- (i) Practising by listening and singing the scales and intervals. This helps the brain to register the sounds of different degrees in a scale which are the ones that makes up a chord hence it will be easy to detect the qualities of chords.(ii)Associating chords to emotions. The sounds of different qualities of chords can be associated with feelings/emotions according to the quality of sounds they give. The recognition of feeling can help recognise the quality of chords for instance, Major- Happy(brightness), minor- Sadness, Diminished- Irritation(tension) and Atmospheric/ Dreaming for Augmented.
- If the student is not well familiar with the intervals such as minor and major thirds, fifths and sevenths, it is difficult to distinguish the chords qualities.
- When using emotions to distinguish chords it is east to confuse between minor and diminished because the feeling is almost the same.
- Some times students practise with off-tuned instruments hence they capture wrong intervals
- Sometimes a student needs to listen to the chord several time to know what quality it is but it is not easy for a tutor to do so.
- When the chord is inverted it is easy to confuse the student.