The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #1

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    I could have easily made this a poll, but I want the people in this forum a chance to explain their points. This topic is not about perfect pitch or transcribing, so I'm not gonna waste time debating with those topics. My question lies upon the fact that, over a few years running, I am able to boil down the 3 methods of training drills for ear hearing where I have seen significant results with my melody recognition, chord changes recognition, etc and no transcribing is needed. I just couldn't wrap my head around which one is really the best, but here's what I found:

    1. Singing Intervals, Scale Degrees, Scale Patterns, Sequences, and Melodic Patterns. (Either with instrument or audio files)

    2. Drilling with Intervals by ear (Isolated and Functional), Scale Degrees, Scale Patterns, Sequences and Melodic Patterns (Isolated and Functional) using audio files made through a DAW.

    3. Sometimes the best way to train your ears is by simply playing chord progressions and improv simultaneously with chords on the piano or guitar. Using your practice time to exhaust all the possibilities.

    Tell me which one of the 3 is the best?

    Thanks,
    Jason

  2.  

    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #2
    Well when I was 10 I started formal paid guitar lessons.But when I saw pictures of say the Beatles I could not why Johns left hand would be doing one thing and Georges something a lot different. So I guess I used formal for lessons and trial and error for the pop music of my youth. I got to attend Berklee College of Music in my early twenties and we were required to learn solfege with movable DO. solfege is a syllable for each scale degree. Learn the song DO RE ME and what intervals you are singing. Also popular guitar solo transcriptions were available for sale for those who could not produce their own yet. Well the internet is chock full with great jazz guitar transcriptions. As far as rating one way against another I think it just depends where you are on your journey. I think Rick Beato sells a method thats most likely quite good.

  4. #3

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jason Sioco
    1. Singing Intervals, Scale Degrees, Scale Patterns, Sequences, and Melodic Patterns. (Either with instrument or audio files)
    To the degree that general singing is going to be comprised of "Intervals, Scale Degrees, Scale Patterns, Sequences, and Melodic Patterns", and that you have capitalized these, I'm assuming you mean singing them in response to their names, or naming them from what you sing... I see acquiring this as a neutral side effect of genuinely grasping things with your ears, not target goals themselves.

    For guitarists, the hands need to learn to hear as well, and like the musical ear, they don't use verbals modes to grasp what is heard in music. Don't mistake the intermediate learning processes (naming things) for the genuine process (grasping things).

    Quote Originally Posted by Jason Sioco
    2. Drilling with Intervals by ear (Isolated and Functional), Scale Degrees, Scale Patterns, Sequences and Melodic Patterns (Isolated and Functional) using audio files made through a DAW.
    If drilling means singing named things or naming sung things, same as above. If you are not doing this by "singing through your instrument" with your ear and hands, I think this is likely a waste of time.

    Quote Originally Posted by Jason Sioco
    3. Sometimes the best way to train your ears is by simply playing chord progressions and improv simultaneously with chords on the piano or guitar. Using your practice time to exhaust all the possibilities.
    This is the closest, but the best way to train your ears is performing, especially playing unfamiliar tunes with musicians you just met...

    The purpose of performance is to prepare you for practice.

  5. #4

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    Breaking my rules here, but quickly...

    Learn to use the voice as part of the larger instrument.

    Sing the melody, play the chords

    Sing the melody, play the root movement

    Sing the root movement, play the melody

    Play the 3rds, sing the root movement

    And so on....

    Let the song be the vehicle for training the ear, and let the singing help you hear how what you play on the guitar fits into the larger sonic palette.

    I did a whole week of singing the root movement and playing 3rds and vice versa for a tune I was learning. By the end of the week, I had the sound of the harmony stored in my inner ear.

    Anyway, that's all probably gobbly guck and more reason for me to stick to just playing. No more, promise.

  6. #5

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jason Sioco
    I could have easily made this a poll, but I want the people in this forum a chance to explain their points. This topic is not about perfect pitch or transcribing, so I'm not gonna waste time debating with those topics. My question lies upon the fact that, over a few years running, I am able to boil down the 3 methods of training drills for ear hearing where I have seen significant results with my melody recognition, chord changes recognition, etc and no transcribing is needed. I just couldn't wrap my head around which one is really the best, but here's what I found:

    1. Singing Intervals, Scale Degrees, Scale Patterns, Sequences, and Melodic Patterns. (Either with instrument or audio files)

    2. Drilling with Intervals by ear (Isolated and Functional), Scale Degrees, Scale Patterns, Sequences and Melodic Patterns (Isolated and Functional) using audio files made through a DAW.

    3. Sometimes the best way to train your ears is by simply playing chord progressions and improv simultaneously with chords on the piano or guitar. Using your practice time to exhaust all the possibilities.

    Tell me which one of the 3 is the best?

    Thanks,
    Jason

    Sight singing.

    The things you mentioned are important, but ultimately a bit elementary in the sense that it is just the start.


    The real challenge is learning to hear things that you don't hear naturally. This is where sight singing is a critically important tool for assimilating new vocabulary.

  7. #6

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    I know you gave three very specific choices, but when I read the name of the thread, I immediately thought of what was best for me: Listening to live music. Deep listening to recordings.
    This was the cornerstone for all formal methods in my ear, and by listening, I got a level of urgency, context, natural big picture progression, anticipation and singibility that comes from an active process ear training in real time.
    I always tell my students (and I do a lot of formal intervallic training with them), listen to live music. Take your ear out of your own head and assimilate music sense by immersing yourself in the sound and the language, then take it back into your head.
    I don't know if this makes any sense or even addresses your question, but I consider this essential (and old school).

  8. #7

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    +1 what ‘Jimmy’ said

    I’ll frame it a little differently.

    Playing the notes that you hear on your instrument is a practicable skill, as is writing them down.

    People unused to professional musicianship get a bit freaked out by this part because it seems miraculous to them. It’s not; you don’t need perfect pitch or any of that stuff - it’s just a matter of time applying yourself.

    This can distract from the REALLY important thing, which is development of the aural imagination. You don’t hear individual notes or intervals; one hears music, phrases, and so on.

    So, You have to listen to music. Singing other peoples music can help focus and nurture the aural imagination which is presumably why Tristano centered it in his teaching practice; you sing a solo or head before you play it.

    The ear training becomes a matter of ‘did I play/write what I heard?’; it can even be quantified with ‘how many incorrect pitches were there?’ That makes it a very good practice exercise, with a clear learning cycle.

    You can then experiment with whatever strategies you might use to try and improve your performance, try and work out if there are any patterns to your mistakes that might suggest helpful changes to your approach, and so on. (Although I think just doing a lot definitely improves performance.)

    The advantage of this is you are also learning music; I also find it makes me much more creative.

  9. #8

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    Quote Originally Posted by PickingMyEars

    Sing the melody, play the chords

    Sing the melody, play the root movement

    Sing the root movement, play the melody

    Play the 3rds, sing the root movement
    Been there done that

    Another:
    Sing the bass of the tune, improvise freely. Doable when minding the learned scale/chord/arp/lick positions of the impro. Insanely hard when trying to just wing it even if winging is easy with a backing track.
    Dunno why but I have a hunch that this might be.. the "best" ear training.. well, it's so damn hard, so it should be the "best". Probably not though

  10. #9

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    Back when it would have really helped, I'd never heard of "ear training". It existed, but I didn't know about it.

    The people I knew learned parts from recordings and that trained their ears. I am convinced that it comes a lot more easily to some than others.

    Much later, I got Ear Master and drilled intervals and chords. I don't think it really helped much.

    I have always been very slow and not very accurate at copying harmony from recordings. I didn't do it enough. I would recommend to other players that they force themselves.

    What did help was a lot of time on the instrument and exposure to musicians with big ears and the ability to name what they heard.

    The first time I heard a teacher say that a student played a wrong chord, then name the correct chord and name the chord he played instead, my eyes started to open. I once played an F13 at the first fret in a loud combo lesson. Same teacher said I wasn't playing a F13. I had my hand on it. He'd heard that the Eb on the D string was missing, because I wasn't pressing down hard enough. Oh.

    Knowing that was possible was helpful. At that point I started trying to be able to do that. I found that I could play melody by ear without difficulty in any key - even though I couldn't easily name the notes I'd just played. I had to think about my fingers to do that. I couldn't do it with chords, so I started by playing tunes in 12 keys. I still work on that. I'll never be great at it, but I've seen some movement in the right direction.

    So, my recommendations are transcription (or lifting -- copying without writing it down) and Irealpro -- pick a tune, change key by a 4th every chorus, set it for 13 choruses. Make the bass louder than the piano.

  11. #10

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    my method is similar

    hear the musical ‘thing’ you like
    (a line in a tune , a harmony etc)
    sing the thing
    play the thing

    repeat a lot .... boum !

  12. #11

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    Quote Originally Posted by pingu
    my method is similar

    hear the musical ‘thing’ you like
    (a line in a tune , a harmony etc)
    sing the thing
    play the thing

    repeat a lot .... boum !
    wordboi approves this message

  13. #12

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    We've been at it for years.

    The advice here is listen to music, learn music, learn phrases and learn tunes.

    Transcribe music by ear.


    Intervals are fine, but hearing a melody or a phrase is a different skill set from hearing an interval.

    Take a simple blues phrase .. Very few will struggle with hearing one of the classic blues phrases and just repeating it instantly. But making it a exercise, where you have to name all the intervals in the phrase by ear suddenly makes it impossible for most. That is not really how music is heard


    So question is whether you're going for being world champion in hearing individual intervals or whether you want to actually play music. From your posts over the years, it's seems you're striving for being the former, which is fine .. Just writing this so we're sure what your goal is.
    Last edited by Lobomov; 05-19-2021 at 05:46 AM.

  14. #13

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    The single best thing I've ever done for my ears is playing along with records. Put on a jazz album, play along with it, start to finish. Play accompaniment, solos, whatever you like. Doesn't matter. If it's a tune you know well, listen for what chord changes are different; most jazz musicians use slightly different changes for jazz standards, obviously this is less true for tunes composed by jazz musicians.

    The second best thing I've done is singing along with a drone, as outlined in the book "the harmonic experience".

  15. #14

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    I had a guitar teacher who was a regular gigging pro in town. He knew and could play on gigs hundreds of tunes, maybe 500 or so. He seemed to know them all, no sheet music required. And he could learn a tune on the bandstand by ear. Standard pro stuff I suppose.

    At a lesson I for some reason had sung some intervals and told him I could sing intervals at command pretty well. He said "I can't do that" . What I can't do is learn and remember songs like he can.

    My interval singing and identification, pretty much worthless compared to his much more practical ears. His ear training was simply learning songs.

    Your option three is the closest to that, but why not just learn tunes by ear.

  16. #15

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    Quote Originally Posted by PickingMyEars

    Sing the melody, play the root movement

    Sing the root movement, play the melody.
    I will second or third this. Been doing it about 6 months now, really helps. I think it broadens what you can hear, and what you can intonate correctly.

    Surprisingly hard to do, especially singing the bass notes.

  17. #16
    If I am in a lazy mood or tired I just play along with the cable television,but a lot of the time my CC is on and I have different things going. Xfinity Music Choice has a Jazz Channel which I think is very good. It mixes new with older tunes mainstream jazz pretty much.Since many of the tunes I ve never heard, it is sort of like sightreading, which to me is playing by reading you have never played before. MC also has a Blues channel which is also very good.I can turn my aggressive guitar sound and side of my musical personality up some. Whats fascinating to me is how my golden lab Lexi hears music. She seems to hear pitchs accurately and matchs or trys to harmonize with me sometimes. She really Hates Extreme overdrive distortion so I dont use it much when she is inside. Maybe thats Nature telling me pure musical notes are usually best.

  18. #17

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    Hi, J,
    #3.
    Play live . . . Marinero

  19. #18

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    Best ear training. I haven't done this for years. But here it is.
    You bundle up all kinds of chords to be played randomly. Then try to react to them.
    So simple.

    Biased to any genre is just bias. React and produce something meaningful. Then go back to your favorite genre, see what happens.