Ear Training

[Michael L]

Brian’s recent intervals lesson (EP492) was timely for me as I’ve just recently started putting dedicated time into ear training. I’m using an app on my phone for basic interval training, and I’ve seen great improvement for hearing diatonic intervals in a key. It’s gratifying to hear a tone and know it’s a major third, or a major 7th, etc. It’s much harder to do this while listening to an actual song with harmonies and melodic flow going on at the same time, but I have noticed I’m beginning to pick out scale degrees by ear. So many of the AM lessons feature a I-IV-V chord progression making that sound recognizable too.

I’m having fun with this. Just wondering if anyone else has put in time and effort in this direction and what your experience has been. Any thoughts to make it more valuable?

[Mark H]

Hi Michael, yes, I’ve been working on it. Worked with the lesson material, went through it a few times, did the quizzes. I eventually managed to get all questions correct, but I’ve only managed that once. It required some time, concentration and focus. Note to self: I need to go back over it again.

I’m currently working with ear training within the context of practicing dominant 7th arpeggios, I7, IV7, V7, trying to identify the chord tones I’ll be wanting to target for ending a lick or phrase, depending on where I am and where I’m going.

I figure I can double the value of practicing arpeggios and starting to play phrases off them by listening for the root, 3, 5, and flat 7 as I run through the arpeggio in two octaves. It’s work, but it’s fun.

[sunjamr]

It was Justin Sandercoe who inspired me to get into ear training. He has an ear training app which I downloaded onto my phone…not sure if it’s still available. Basically, I learned to recognize the major intervals using tricks like “Here Comes the Bride” for the 4th and “Star Wars” for the 5th, etc. So the question is, how useful has that been to me? Not very, except that I can now listen to a lick from some song I want to learn, and maybe it goes a little faster because I recognize the intervals sooner. But when I’m doing improv, can I just think “I want to use a 4th interval here” then I quickly play it? Nope. But if I were on a quiz show where they play 2 notes and ask “What musical interval is this?” I would win.

Sunjamr Steve

[Michael L]

I used to use the “familiar song” approach, but always found it to be a lot of thinking to get to the answer. The app I’m using plays a I-IV-V-I cadence, then the single note to identify. It can be in any octave. As I’ve practiced I find each interval begins to take on a distinct “character” which makes them pretty clear in relation to the key. I was kind of surprised by this. I think the next steps would be to listen to nursery-rhyme level songs and perhaps transcribe the melodies. Hearing the intervals melodically is still tough.

[Jean-Michel G]

I somehow internalized the sound of the intervals; when I “sing” a melody in my head and concentrate on it, I can “see” the intervals that it contains and my fingers know how to play them. Similarly, when I am sight reading a score I see intervals and my fingers do the rest (but not always with a very convenient fingering).
But when I am doing improv, like Steve I am not necessarily singing intervals in my head all the time; I am not thinking “now I’ll go up a sixth and then down a second…”. What happens then is in fact more the result of the time I put in working out phrases on the guitar and practicing scales and arpeggios that way. It just flows naturally for the most part.

[charjo]

I haven’t concentrated on ear training but I find I can pretty easily reproduce licks at this point. I have purchased the Beato ear training course. It looks quite sophisticated and seems to concentrate more on chords and progressions, definitely something I would like to hear better.
John

[Mark H]

Rick Beato blows my mind. I need to find some kind of on-ramp to start catching up with all the esoteric stuff he takes for granted. At present I sit through his teaching vids like a drowning man hoping to grab on to something I’ve already understood to help me float toward solid ground.

Watching Rick, I don’t think I’ve learned a single usable thing other than “good grief, I still have so much to learn…”. And yet I continue to watch and enjoy them. Guitarists bitten by the theory bug are total masochists apparently and I’m no exception.

Brian, on the other hand, has this knack of leading you into the material toward the key points of the lesson. I really appreciate the way he asks, after playing a change or a lick or something, “…so what is that?”, and then breaks it down. When you combine that with what you’ve learned from previous lessons it all starts to fit together. As a teacher in a previous life I recognize a great teacher when I see one. 👍

[charjo]

Beato does cover intervals but he does it melodically and harmonically. It’s actually quite hard distinguishing a minor 2nd interval from a major 2nd interval when the notes are played together and the pitch is constantly changing with each example. When he plays intervals melodically, ie. separately, he alters from low to high and high to low with pitch changes as mentioned before. He has practice and test modes in the program and videos to give helpful tips. It’s more frustrating than I might have imagined.
John

[Michael L]

I’ve been curious about Rick’s ear training program. If I recall, he says he used to teach a college class on ear training for people who were failing the traditional approaches and had to have it for their music degree. This leads me to believe he would have a good approach, but it sounds complex. Unless you can hear single intervals on their own first, hearing them in a context would be much harder.

I have no experience on this, but I’m thinking, as a player, it would be more helpful to hear chord progressions well so you could play along or improvise a lead over the changes. Hearing melodically is good for transcription or composition, but if you’re sitting in with a band I would guess the chords are your lifeline.

[Jean-Michel G]

True: hearing and recognizing chords and chord structures is much more complicated than identifying melodic intervals. One of the reasons is that chords sound very differently depending on how they are voiced. The effect they produce also depend strongly on the context in which they are used.

David Reed is the author of a book and a series of courses called “Improvise For Real” in which he insists on the necessity to recognize chord transitions. He treats each chord as a distinct harmonic environment that has its own identity. He analyses the melodic paths taken when going from one chord to another. I recommend having a look at his approach.

I would love to be able to improvise on the fly over any chord progression without any prior analysis, but in general I can’t do that. I can certainly recognize a basic I IV V thing, but in more complicated settings I need to hear and see the song first in order to know what chords are used, how they are used and where they are going to.

[String B]

I went through much of Improvise For Real, and honestly, I think most guitar players will see more benefit from learning some basic music theory, learning to sing a bit, learning the fretboard well, and learning songs and lines by ear. All traditional stuff. Improvise For Real is very intriguing on the surface, but in practice it was rather vague and unstructured. And I felt that the time I was spending on it would be better used on the traditional stuff or even my own invented exercises for myself. Just my opinion.

On ear training, most guitar players shy away from singing. But not having an internal sense of pitch can be a real handicap. It’s nuts. A lot of us guitar players have a fear of singing for sounding bad, but we didn’t so much have that fear when picking up the guitar for the first time. I guess there is something about our voice that is more personal and makes us feel more exposed and vulnerable. For a guitar player who doesn’t necessarily want to be a singer in any capacity, the goal of singing is to simply develop the ability to hear the intervals of lines. If you can sing a line that you hear, you are hearing those intervals internally. Translating those intervals to the fretboard is another skill that falls in knowing intervals on the fretboard. To do it efficiently, you have to be able to hear intervals of lines and know where those intervals are on the fretboard. Although you can just hear and sing the pitches and find them on the fretboard. Also, translating something that you sing to the fretboard is easier if you start doing it on a single string to begin with.

And oh, I’m not preaching here. I can definitely use a lot of work on ear training and other skills myself. I have a book that I have been meaning to work through for ear training called Ear Training For the Contemporary Musician. It looks like it should be a good one to work through. Most of the singing for pitch recognition that I have done has been of my own invention, pretty haphazard, and lacking in comprehensiveness. I have only lightly previewed it so far, but I think it should be better time spent than the time I spent on Improvise For Real. And I don’t mean to be contrary here about David Reed’s book/course. I try to be open to new ideas, but I’m also a practical skeptic from life experiences. Just sharing my personal view, and other’s may well have a different experience than my own.

[Mark H]

This is interesting. I realized something important while reading this thread re my hearing of chords. I’m stronger distinguishing major chords than I am minors. For example, going from the root chord, say G, to a minor chord in the scale.

Usually I can spot the relative minor (the minor 6th, Em) pretty well. But the minor 2nd (Am) versus the minor 3rd (Bm) are not always so clear to me.

Now I’ve realized that it gives me something to work on, so thanks. And I’m still only on my first cup of coffee for the day 🙂

[Duffy P]

I have found it much more helpful to transcribe things than identifying structures out of context. Melodies, chord progressions, solos, finger style arrangements. Anything that is interesting – I try my best to learn it by ear, rather than from some other source. I can do this on guitar, and sometimes I sit down and try to notate things.

[Jean-Michel G]

I fully agree with that! Musical perception is heavily dependent on context. Transcribing things by ear is an extremely useful exercise, but sometimes it just isn’t possible (for me anyway) because the polyphonic nature of the musical context makes it very hard to identify who is playing what.
I also find it very interesting that my ear is often guided by my knowledge: knowing where something is supposed to go (according to the theory) helps identifying where it actually goes (or not)!

[Duffy P]

Yes, the ear being guided by knowledge is definitely an issue. Thus, when introduced to some new theoretical concept, it’s a good idea to seek out musical examples of it to listen to. Another thing that’s worthwhile is to take something you have learned and force it into exercise you are playing.

When I did Jimmy Bruno’s course he made me take a tune and improvise over it targeting a note over every chord. So, I could play whatever I wanted, but on each chord I had to play the root at least once. Then the third, fifth, seventh, ninth, etc…. Absolutely fantastic for developing the ear, and not easy at all.

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