The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #26

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    This sounds familiar, and understandable up to some point. Aren't there also obligatory vocal and ensemble classes in that school, which would be the perfect platforms that, respectively, give the tools needed in ear-training and apply the things learned in those "theoretical" classes?

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  3. #27

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    Quote Originally Posted by RJVB
    This sounds familiar, and understandable up to some point. Aren't there also obligatory vocal and ensemble classes in that school, which would be the perfect platforms that, respectively, give the tools needed in ear-training and apply the things learned in those "theoretical" classes?
    In theory, yes. But picture this, an ensemble made up of two tenors, two guitarists, a bass player, drummer, an alto or two and a piano player. This into a tiny room for an hour. Different levels of ability, no time but to run a couple of tunes. No commentary on individual performance. No demonstratible or practical strategies of space or taste (ever try to hear the effect of a half bar rest in an ensemble of people who are just looking for a chance to fill that space?
    There are ways to get something out of this situation, like finding others in your class and then working individually outside of class, but I'd say 80% of ensembles are transformed into 'louder and more notes' as a survival strategy.
    Now this is the observation from my own experience and those of people I've also been through school with, and with graduates on the bandstand. But there are two schools in my town. I'll call one of them B and one of them C for anonymity's sake. At (the) C, there are smaller ensembles with much more attention to individual development and experimentation, and their students' ear sense is very sharp. I'll note that their sense of ear and hand are very seamless in my experience.
    At B, there are a lot more students funding the school's acquisition of real estate so naturally you get a mix of serious students and high school pop star wannabees. A good formula for a modular grade oriented low bar curriculum. There's where you get this idea that 'hey I got a B in ear training and all I had to do was play on my computer, I got B+ in harmony and FB skills, and an A in private instruction because I passed the proficiency tests. I will graduate but I'll learn to be a musician after that."

  4. #28

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    Quote Originally Posted by RJVB
    Seems slam dunk for me: train your ears by playing an instrument...?
    This ^^^^^

    One of the things I appreciate about Robert Conti is how he keeps things focused and straight forward. He often says on his DVDs (and in person) that you learn to play guitar by playing guitar. He sometimes will go on to describe the "old school" way of jamming with friends, learning off of recordings, but overall playing tunes and in that process learning what you need to play tunes. Even with that said, he will never say that knowing theory is unimportant. Instead, he says that once you are playing the music, theory becomes easier to understand when it describes what you are already doing. He also says that there are many approaches to learning, but hopefully they all end up at the same place with you playing music, so clearly he doesn't feel his way is the only way.

    It is unfortunate that getting together with other people to jam seems out of reach for so many of us, so we substitute with other means such as online sites and books/DVDs (a bit like looking at a magazine instead of enjoying the real thing...). Years ago (late 1970s), when I played full time in a trio (sax/keyboard, drummer/vocals. guitar/Crumar foot pedal bass) for a couple of years that played supper clubs, resorts, etc., I could hear music really well since I had to listen to the other musicians and react accordingly (the proverbial learning on the bandstand). We learned tunes by ear off the jukebox and our band leader (sax) had the original Real Books. In later years, when I got into a band, it took a week or so to get that ability back, so I realized that it is like riding a bicycle in that you never lose it, but also, it can go dormant when not used.

    I never had formal lessons with a live teacher other than a few short stints on specific subject areas after I had been in that trio, and I never had ear training. On the other hand, I have always seemed to do pretty well at being able to lift stuff off recordings for some reason, and was able to learn to work in a band without too much trouble. Anyway, I do agree with RJVB and Conti and (I am sure) other players who feel similar.

    Tony

  5. #29

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    Just something I've noticed.

    I always thought I had a poor ear compared to my peers and tbh I still think it.

    But, over the last 20 years I've immersed myself in music requiring reading notes and harmony and soloing. Big band, octet arrangements and lead sheets -- originals and lots of stuff I had to play before I ever heard it.

    I've noticed, over the last few years, that I can now sight sing if the intervals aren't too wide or strange. And, when I look at a lead sheet, I can imagine the sound of the harmony while sight singing (or sight thinking) the melody.

    The pace of improvement was glacial. I never heard of ear training when I was first learning, which is clearly a shame.

    I also noticed, years ago, that some musicians seemed to have a metronome in their heads streaming 8th notes, which allowed them to keep their place in heavily syncopated, non-repetitive, music. That also developed, and also, very slowly.

    The point is that these skills will develop with sufficient time trying to do those things. But, anything a teacher could offer to accelerate the process would be a very good idea. That would include formal ear training. For rhythm, I've noticed that players who started on drums tend to have very good time feel. So some drumming. I've also heard some musicians recommend dancing to get the feel of samba.

  6. #30

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    Quote Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
    I've also heard some musicians recommend dancing to get the feel of samba.
    A couple of friends I had in another life who studied Early Music at the Schola Cantorum in Basel told me (period) dancing lessons were obligatory exactly for that reason (well, nothing to do with samba of course ). EDIT: just accompanying dancers is a *great* training already.

  7. #31

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    I don’t think dancing the gavotte helps with swing feel. It gets you laid like anything though.

  8. #32

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    Quote Originally Posted by Alter
    As a musician, I see three big fields in training the ear: the "formal" ear training (learning to hear music, scales, chords, what a band is, interaction, dynamics, development, etc.). A second field would be, just learning music, hearing and learning as much music as you can, in many idioms, what yours and other instruments do, etc. And the third would be, learning to transfer it all on your instrument (the only field that's instrument specific).
    That kind of correspond to a three legged chair, where the best
    results come from keeping all three legs leveled up, in balance.

    - musical ear
    - musical mind
    - musical hands

  9. #33

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    You can "play" the guitar for 20 years, and get practically nowhere. It takes focused practice to improve, and ear training can supercharge that process.

  10. #34

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    All outstanding jazz musicians have an excellent musical ear.
    Some were born with excellent musical hearing, while others were educated in or outside schools.
    Can you play an instrument without hearing what is being played?
    It will probably be tiring.

  11. #35

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    Almost noone will play well without using ear or by trying to only use ear. It's 2 sides to the same coin. You need ear and structure, and they both help develop the other.
    Last edited by Jimmy Smith; 08-11-2022 at 04:05 AM.

  12. #36

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    Quote Originally Posted by pauln
    That kind of correspond to a three legged chair, where the best
    results come from keeping all three legs leveled up, in balance.
    At the same time, we use tripods, three-legged stools etc. because they are the best option for stability on terrain that isn't level (which is also why there's usually only 1 of the legs on a 4-legged table that needs a shim).

    I just remembered a cute application that can help with ear training:
    Minuet - KDE Applications

  13. #37

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    It also depends on what you're trying to do.

    If you can choose your repertoire and take as long as you want to learn the songs, then you can probably do it entirely by ear, allowing for some imprecision in what that really means.

    But, if you're going to be handed a chart you've never seen of a tune you've never heard, and have to play the first solo -- to do that by ear you're going have to wait to hear the changes -- which can make a solo sound awkward. If the tune contains unusual chord movements, dropped beats or oddball length phrases, you're at risk for additional problems.

    And, all that applies to players with great ears. For mere mortals, there isn't a guarantee that you'll recognize the next chord (if it's unusual enough) and find the notes you need. Maybe if you had the recording in advance and sat down with it, but that's not always possible.

    The point is, like a lot of things in jazz guitar, it depends on what you're trying to do.

  14. #38

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    You need an integrated approach. Ideally, you have a balance between technical, theoretical, and aural skills.

    Very stupid example:

    I know all the notes of a C major scale, how to harmonize it, all sorts of patterns, etc (theoretical). I know exactly what a C major scale sounds like, can sing it and hear it in my head without an instrument (aural). I can even imagine what it would sound like in my head if it were played by a bassoon.

    But hand me a bassoon, and there's no way I could play it. You could even have someone show me the fingerings and the basics of sound production and embouchure. Not gonna happen. Technique matters.

  15. #39

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    Quote Originally Posted by dasein
    But hand me a bassoon, and there's no way I could play it. You could even have someone show me the fingerings and the basics of sound production and embouchure. Not gonna happen. Technique matters.
    Even a stronger argument is for a guitarist to do this experiment - flip the guitar over so as to fret with the right hand and pick with the left. You already know the fingerings, and the mechanics of sound production, but even if you have played the guitar every day for decades... yeah, still not gonna happen. Technique matters.

  16. #40

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    Quote Originally Posted by dasein
    You need an integrated approach. Ideally, you have a balance between technical, theoretical, and aural skills.
    Yup-o

  17. #41

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    However, have some beginners and an advanced musician start on a new instrument. In a few months they can all have decent technique down. Beginners will still sound like beginners for many years, the musician will sound very capable, because of what they can hear.

    Pretty much every musician that plays multiple instruments fits that story (so most pro drummers and horn players these days..).

  18. #42

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    Quote Originally Posted by Alter
    because of what they can hear.
    And conceptualize.

  19. #43

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    There are also some musicians who practice the instrument a lot - they are technically skilled but they can't hear well.
    They often forget about music.

  20. #44

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    And people who try to learn an instrument only aurally just quit.

  21. #45

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    Well that’s the problem with theory into improvisation generally is if you are good at music it will sound good and if you are bad at music it will sound bad.

    Kurt soloing on a D Dorian mode is not the same as someone at a beginner jazz weekend course.

    Confusing matters is the fact that there are people who are very good at music right away. You don’t actually need to teach these people; just tell them what to listen to and where the info is. You can fool yourself that this is teaching but it is not. Everyone loves students like this, but you learn little from them.

    For most people who are not naturally very good at music, you need a teacher who will cajole, nag and encourage in whatever way possible to get the student to develop their inherent aural musicianship; which means checking out other peoples music by ear, basically. This process can entail real hard work and frustration at first; the teacher must find a way to pace it. And they need to learn all this before they can simply improvise on a scale or whatever.

    (I also wonder if some teachers only get talented students because of their position, which may trick them into thinking their methods are good; but that’s another one… rule of thumb is that if you can put something in a book, it’s not really teaching either, any more than recipes make a chef. )

    it takes hard work and persistence on both sides to make people better at music, but it can be done. Anything less than undertaking this task as a music teacher to me is basically a cop out.

    Anyway if you ascribe your lack of hipness to your pitch choices, you are more or less screwed in the long term.

    luckily I got good advice early. But I should have worked stuff out from records much earlier. Big regret.
    Last edited by Christian Miller; 08-13-2022 at 11:01 AM.

  22. #46

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    I am reminded yet again of an experience I had in a combo class some years ago.

    I was surprised to find that, if someone played a wrong chord, the teacher knew which wrong chord it was and, of course, what it should have been.

    With a loud band playing, the same teacher said to me, "why aren't you playing an F13?". I looked at my hand. I was playing the usual F13 in the 1st position. I said, "I am playing an F13". He said, "I don't hear the 7th". It turned out that I wasn't pressing down hard enough on the Eb on the fourth string.

    That's when I realized that the music could be heard, and understood, at that level of specificity.

    I bought EarMaster and started working on ear training. I don't think it helped much. I think a lot of time playing in groups while trying to perceive what was going on more precisely eventually helped, albeit at a glacial pace.

    Another recollection: playing in a big band with a lot of old pro players, the leader asked the 15 horns to sing their parts on a new arrangement that was difficult. Every single one of them sight sang his part. I thought, "everybody can do that?"

    The point I'm trying to make is that it's possible to play for quite a while without appreciating some skills that exist at a higher level.
    Last edited by rpjazzguitar; 08-15-2022 at 05:03 AM.

  23. #47

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    Quote Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
    I am reminded yet again of an experience I had in a combo class some years ago.

    I was surprised to find that, if someone played a wrong chord, the teacher knew which wrong chord it was and, of course, what it should have been.

    With a loud band playing, the same teacher said to me, "why aren't you playing an F13?". I looked at my hand. I was playing the usual F13 in the 1st position. I said, "I am playing an F13". He said, "I don't hear the 7th". It turned out that I wasn't pressing down hard enough on the Eb on the fourth string.

    That's when I realized that the music could be heard, and understood, at that level of specificity.

    I bought EarMaster and started working on ear training. I don't think it helped much. I think a lot of time playing in groups while trying to perceive what was going on more precisely eventually helped, albeit at a glacial pace.

    Another recollection: playing in a big band with a lot of old pro players, the leader asked the 15 horns to sing their parts on a new arrangement that was difficulty. Every single one of them sight sang his part. I thought, "everybody can do that?"

    The point I'm trying to make is that it's possible to play for quite a while without appreciating some skills that exist at a higher level.
    Id be the last to say my ears are as good as I’d like them to be, or as good as some other musicians I know (including the missus) but what I would say is that my ears have improved. So if I offer advice take it in that spirit.

    my hot take is that Earmaster is not that helpful because it’s based on intervals. This might be good if you need to pass ear training tests for music exams but it is not great for developing a grounding in basic and reliable sight singing of dictation skills.

    Why do I say this?

    Well, the UK is home to the English Choral Tradition and it is quite expected for jobbing classical singers to blast confidentially through some Monteverdi, Tallis or Parry of a Sunday morning High Anglican church service with no rehearsal and a single voice a part. (Some have been doing this since early childhood in cold churches in frankly preposterous little outfits.) To cut a long story short, English singers are generally really good at sight singing.

    I used to sing a lot but was never a secure sight singer, and I remember working a lot on intervals to no avail. So eventually i asked some of these guys, including the missus who used to do these gigs (she impressed me early on in our relationship by playing joy spring in all twelve on piano faultlessly and in time after hearing me practice it a few times.)

    They all say the same thing - learn functional ear training. 1 2 3 4 etc from the central key; my wife was trained to do this as a young adult, so it’s possible to learn it. She’s got ears I envy!

    So I did this for a while and my ears got better for sure. Sight singing straightforward tonal lines is now no longer intimidating for me, although I would hesitate to take a Sunday gig at this stage (bit of practice tho.) Obviously not all jazz is tonal in this way, but contrary to popular myth, a great deal of it is; bop lines even. Things like Joy Spring and so on are clearly tonal.

    I also find functional ear training fine for identifying modal melodies on non functional chords and so on; you simply move do onto the root of whatever chord it is.

    TBF this is not the alpha and omega. It trains you to have a linear ear - harmonic hearing is I think somewhat different. But as a grounding it’s pretty solid and it’s helped me.

    Intervallic training can be useful for tracking the root/bass movement of non functional progressions for instance. Hearing intervals I do think is useful for chord voicings sometimes, but I tend to hear the notes within the chord in reference to the root as much as the intervals within them (also many people recommend hearing chords as a totality which really works for familiar voicings.)

    So I’m not saying anything else is useless; it’s just that in tonal situations the functional hearing is so much easier and more reliable.

    Anyway there’s an app for that called - Functional Ear Trainee. Fwiw Charles Banacos also taught ear training on this basis afaik. There’s also a book, Jazz Ears, that takes the functional approach. They also seem to use this at all the UK conservatoires (I think maybe in US as well? Not sure.)

    Interstingly the other day, I attended a seminar for one of the organisations I teach for academic (non instrumental) teaching for and they do everything from 4/5 year olds singing everything as numbers with Kodaly etc. they call it the Hungarian approach. I thought some of my guitar students had pretty good ears! (This a relative pitch approach as opposed to the fixed do approaches of Russia or France, Spain, Italy etc who used fixed do systems and don’t work this way.)

    The rest is familiarity with the language. Famously, do enough Palestrina and it’s all very much of a muchness, but this also counts for harder composers like Bach, Poulenc and in our wheelhouse, Charlie Parker. That’s a matter of immersing yourself in music, once the basic skills are acquired.


    Along with transcribing music straight to notation (which is sight singing in reverse) that’s the only formal ear training that I think has helped me.

    Beyond that, I have not found ear training on the guitar to be a separate thing to some extent. This may say more about the way I’ve learned the instrument but I daresay that’s not unsual either as many people don’t start with note names etc.

    In this case I find hearing phrases on record and playing them the best training. There’s other things you can do, but you just need to do that a lot. It seems to need regular upkeep though a bit like sight reading.
    Last edited by Christian Miller; 08-13-2022 at 03:02 PM.

  24. #48

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    I agree that Ear Master didn't produce much benefit. I might be a little better at naming intervals.

    I say "naming intervals" because I could already imitate lines on the guitar. That is, if the singer or horn player plays a line, I can play it back to them.

    My problem was that I couldn't do that with chords.

    What has helped for chords is playing tunes in random keys and listening for the notes that allow me to find the chord. For example, I can identify a m7b5 by the overall sound and especially the b5 in the soprano. For some reason, that's distinctive. I can always hear a lydian sound, dominant or major. But, ii-Vs in changing keys have been tougher, so I have to find something the tune that triggers a useful response. Sitting around making chord melodies in random keys has helped, a bit, I think.

    Probably, focusing in on bass lines and chord quality would be even more effective. Once you've got the root, it shouldn't be all that hard to tell major, minor or dominant.

  25. #49

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    Quote Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
    I agree that Ear Master didn't produce much benefit. I might be a little better at naming intervals.

    I say "naming intervals" because I could already imitate lines on the guitar. That is, if the singer or horn player plays a line, I can play it back to them.

    My problem was that I couldn't do that with chords.

    What has helped for chords is playing tunes in random keys and listening for the notes that allow me to find the chord. For example, I can identify a m7b5 by the overall sound and especially the b5 in the soprano. For some reason, that's distinctive. I can always hear a lydian sound, dominant or major. But, ii-Vs in changing keys have been tougher, so I have to find something the tune that triggers a useful response. Sitting around making chord melodies in random keys has helped, a bit, I think.

    Probably, focusing in on bass lines and chord quality would be even more effective. Once you've got the root, it shouldn't be all that hard to tell major, minor or dominant.
    I’m in two minds. I think that on one hand most isolated ear training apps miss the fact that we tend to hear in gestalts (can’t think of a good English word) quite a lot of the time - ii V I’s or m7b5 chords are good examples.

    Then it seems the best way to get good at that stuff is exposure. Learn 600 standards and you’ll have a pretty good handle on ii V Is and m7b5s. Even if for some reason you don’t, at least you’ll know 600 tunes.

    This is how cats used to get their ears. I doubt they did much formula ear training. Probably some did at college, but I doubt it was that important.

    On the other hand, functional ear training definitely helped me, so ….

    A lot of the time I recognise changes from the melody and middle voices. I might confuse a IVm6 and a IIm7b5 but probably not a II7 and IIm7b5. Particularly bass can be hard to hear on older recordings and I do tend to use a laptop which has terrible bass anyway (headphones help) but even then with stuff like older Ellington- hard to pick out.

  26. #50

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    The trouble with most generic ear training is that there might be very little feelings or creativity involved.