Designing a new aural skills curriculum for a higher education popular music programme

In South East Asia, popular music is a rare but increasingly feasible option to study in higher-level education. The local educational landscape has been dominated by conservatories teaching western and Chinese classical music and pedagogical practices, leaving emerging popular music programmes to develop independently from the ground up. The author has been tasked with designing new curriculum and workbooks for a popular music diploma programme at a newly established arts university. As part of that process, this article presents a literature review of commonly used ear training method books. The findings reveal that the aims, genres and assumed skills and knowledge of western music theory made by the authors do not align with the practice-centred popular music programme. Excerpts from in-progress workbooks are presented with discussions of the different goals, challenges and methods of assessment.