The best ways of ear training

[pauln]

It is enough to spend 30 minutes a day...

[kris]

It's hard - so I'll be using my internal hearing.

[CliffR]

Do you think the app helps or do you just get better at using the app?

The app plays a short chord sequence ending on the tonic, then a single note, and asks the user to state the relationship of the note to the tonic. It tracks the user's progress over a series of more and more challenging variants. Yes, I think it's helping.

[StuartF]

If I spent 30 minutes a day on Beato Ear Training, I’d wind up hospitalized.

[orri]

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Unattributed quotes I consider in the "ear" domain (2):
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Unattributed quotes I don't consider in the "ear" domain(22):
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Looks somewhat like playing songs/music domain vs. exercises and/or systematic method domain

[kris]

If I spent 30 minutes a day on Beato Ear Training, I’d wind up hospitalized.

I do not know this.
is this torture?

[emanresu]

I do ear training with starting students now. The failure and boredom is painful to watch.

[emanresu]

Ear training is essential for most musicians.
How important is having a good ear to play jazz music?
Does everyone approach this topic with respect?

Yes.
Very.
Not enough. edit: never enough.

[Liarspoker]

Music is an hearing art. Yesterday when driving my eldest home after sport he got a running commentary on the orchestral piece that was playing on the radio.

Opening was a big accented minor chord, sets the scene, followed by a few major chords, back to minor, introduction of theme, soloist enters, key change after the A section etc. I'm actually surprised how well my ear functions especially after starting with a tin ear. Then again I was trying to work out Vai and Satriani stuff when I first started playing.

My holy Trinity;

* Sing intervals, scales, arpeggios, melodies etc
* Transcribe... a lot
* Teoria ear training app

Best of the three, for me, is singing....

[Victor Saumarez]

If there is one regret I have after playing over 35 years, it's not developing my ear more. I would say it is as important as motor skills. If you relied on your sense of timing alone, you're going to get caught out. The difficulty for many is their main instrument may not be a chordal one. For guitarists, be able to hear piano harmonies is important. So, it points to learning some basics on the piano. The alternative would be to try and transcribe chords. There's probably a plethora of courses available.

[GuyBoden]

I thought that this exercise was good.

Sing a line, then play it on your instrument, but start with very, very simple lines.


Grace Kelly shows you how in this video at 5:14min

[Dean_G]

I don't do anything in particular. I try to sing as I play lines and work on prehearing the intervals. I will improvise freely and go back to repeat something a ways back, then vary it, carry it forward, working on my memory. If I find something that's awkward to play I will keep going and then I will go back, break it down fingerwise and aurally usually singing it a couple times without playing. Along with those things I picture the names of the notes in my mind's eye. Many years ago I found I could just have music paper and no instrument and write and hear mentally by picturing the fingerboard in my head. So I do most writing without the guitar(otherwise I just start improvising and don't get anything done). Then I will tweak the tune later if necessary. I think everything I do is ear traing. Good thing too because I am a poor sight reader!

[charlieparker]

My opinion is that the best things for ear training are the following.

Transcribe away from your instrument by singing the lines and then checking them later.

Transcribe piano voicings and bass parts, not just solo lines. I'd say this is more important than transcribing solo lines.

Get a solfege book. Most of those have graded melodies that work from simple melodies and harmonies to stuff like Bach which will take you pretty far.

Sing guide tones through changes. Sing arpeggios through changes.

That's what I would do at least. I only do some of the above because at the end of the day that much focus on ear training is a grind.

[pamosmusic]

My opinion is that the best things for ear training are the following.

Transcribe away from your instrument by singing the lines and then checking them later.

Transcribe piano voicings and bass parts, not just solo lines. I'd say this is more important than transcribing solo lines.

Get a solfege book. Most of those have graded melodies that work from simple melodies and harmonies to stuff like Bach which will take you pretty far.

Sing guide tones through changes. Sing arpeggios through changes.

That's what I would do at least. I only do some of the above because at the end of the day that much focus on ear training is a grind.

Well yeah shucks. That would about cover it.

I also like to sing bass notes. I do a lot of small voicings so that can be tough … singing the bass notes of a set of changes while you play some upper structure voicings is a little whacky

[AllanAllen]

My opinion is that the best things for ear training are the following.

Transcribe away from your instrument by singing the lines and then checking them later.

Transcribe piano voicings and bass parts, not just solo lines. I'd say this is more important than transcribing solo lines.

Get a solfege book. Most of those have graded melodies that work from simple melodies and harmonies to stuff like Bach which will take you pretty far.

Sing guide tones through changes. Sing arpeggios through changes.

That's what I would do at least. I only do some of the above because at the end of the day that much focus on ear training is a grind.

It'll also take years of work to be able to do all this. Just have to mention it.

[pamosmusic]

It'll also take years of work to be able to do all this. Just have to mention it.

Some yeah, but I think honestly folks would be surprised. Singing is the key. Solfege helps so much. I feel like if you spend fifteen minutes transcribing and try to sing basslines, or guidetones, or extensions on your chords while you practice, you'd have an ear in about a month. You'd lose it if you stopped, but still. Just doing something with this stuff helps so much.

[AllanAllen]

It does, the bassist suggested we add Autumn Leaves back to our set since it's autumn and I was like, I don't know it anymore. He said go up the first three notes of the G minor scale, then jump to the sixth. Follow that pattern. And it came back.

I don't like Autumn Leaves because I tried to learn it too early and associate it with a lot of frustration.

I thought of the forum member who always suggests playing something like Happy Birthday straight from memory. I guess I'm bragging about reaching a milestone.

[bediles]

Get your tendencies, cycles and scale scale degrees together.

1. Sing 2, 1 ; 4, 3 ; 6, 5 ; sev, 1.
2. Sing 4, 7, 3, 6, 2, 5, 1
3. For the functional ear training, start with maj scale then add in non diatonic notes then do minor the same way.
** while you're working through this over a period of months, sing some music too, doesn't have to be jazz. Can be baselines or roots or guide tones or transcriptions. You'll start to hear the degrees and the intervals.

[pauln]

If the purpose of ear training is primarily to be able to play by ear (I think it is, above means to transcribe, compose, grasp music) then singing vocally is good but it doesn't approach the end goal; it's a first step. It's limitations constrain the tempo at which one may realize a melody line. Even if you use a "doodle do" kind of sound there's a slow tempo threshold beyond which pitch precision begins to fail, likely just a few or so notes per second. This should be a first hint that vocalization schema is not going very far.
A second hint is the realization that chord harmonies are out of reach unless you vocalize them as arpeggio, but that slows things down even more and does not reflect the real-time multiple note concurrency of the sound of chords. It is good to do as an analytical process, but it is still not the end.
The beginning of the end is the departure from singing with your outer vocal voice to singing with your inner voice - the sound of your mind's aural voice. That voice can singer precise lines, can sing chord harmonies, progression changes, and other more complex things - ultimately internalizing recognition of types of interval, scale, chord, and progression change without inspection or verbal identification.
The method is through direct confrontation with the sound of the music. The process is building internal representations of abstractions (fancy words that mean the actual mechanism is beyond understandable description, can't be formally taught, but may be learned).
Because the process uses your existing internal representations from which to construct new ones, success is dependent on your existing representations (through past exposure to music). This means it takes a while for some before they feel any traction forward. The motivation to stick it out is that because the abstractions are constructed from your own existing representations (elements that are already part of you) the new constructions eventually come to realize their innate familiarity, instantaneous recognition, immediacy of manipulation, and an overall sense of feeling natural and relatively effortless. To the degree that one anticipates these things as part of how they wish to perform Jazz, a long and difficult path must be acknowledged as the likely reality, but strong love of playing Jazz guitar helps carry one through the journey.

[James W]

If the purpose of ear training is primarily to be able to play by ear (I think it is, above means to transcribe, compose, grasp music) then singing vocally is good but it doesn't approach the end goal; it's a first step. It's limitations constrain the tempo at which one may realize a melody line. Even if you use a "doodle do" kind of sound there's a slow tempo threshold beyond which pitch precision begins to fail, likely just a few or so notes per second. This should be a first hint that vocalization schema is not going very far.
A second hint is the realization that chord harmonies are out of reach unless you vocalize them as arpeggio, but that slows things down even more and does not reflect the real-time multiple note concurrency of the sound of chords. It is good to do as an analytical process, but it is still not the end.
The beginning of the end is the departure from singing with your outer vocal voice to singing with your inner voice - the sound of your mind's aural voice. That voice can singer precise lines, can sing chord harmonies, progression changes, and other more complex things - ultimately internalizing recognition of types of interval, scale, chord, and progression change without inspection or verbal identification.
The method is through direct confrontation with the sound of the music. The process is building internal representations of abstractions (fancy words that mean the actual mechanism is beyond understandable description, can't be formally taught, but may be learned).
Because the process uses your existing internal representations from which to construct new ones, success is dependent on your existing representations (through past exposure to music). This means it takes a while for some before they feel any traction forward. The motivation to stick it out is that because the abstractions are constructed from your own existing representations (elements that are already part of you) the new constructions eventually come to realize their innate familiarity, instantaneous recognition, immediacy of manipulation, and an overall sense of feeling natural and relatively effortless. To the degree that one anticipates these things as part of how they wish to perform Jazz, a long and difficult path must be acknowledged as the likely reality, but strong love of playing Jazz guitar helps carry one through the journey.

In my ongoing efforts to cultivate my own audiation abilities, I'll take stuff that I use for sight-singing but only sing every other note, or perhaps every third note etc. all the while imagining the notes I'm not singing. It's good to do this with counterpoint exercises too. As you say, the end goal is to be liberated from ones limitations as a singer or performer - I guess though that this is a more relevant skill to pursue for someone who composes using notation etc. rather than a performer who might not necessarily need to transcend the limitations of what they can play on their instrument.

[pauln]

I guess though that this is a more relevant skill to pursue for someone who composes using notation etc. rather than a performer who might not necessarily need to transcend the limitations of what they can play on their instrument.

When improvising, the primary thing is musical judgement (what's authentic, appropriate, alluring). Judgement may be made upon a couple of ideas separately if there is time, but it's nice to have the speed and capacity to select from a couple of ideas with one "aural glance". That's a useful kind of transcendence (e.g., judging both of two ideas in the same "glance" to select which you play).