Effective ear training

The Lounge General Discussion
#45

The gold standard for ear training is sight singing solfeggio since you are required to produce the pitches in your head. However this requires a knowledge of standard notation.

Before undertaking sight singing it is a good idea to work on all intervals in both directions as well as harmonically, up to an octave as well as being able to find the tonic of a given excerpt. Finding tonic can be tough in some situations since music is often written as to obscure the tonal center as a way of creating a dreamy feeling of uncertainty or dissonance.

Rest assured you can develop your skills. I took ear training classes in college and while it wasn’t a strong point for me, I certainly improved and am more than proficient currently. Some useful programs are Auralia or Macgamut. Do not be afraid to start very basic, a strong foundation is important. The most important thing is consistency. It takes several years to master these skills. Best of luck

#46

In my early years of playing music the two things that helped me learn the most, and the fastest, were playing with other people and studying the subject. Honestly it was probably the combination of the two.
By studying I don’t just mean learning theory though I did do a lot of that. I started listening to music differently once I started playing, really critically listening, and I listened to stuff way out of my normal comfort zone. I learned a lot that way.
All of the new ideas from listening and knowledge from theory have to be road tested or they remain abstract and that’s where playing with others comes in. Joining a band is the best as there is usually goal oriented motivation but regularly jamming with friends is good too. All of the things you only partially understand come into focus when playing with others.
Oh, and practice of course. There is no substitute. You have to put the hours in, lots of them. And you should never skip a day, even if you can only squeeze in a five minute session it’s worth it. When people say they tried to learn music and it didn’t work, what they really mean is that they didn’t work, not long enough anyway.

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#47

Furthermore, if you don’t count the repeated notes in the 8 and 13 it’s 7/12 or 58.3333r%

#48

Brilliantly succinct

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#49

As someone said above, genuine tone-deafness is pretty rare. It’s a skill that can be developed for sure.
Do you play any (traditional) instruments? I think the first time my ear started to develop was learning to tune my guitar. I was quite excited the first time I tuned it by ear to a keyboard, then used an electronic tuner and saw I was bang-on.
Playing keyboard has been very good for me developing my ear in recent years. Playing chords on the keyboard it’s very easy to visualise the intervals between the notes, name that interval if you want, and get a feel for the flavour of that interval or chord. It’s quite nice learning what chords you particularly like and writing with them.

#50

Because I have no other structured training available to me :slight_smile:

It’s also easier to have another laptop in front of me from time to time at work versus my Nord Electro.

I do play as well, but which scales and how to progress, i want some sort of structure for that and get frustrated trying to write my own plan when i don’t know enough.

And sadly i don’t know any locals (currently!) into playing with me, I am close to a composer but he’s a fulltime artist to pay the bills and I don’t get any opportunity to jam at my level.

#51

+1 for taking lessons in person.

I have done the learning on my own, through videos, and online lessons route for guitar, and I have never quite gotten to where I want to be. I recently started learning the flute as well, and based on advice I got from players online, I decided to start with in-person lessons. Night and day for me. I find learning in person so much better and surprisingly much more enjoyable. One of the real keys is that often you don’t know that you are doing wrong, and having someone knowledgeable point those things out and steer you in a direction makes such a big difference. I bet if you took 2-3 years of piano and drum lessons you would be on a totally different level. That would be a huge commitment, but could be worth it.

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#52

This is one of the most valuable things about in person lessons. When I started playing strings My posture and positioning was corrected constantly by the person teaching me, often in tiny degrees. It seemed overly fussy and even arbitrary at the time but years later all of that was a huge advantage when I started learning advanced techniques. Doing what intuitively feels natural/ comfortable at first might hold you back in the long run or even cause joint pain.

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