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deliberately provocative title guys - chill (a bit)
i did endless ear training - i won't go into the sordid detail
my overwhelming impression is this
i learned more in five years of playing 7 gigs a week (with a repertoire of maybe fifty or sixty tunes) with musicians who were much more experienced than me and very very good than i did in endless hours singing intervals and bass notes etc. etc.
i was so paranoid about how bad my ear was - and then really regular exposure to the tunes themselves sorted it all out
there is nothing i find harder to imagine than billie holiday or prez doing ear training exercises - i mean c'mon guys
its the tunes that teach you how to hear tunes - how to hear the harmony in a tune you've never played (but have heard) - how to play a tune you've never played but can hear etc. etc. - how to accompany without interrupting or otherwise messing up the soloist etc. etc.
if you can't get to play the tunes then it is just conceivable that the ear training could do some of what the tunes will do for you - but only just - and the best thing would be to simulate exposure to the tunes for yourself rather than coming up with clever interval exercises
my guess is that people started to go nuts about 'ear - training' after the songbook was largely thrown out in favour of abstract aimless 'tunes' written by too-clever-by-half jazz musicians. its the real tunes that do it for you - if you know fifty of them really well and get to play them all the time - they do all the ear training you could ever need. (even if what you want to play are abstract, open (aimless) melodies)
is this the bit where i say
'just my 2 cents'?
yes it isLast edited by Groyniad; 01-05-2016 at 05:17 PM.
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01-05-2016 01:57 PM
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I haven't had formal ear training, so I don't know what it's like, but you're the first person I've encountered who has had years of it yet claims it wasn't helpful. I wonder if many others have had the same experience with it.
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There's all sorts of different types of ear training. It's not just about interval recognition. That's the biggest one that gets pushed in school. But frankly anything that is 'training' your ears to hear better is ear training. Which means that playing lots of tunes with your ears open to them is a form of ear training.
I've met plenty of people who play tunes and actually never listen to them. They stare at the real book, or they have this or that memorized... but there's no real listening happening. At some point, I'd go so far as to say that most (if not all) of us were that way. Some people realize that and start to open their ears.
For me personally, I spent years in school doing interval stuff. It was definitely helpful to me on some level of the spacial understanding of music. But these last few years I've spent doing stuff that's more based on developing a personal relationship with specific notes. Feeling their energy and emotions so that I know exactly what any of the 12 pitches is going to sound like and how it will function within any key before I play it. It's a way for me to make my lines and melodies more intentional and honest... so my improvisation isn't coming from a place of arbitrary muscle memory from riffs and ideas I learned when I was 14, but rather it's coming from my heart and my mind, in that moment... I hear lines, and then am seamlessly able to express them through the guitar.
I don't expect the ear training I do to teach me tunes. I do it for an entirely different reason. That said, I also have practices that sort of bridge my ear training and my tune playing into the same activity because I want to work on building and developing strong melodic statements in the context of tunes I already know.
But everybody's got their own priorities of what's important.
And it's a process. I wonder if you would have been able to get as much out of those 7 gigs a week for 5 years playing with guys better than you had you not been through the endless ear training. Frankly, I wonder if those guys that were so much better than you would have wanted to play with you 7 nights a week on an ongoing basis had you not already developed a solid foundation of basic musicianship.
One of my bigger periods of growth came for me when a few older cats who were just insanely good 'took me under their wings' and started bringing me in to play guitar with them. I was just barely good enough to hang with them... but having to keep up and find a way not to screw anything up and still add my voice taught me a lot. And I learned more by playing tunes with them then I learned throughout all my university studies. But I can pretty much guarantee that had I not been put through the ringer in college, I wouldn't have been good enough for those guys to be willing to let me work with them. Every rung on the ladder helps you get to the next rung. Had I not been good enough to play with those guys I wouldn't have learned what I did from playing with them and wouldn't have gotten into my masters program. And then I wouldn't have gotten to study and play with the monsters there who taught me even more... including playing tunes and new ear training ideas. It's a process.
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There seems to be a school of thought, mainly applied to guitar, that says you would do better to do anything other than play lots of tunes on the guitar. They tell you "If you REALLY want to learn the music you have have separate it from the guitar…" or "If you REALLY want to learn music, put the guitar down and sing" or the like. I really never hear horn players or pianists bad-mouthing their instrument and the importance of training on the instrument, but among guitarists there seems to be some kind of counter-intuitive ideology that says somehow the guitar is inferior and to "really" get the music we need to get away from actually making the music on the instrument and somehow, well, at that point it's hard for me to know what they want me to do.
I call it "Revenge of the Music Majors." Many of them learned all this really complex stuff but still struggle with improvisation (don't we all) but feel like they need to get all that intellectual overhead crammed into bandstand playing. I always thought of jazz as "theory as practice" where harmony is learned by playing harmonies with others in live, real time music-making.
I'm not dissing theory, I've tried to understand the music the best I can, but I find the OP's suggestion to learn lots of tune, play them lots, and do so with others, before listeners… that's still the quickest path to mastery. I learned more in a year spent as a jam-session house-band rhythm section "regular" than in all my attempts to master complex, almost mathematical formulaic theory.
I'm 61 and I love the guitar, and I love standards. I plan to play standard, on guitar, for as long as I can do so.
And, dang it, it's FUN. Remember that? FUN? Yeah. Let's have fun out there.
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That's funny, it's been the opposite in my experience. The majority of the guitar players I know, have played with, or have studied with didn't really want to talk much about singing things or ear training. They mostly just wanted to play.
Originally Posted by lawson-stone
It's always been piano players, horn players, and drummers that have advised me to sing or have shown me different ear training ideas. And perhaps it's just coincidence... but they've always been unbelievably sick players.
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I'll defer to broader experience; I was just relating what I've observed in my own circle of admitted amateurs. I think guitarists who are serious about music generally have a inferiority complex going. We think of constructing lines "like horn players" or comping "like a piano" etc. But I don't ever hear horn players trying to imitate guitarists, though I've seen electronic keyboards with string-bending switches, come to think of it… ;-)
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This about says it all .....
I feel that in improvisation, the tune should serve as a vehicle for musical
variations - and that the ultimate goal is to have as much freedom from the harmonic,
melodic and rhythmic restrictions of the tune as possible - but that the tune must
serve to hold the chords and variations together. For this reason, I have never been
concerned with finding new tunes to play. I often feel that I could play and record the
same tunes over and over and still come up with fresh variations.
Lee Konitz
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I think ear training is crucial...but i also think you should have a guitar in your hand while you do it.
It's all about the connection of what you hear to those fingers...those damn fingers have to be a part of it.
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That's it right there. The problem with ear training in school is that it takes students who mostly aren't conversant in solfege, even for singing simple melodies, and immediately throws them into interval recognition. The fact that these students (like me back in the day) should already know some of that is kind of beside the point. Originally Posted by jordanklemons
One book which shaped my philosophy on this somewhat was an elementary music ed book I saw about 20 years ago called Conversational Solfege (I think). It's mostly elementary stuff, but in it,he lays out the framework which is based on the sequence in which children learn language and reading.
Something like:
1. You hear speech and learn to distinguish the sounds of words.
2. You learn to speak the words which you already know by aural recognition.
3. You learn to read words which you already recognize and can speak.
4. You learn to write words which you can already read.
I don't remember all of it, but the idea, applied to music, would be something like:
1. Learn songs and the way they sound (simple songs at first).
2. Learn to sing the songs on syllables of some kind. (putting a label on that which you already can hear)
3. Learn to read syllables by sight which you already recognize aurally. (basic reading)
4. Learn to write down that which you hear or imagine. (dictation/composition)
Honestly, interval recognition is like a more advanced grammar concept beyond these fundamentals. It's not just recognizing scale degrees. It's hearing the relationship between pitches without respect to scale degree. That's basically where we started when I was in school and it's asinine. We should have spent a few semesters doing basic solfege on children's songs music from school performance repertoire etc. just to learn scale degrees. Think about it. You don't "think" anything to sing a song you know, and you really don't feel spaces between (intervals) as much as you have a sense of "place" for different pitches. Some intervals are harder, but generally you hear scale degree. Imagine if you had a name for all of the "places" which you already know viscerally as an experienced musician....
I haven't done nearly enough work, but it's on my list. Personally, I think a great first step would be to spend 5 minutes a day singing simple melodies on solfege by rote or reading. If you recorded it, you could listen back as you drive etc. Perfect "time away from the instrument" work. Root movements of tunes and basic patterns would be a logical next step.
Honestly, interval recognition leaves me with the same feeling as the OP, but I believe that's because I'm not proficient at a more basic level. I think we generally skip multiple levels when we start this stuff.Last edited by matt.guitarteacher; 01-05-2016 at 03:51 PM.
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That's really interesting Matt... the order of things specifically. I'm going to have to think about that some as I use solfeggi in my own practice and when I'm teaching.
I met a handful of people in my masters program who didn't exactly have 'perfect pitch' but pretty much did. They weren't born with it, but they had been presented with exactly what you're talking about... an early, elementary education in solfeggi training. And it just created an organizational system in their brains that can hear things in a way most people can't.
I wasn't presented with that idea until I was 30, so I was very behind the curve regarding it. But since beginning to think in terms of the syllables, just in the last couple years, it has completely changed how I hear and relate to sounds. In ways that I didn't think were possible. Which has drastically affected how I play, improvise, and phrase melodies.
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Originally Posted by lawson-stone
You'll find most horn player also play piano and some are even good enough on piano to play at jams or even gig. That's a big difference from the average guitar player. In the long run to be a serious musican everyone has the learn the same stuff, some got to music school traditional other Jazz and other from transcribing and gigging. The school route tried to formulize things in order to teach them, but still final teacher is gigging. The second non-school approach learns the same stuff via doing the analysis and applying it both in the woodshed and on the bandstand. I think in the long run the time involved is about the same, advantage to the second non-school is they are out there doing it getting real world experience. Many of those are the ones that started young and some end up at music school, but just to polish their playing and to make connections.
As for ear training I've done a lot of in school not sure if I think the old approaches work that well. But I see newer approaches coming from Berklee, Bruce Arnold, Roberta Radley that seem more practical. But all this stuff bottom line is how much time spent in the shed and playing with others is the real teacher.
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Sounds like you are questioning the value of ear training as a separate thing in itself, to me. Originally Posted by Groyniad
So it ties into the larger question of should a guitar student always focus on learning music (for example, songs and solos by ear) or whether isolated exercises have their value (such as doing specific ear training.)
For my part, I have spent years learning songs and solos by ear, but still lack the accuracy in playing melodies by ear that I would like. When you work out stuff at home you can make mistakes. On the bandstand, not so much.
To this end, I do ear training based on solfege which is what guitarists like Eddie Lang and Joe Pass received in their early years (it's the traditional way to learn music in Italy AFAIK - and can trace its history back 1000 years.) Singing solfege to melodies is a good way to develop accuracy in melodic playing. I'm better now then I was. There's nothing new fangled about learning solfege.
Of course you could develop a killer ear without the use of a formal system but it's much more hit and miss.
Anyway, I don't have the answers. I don't think interval recognition is particularly useful by the sounds of it, but this often what people get taught.
YMMV, as always.
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Where's the information that Joe Pass learned solfeggi? That's really interesting to know. I know he started on the Carcassi classical guitar method, but had never heard about the solfeggi part of it. Any reference for that?
Not questioning the fact, just curious where that is found.
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Originally Posted by lawson-stone
In that Joe Pass DVD he was saying he studied a little of Carcassi and one other, but never finished either one, he learned by having to pick off tunes from the radio and records.
I other interviews of Pass he talks about growing tired of playing guitar because it was forced on him by his father, but it was the only thing he knew how to do to make money and get out of town. He tried to quit again when he finally got to NYC but again it became his only way to make a living. Then when he got strung out he did eventually quit playing. It was at Synanon I think he was there two years, they got him to start playing again as part of his rehab and the rest is history.Last edited by docbop; 01-05-2016 at 05:00 PM.
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I'm totally into getting my ears good ...
I don't do solfage , I try to get the sounds
of the common chord movements into my
ears ...'prehear'
hear a standard tune like "I'll see you in my dreams" .... can I hear where the chords are
going ? can I play them on the guitar ?
I'm concentrating on the diatonic chords and the secondary dominants (with their approaches)
prehearing them all
Its been so usefull on the bandstand
thats enough for me for now
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No knowledge of actual ear training but have always followed Joe Pass's mantra " Learn Tunes" He must have had one of the best pair of ears ever as he was not a particular good sight reader.
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BTW - I find that picking up a guitar helps me work out what the notes of a tune are even if I don't play it. There is definitely an association with sounds/fretboard which has nothing to do with academic ear training, if that makes sense....
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some really great posts here - incredibly interesting stuff
i have been very lucky in a sense - its a funny thought - and hard to assess - but i think i've been very lucky.
at a time when university study was an empty formality (i was writing a phd in philosophy and getting no help at all from any professional philosophers) my jazz education was just amazing. to fund the phd and pay rent etc. i taught in a paid-by-the-hour capacity at the university, and played jazz gigs at night. i had an enormous amount of time playing trio and quartet gigs, and the bass players and horn players i was playing with were fully functioning jazz musicians (any tune, nearly any time, any key etc. etc. - no books). i organized all the gigs and called nearly all the tunes and never used books or lead sheets etc.. the alto sax player - now dead - had been playing since the late fifties - had a unique grace and breathtaking knowledge of tunes and tempos. what a trip it all was. however effortless it all was for him - his use of double time left my face hurting from the smiling it induced in me - it was his ability to play a tune with total authenticity and freshness that flawed me night after night.
i had done a lot of practice before all this happened - and i grew up with classical flute music and orchestras - but (despite the endless practicing) i was convinced that jazz would prove very very hard for me because i couldn't e.g. just play the chords to a tune i could sing etc. etc. - practical musical things would often go wrong for me: being able to sing a tune i'd heard, and then play it - being able to sing a harmony line to a tune (even a hymn tune or a christmas carol) - being able to sing a bass line etc. etc. i sometimes did well with these things and other times not. and it made me very down on myself.
but the gigs - the playing and hearing all the great tunes and changes etc - just gradually started to make it all work. i was doing gigs with a trumpet player who would sometimes say - 'no i don't know that tune - can you sing it to me? i'm happy to do it if you can sing it to me' and - without fail - if you could sing it to him, he would sing it back and then ask you to count it in. (standard type tune)
so i'm not talking about getting good (original - really creative - etc. etc.) - just about getting competent with songs. i'm not able to do all the practical musical things i would like to be able to do (i know bass players who at the drop of a hat can sing five different sets of changes for the same four bars etc.) but i'm not totally down on myself any more. i know that more gigs and more tunes will improve things hugely. i'm pretty sure that the guys who are really really good and creative etc. - have all of them become genuinely competent through playing the repertoire a hell of a lot.
and i like the thought that what provides musicians with the capacities they need to play the music is (at least first and foremost if not exclusively) the music itself.Last edited by Groyniad; 01-05-2016 at 05:49 PM.
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I would like to be like that trumpet player. Originally Posted by Groyniad
To be fair, I think horn players are often more advanced on this front than guitarists, even if they are not amazing improvisers, because that's their flipping job. Trumpet in particular has always been the melodic voice since the early days.
Bass on the other hand - well they have their 10,000 hours doing that. If that's what you do all the time, you get good, no?
On guitar it's all chords. Hearing 4 notes at a time is a different problem... Anyway...
Whatever gets you through the gig. I would recommend solfege to those how haven't done any and want to tighten up their ear playing....
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We had a Korean guy in our class, when I was in school, who had grown up with it since elementary school or whatever. At some point in our sightsinging/ear training class, we found this out and kind of pressed him on it. Basically, he could flip to the back of this advanced text and sing whatever. Then, Dr. Shaw said, "Can you do with 'fixed Do' as well?". The kid ripped it off like it was no big deal. Originally Posted by jordanklemons
I know that ear training on intervals for hours on end, when you could otherwise be playing, is a tough sell, but the kind of basic stuff I'm talking about above is a pretty simple start. And again, my contention is that we already "know" most of what we need to know and "hear". We just haven't codified it and put a name on the sounds we "know". I have a gig as a school bus driver and am on the road a good bit commuting etc.
Last year, it was memorizing song lyrics while I drove. The year before, it was triplets on the steering wheel, while pushing melodies like stardust polyrhythmically across beats as far as I could without losing my place. This year, I think it's going to be memorizing the last verse of tunes; the unwritten "solfege" verse. :-) Not figuring it out while I drive and killing myself; just prerecord and sing along by rote, adding root movements and patterns progressively to the recording over time. Something new to pass the time...
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Wouldn't seven gigs a week for five years be considered pointed ear training?
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Ear training isn't pointless.
Doing theory without any connection to the ear is pointless.
Doing technique exercises without any connection to the ear is pointless.
Doing chord studies without any connection to the ear is pointless.
Playing the guitar is doable without using one's ear.
I mean, you can play endless unconnected riffs as quickly as possible and what not without any connection to how your hear. You can do that on any instrument, really... maybe not the brass instruments, but yeah...
But, you'll end up sounding like a JAMF (Johnny Griffin taught me that one. Sitting front row at one of his last concerts awarded me with that brash piece of knowledge).
Or you can try as much as you can to let your ear guide you with whatever works for your ear. Method or not. You have ears. Give your ears a chance.
I can't apologize anymore. Stubbornness is a disease that can advance into close mindedness. I've tried a lot of different ways, and studied with great teachers and I still absorb different ways to be more musical. But it is all rooted with my ear.
I like parts of the forum where I can learn from others. Learning is exciting for me.
Being attacked by strangers ain't a good look, especially when this is my safe haven. I don't like those parts.
I've done some of the attacking myself.
For instance, Reg, we've clashed quite a bit recently. That sucks, and I bet if we met in person and played together (totally doable, btw. For now at least...) we'd get along. We both know another great musician on a personal level, btw (though, you more than me). I hate the internet sometimes...
I think I'll take a hiatus from the forum for a little while longer. If you want to connect in person and you live in NY, PM me and let's make it happen. Less talking (I can certainly ramble on these internet things) and more playing. If not, email me. The whole forum thing isn't working for me right now. It;s gotten a little too armchair warrior for my taste.
Back to the ear training thread, if the interval method doesn't work for you (it certainly didn't for me), do some research and find out what works for your ear. Let your ear be the final decider in the grand scheme.
Long post, I know. Ranty, yeah maybe. But if you read through some of what I've shared in my short stay (on various threads), you might actually learn something new. Ground breaking? Maybe or maybe not?
Regardless,
See ya's all later. Right now, I gotta focus on keeping my day job. I'm sure that a lot of your know what that ruckus is all about, musicians or not.
--Erez
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Jeez man, you act like somebody really insulted you...we're talking music, not saving lives.
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that's like straight out of effortless mastery, great point Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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Well maybe he's in his imitating phase. Originally Posted by nick1994
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