it gets its own dedicated training. Playing chords, arpeggios in tempo, minor keys in tune with expression — that's Stages 5, 6 and 7. Keep those separate in your mind. You don't have to hear a deceptive cadence instantly yet; you have to know what one is and be able to find it on the page.