Practicing Playing What You Hear

[smokinguit]

Not to diss any software programs or anything, but I think the best way to learn to play what you hear is to learn songs, as advised by Joe Pass.

I believe you can and should do both at the same time as each complements the other. If Joe Pass had access to ear training programs when he was getting his ears together, he likely would've taken advantage of it. My experience is that I tried to learn by studying songs without including much ear training. I was not progressing fasten enough so I studied ear training more systematically and now my overall playing is growing at a quick pace.

[targuit]

Actually I'm not convinced that absolute pitch itself is a great advantage over simply relative pitch which is more than adequate 98% of the time. The problem with absolute pitch is that if your piano player is playing a piano which itself is out of tune, the guy with absolute pitch will be going bananas. Relative pitch awareness is more critical and useful.

I do feel that this can be way over intellectualized. If you can sing on pitch, learn to play what you can sing. I do have excellent relative pitch and can play what I hear and sing with little effort, a skill developed over time. But to do those elaborate solfeggi exercises would drive me batty. Remember that you are trying to develop that skill as applied to playing guitar. Or at least it would seem to me.

[smokinguit]

Hey Jordan, when you say "energy" what exactly do you mean. I don't give all chord qualities an emotion except for the basic ones like major (happy), minor (sad), and the dominant (restless). I am amazed that you are able to assign color chords with a certain emotion. When I hear a dominant 13th I just think "restless".

[GuyBoden]

Are we playing what we hear or playing what we know, I'm never quite sure.

[destinytot]

i) one way is modify the sound of the syllable - do becomes di when sharpened for example. There is a list on Wikipedia/
ii) different strategies. One effective way (I find) is make the new note a do when possible. So if we go from C major to A for example, we rename la to do.
If we are going to a new key based on a chromatic degree (C major to Eb say), then we can use another scale degree.
In this case, I find turning do to la works (as we then have the major/minor relationship.) A little trickier but OK.
Or we can use the chromatic degree as do straight. C to Eb is pretty easy. Going Do/re/mi on C/F# is quite fun (whole tone scale)

But it might be good to use chromatics as well. Different weapons in your arsenal.

Thanks!

"The seven syllables normally used for this practice in English-speaking countries are: do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, and ti (with a chromatic scale of ascending di, ri, fi, si, li and descending te, le, se, me, ra)." Solmization

Posted this a couple of months back, my four-year-old daughter:

[jordanklemons]

Hey Jordan, when you say "energy" what exactly do you mean. I don't give all chord qualities an emotion except for the basic ones like major (happy), minor (sad), and the dominant (restless). I am amazed that you are able to assign color chords with a certain emotion. When I hear a dominant 13th I just think "restless".

I use energy and emotion fairly interchangeably smokinguit. It's more or less the same thing for me. Sometimes I feel more of an emotion, like happiness or sadness. Other times I feel more of an energy...like sweetness or strength or something. But ultimately, it's just an internal feeling.

And I assure you, there's nothing worth being amazed about as far as me and my abilities are concerned. To me what's amazing is that we all have the ability to hear this way, including children and non-musicians, yet we never talk about, educate, or promote it. I find that amazing. And I find it amazing that you ALREADY hear the chords you're saying you can't, but you don't know it. That's the trippiest part of the whole thing. We ALL hear this stuff. We just don't know it.

You're telling me when you go see a horror movie, and they play some really creepy ass chord, you don't IMMEDIATELY get that reaction in your gut, that visceral, emotional reaction of like...uh oh...something's about to happen! You don't need to sing the intervals, or think about anything. You just FEEL it. We all hear those chords and know what they're telling us. We just don't study them consciously. We don't take the time to associate the feelings those chords give us with the names and qualities of the chords.

Check this out.

E13b9
0.11.12.10.9.9

Super romantic. A twinge of nostalgia and heartbreak perhaps...but just drenched in romance. Like falling into the arms of a lover. Or like you're ballroom dancing with your lover and you go to dip them, and right at that moment...you'll hear this chord.

Vs

E7b9b5 (or E7#11b9)
0.11.12.10.11.10

Totally different right? A little spooky. Like being in a horror movie, it's night...we think there's a monster or killer nearby, but we're not sure...we can't see them. We trying to find a place to hide or quietly get away. Our eyes are wide as we're looking over our shoulder to see if he's behind us.

Now can you possibly imagine a film director using the 13b9 chord in the horror movie scene? Or using the 7b9b5 chord to show two lovers dancing together as the man dips the woman? Play them and close your eyes and try and imagine watching a movie and seeing the wrong chord during the wrong scene. It just doesn't feel right, right? That's what's amazing to me. That we all already intuitively know this stuff...yet we never talk about it, study it, or teach it to musicians. But you can hear it right? Please let me know. I'm super curious. I've never taught this to someone via typing where I couldn't play the chords myself and sit and talk with them about what we're hearing. I'd love to know your thoughts. From anyone reading this in fact, not just smokinguit. Is it super obvious? Can you hear the difference immediately? Will you ever get these 2 chords confused again?

[Irez87]

all cool ideas. However, one warning to ear training. You need to access that information immediately, without any conscious thought, in order to use it in a musical situation. Therefore, you should save yourself the pain and not relate intervals to what you have heard before, such as the P4 "here comes the bride" trick. Learn everything as sound. In my case (with Bruce) I relate everything I hear to the underlying key center.

Bruce states an interesting tidbit on how many people hear a blues. For instance, in F, many people would think Bb mixo for the next chord. Try thinking of it in relation to F as F Dorian. Really helped me.

[dasein]

"My goal is to get to what Charlie Banacos referred to as "professional level ear training"...which is to be able to hear 6 random notes played at the piano and just know what they are. That's a long way off. But it's the 'north' on my compass."

then you should quit slacking and PM me.

(i kid, because i care)

[dasein]

Bruce Arnold (the music-eek) guy has courses to develop both, but suggest that absolute pitch ear training may be less useful to a jazz musician than relative, while absolute is more useful to a classical musician. Reg IIRC, made similar noises.

Is it possible to learn both?

it is definitely possible to learn both. but if you learned perfect pitch and mention it on the Internet, be prepared for a thousand 'experts' to chime in on how it's impossible, you're wrong, and what you REALLY have is special-relativity pitch 2.0.

[jordanklemons]

then you should quit slacking and PM me.

(i kid, because i care)

If I'm not mistaken, I was waiting to hear back from you my friend hahahaha

[Irez87]

Another great practice item. Find a simple melody in C major. For instance: C E F B

Now take that fragment and sing it with movable do

in F: So Ti Do Say

in Bb: Ray Say So

in Db: Ti May Me Tay

I prefer to think in flats, but you should learn the sharp enharmonics as well.

The key (all pun intended) with this excercise is to sing it over a cadence and drone the root for each key change. Trust me, interesting stuff when the keys move "away" from the melody. Those four notes become a whole musical experience in it of itself.

[christianm77]

Oh, one last thing...I've taught the solfeggi energy stuff I just mentioned to non-musicians. This stuff is not a talent based thing. It's not perfect pitch. My father is 64 and has basically never played a musical instrument in his life...can't even find the beat when he's dancing. I wanted to know how learnable this energetic listening method was, so I sat him down at a piano with me one day and showed him how to listen. In under 30 minutes I had him able to identify half of the notes of the major scale. He didn't care enough to commit to it, to practice, and to learn the rest of the notes. Which was fine with me. I wasn't trying to convince him to. I just wanted to see if a non-musician would be able to pick it up.

And a friend of mine in my masters program does a lot of non-musical, substitute teaching. He told me he has turned the solfeggi thing into a game and plays it with little kids, 5-8 years old. And he told me they love it and pick it up really quickly. Gotta love that.

Backtracking a bit - Kodaly system covers this in the form of gestures. It's brilliant because it works, and kids get it right away. They do enjoy it...

[christianm77]

Some great ideas here. I'm keen to try some of them...

At the moment I am doing speed transcription in my practice regime - write down something short - a musical phrase, the melody of a standard I am learning, etc.

I do this away from the guitar because the guitar can become a distraction. I also like the way a melody or phrase becomes an object in my head before I put it onto paper or on the instrument.

The aim is to develop more fluency in recognising and understanding musical ideas.

Of course the most relevant part of this for playing the guitar is pitch recognition. That said rhythmic ear training is also valuable, because I think accurate notation of rhythms means you have understood their structure... That said, it is possible to understand rhythm from intuition, of course.

The frightening thing is that their are many musicians out there who learned this in their childhood!

[jordanklemons]

Backtracking a bit - Kodaly system covers this in the form of gestures. It's brilliant because it works, and kids get it right away. They do enjoy it...

Yeah, I don't know too much about the Kodaly system except that it utilizes hand gestures with the solfeggi syllables as well. I know a girl who was taught this system when she was very young and developed perfect(ish) pitch from it.

The way I do solfeggi syllables and chords is the same idea...hand gestures...mixed with facial expressions. The difference is that my hand/body gestures are almost like sign language movements that communicate the energy and emotion of that note or chord. From what I understand about the Kodaly system, the movements are not emotional in that sense. They're just movements.

There seem to be pros and cons to both. In the system I use, I basically taught myself to be able to identify any note immediately in under a month or two. The relationship between the note and the movements were so emotionally and energetically connected, that my body just picked it up really quickly.

The downside to the way I do it, and the upside to Kodaly (again, only based on what I've heard)...is that the hand gestures are much smaller movements in Kodaly, and they're easier and quicker to move through...so they can be connected quickly which helps sight singing tremendously. I use my movements for sight singing and it gets me into tune really well! But it's not always good for staying in rhythm. As some of the movements I use are rather large and boisterous and take a good second or 2 to move through.

As someone else pointed out on here, the issue with relative and intervallic ear training is that it all exists in the mind...it's all built on relating this to that...these two notes sound like this song. Personally, I don't think that's too big a deal, as eventually if practiced enough, those things start to internalize. But what I love about my system and Kodaly, is that is seeks to bypass that entire thought process from the start and goes right to the body. When we're happy, we know we're happy. When we're hungry we know we're hungry. Our body can experience things with instantaneous knowledge in a way that our mind can't. So learning to identify notes and chords using the body is going to be a more direct experience of the sounds.

That said...the intervallic and relative stuff is also great. And I don't regret for a second having spent 15-20 years working at it before venturing into other ways of listening. Though I do admit...a often wish someone showed me how to listen this way when I was 5 or 10 years old and was just starting out. Ah well...what can you do? Gotta work from where we are. Everything other than accepting where we are and moving forward from there is a waste of time and energy.

[christianm77]

Yeah, I don't know too much about the Kodaly system except that it utilizes hand gestures with the solfeggi syllables as well. I know a girl who was taught this system when she was very young and developed perfect(ish) pitch from it.

The way I do solfeggi syllables and chords is the same idea...hand gestures...mixed with facial expressions. The difference is that my hand/body gestures are almost like sign language movements that communicate the energy and emotion of that note or chord. From what I understand about the Kodaly system, the movements are not emotional in that sense. They're just movements.

There seem to be pros and cons to both. In the system I use, I basically taught myself to be able to identify any note immediately in under a month or two. The relationship between the note and the movements were so emotionally and energetically connected, that my body just picked it up really quickly.

The downside to the way I do it, and the upside to Kodaly (again, only based on what I've heard)...is that the hand gestures are much smaller movements in Kodaly, and they're easier and quicker to move through...so they can be connected quickly which helps sight singing tremendously. I use my movements for sight singing and it gets me into tune really well! But it's not always good for staying in rhythm. As some of the movements I use are rather large and boisterous and take a good second or 2 to move through.

As someone else pointed out on here, the issue with relative and intervallic ear training is that it all exists in the mind...it's all built on relating this to that...these two notes sound like this song. Personally, I don't think that's too big a deal, as eventually if practiced enough, those things start to internalize. But what I love about my system and Kodaly, is that is seeks to bypass that entire thought process from the start and goes right to the body. When we're happy, we know we're happy. When we're hungry we know we're hungry. Our body can experience things with instantaneous knowledge in a way that our mind can't. So learning to identify notes and chords using the body is going to be a more direct experience of the sounds.

That said...the intervallic and relative stuff is also great. And I don't regret for a second having spent 15-20 years working at it before venturing into other ways of listening. Though I do admit...a often wish someone showed me how to listen this way when I was 5 or 10 years old and was just starting out. Ah well...what can you do? Gotta work from where we are. Everything other than accepting where we are and moving forward from there is a waste of time and energy.

A lot of points here... Will need to reread at some point... Very interesting stuff.

Some things that jump out at me-

Couldn't you make the gestures smaller over time? I think the idea of the BIG gestures sounds like a lot of fun, but maybe you can stylise them as the student progresses?

Secondly - regarding intervallic training, nothing wrong with it, but it is a different thing from moveable do solfege and less effective if your aim is to sight sing or transcribe tonal melodies.

The process is not totally different, however, but there is a key difference (pun not intended). If you take the first two notes of Days of Wine and Roses, in the intervallic system you can understand them as a major sixth obviously, but for sight singing purposes we could anchor 'The' as the 5th (sol) below and 'Days' as the 3rd (mi) above the 1 (do). We would then need a different syllable for an actual 6 (la) in the scale (perhaps 'Sky' or 'Skylark, though that's quite hard to place actually.... I'm sure there's a better one we could use - anybody?)

It's just a different way of understanding the same material. You could see the moveable do system as relating ever interval to the root.

[jordanklemons]

Couldn't you make the gestures smaller over time? I think the idea of the BIG gestures sounds like a lot of fun, but maybe you can stylise them as the student progresses?

Mini movements?! Love it!! I'll have to put some thought into this!

Probably not necessary for my students. They're generally too lazy and too cool to do the movements. So they remain mediocre at hearing the notes. It seems silly, and they don't get how important it is...but the physical movements actually help us feel the energies. If they're not willing to do them and act weird and silly with me, they general only get mediocre.

That said, mediocre is the ability to hear any of the 12 chromatic notes and get them right about 40-60% of the time after THINKING for 10-20 seconds. That's the problem though. They want to think their way into the answer. I want them to feel it. It's a tough shift. And the movements get us out of our brain and into feeling.

The students I have who do the movements generally get to about a 90% correct recognition rate by the end of the semester. And that'swith them only working with me once a week, as I don't require that they practice this stuff on their own in between their lessons.

[christianm77]

Mini movements?! Love it!! I'll have to put some thought into this!

Probably not necessary for my students. They're generally too lazy and too cool to do the movements. So they remain mediocre at hearing the notes. It seems silly, and they don't get how important it is...but the physical movements actually help us feel the energies. If they're not willing to do them and act weird and silly with me, they general only get mediocre.

That said, mediocre is the ability to hear any of the 12 chromatic notes and get them right about 40-60% of the time after THINKING for 10-20 seconds. That's the problem though. They want to think their way into the answer. I want them to feel it. It's a tough shift. And the movements get us out of our brain and into feeling.

The students I have who do the movements generally get to about a 90% correct recognition rate by the end of the semester. And that'swith them only working with me once a week, as I don't require that they practice this stuff on their own in between their lessons.

Not everyone is a Kinaesthetic learner.

[jordanklemons]

Not everyone is a Kinaesthetic learner.

I'm not sure I agree with this Christian. Are there studies to show this?

I've read about studies where they proved that holding a power stance for 2 minutes will alter the biochemistry of the body and make people for more confident. They also proved that slouching or sitting in a submissive posture for 2 minutes has the reverse effect. And I've read studies that say similar things about the act of holding a smile for a given period of time will alter the body's hormones and actually make you happier.

I do agree that humans learn better in different ways. But with that we're talking about intellectual information absorption. How to best put facts and ideas into someone's brain capacity.

With what I'm talking about, we're bypassing that process altogether and teaching the body to feel an emotion, and then associate it with a movement and a sound. And eventually to get rid of the movement so we hear the sound and recognize its emotion. Like Pavlov's dog sort of.

And along with the studies I've read, I've found over the last roughly 2 years of teaching my students ear training this way...the ones willing to goof off with me for 10 minutes at the beginning of the lesson, and do the movements, and make the funny faces...100% of them nail this stuff. Quickly. The students who aren't willing to still get a lot better. But they don't master it. And it's quite obvious from the look on their face that they just either don't understand how cool what I'm showing them is, or that they think they're too cool to go through what they need to do to accomplish it. Makes me a little sad for them. But hey, everyone has to do what they feel is the best thing for themselves.

I'm curious if you have any studies to inform your last statement, or if it's more of an opinion?

[christianm77]

I'm not sure I agree with this Christian. Are there studies to show this?

I've read about studies where they proved that holding a power stance for 2 minutes will alter the biochemistry of the body and make people for more confident. They also proved that slouching or sitting in a submissive posture for 2 minutes has the reverse effect. And I've read studies that say similar things about the act of holding a smile for a given period of time will alter the body's hormones and actually make you happier.

I do agree that humans learn better in different ways. But with that we're talking about intellectual information absorption. How to best put facts and ideas into someone's brain capacity.

With what I'm talking about, we're bypassing that process altogether and teaching the body to feel an emotion, and then associate it with a movement and a sound. And eventually to get rid of the movement so we hear the sound and recognize its emotion. Like Pavlov's dog sort of.

And along with the studies I've read, I've found over the last roughly 2 years of teaching my students ear training this way...the ones willing to goof off with me for 10 minutes at the beginning of the lesson, and do the movements, and make the funny faces...100% of them nail this stuff. Quickly. The students who aren't willing to still get a lot better. But they don't master it. And it's quite obvious from the look on their face that they just either don't understand how cool what I'm showing them is, or that they think they're too cool to go through what they need to do to accomplish it. Makes me a little sad for them. But hey, everyone has to do what they feel is the best thing for themselves.

I'm curious if you have any studies to inform your last statement, or if it's more of an opinion?

Well its something that came up during my training as a music educator. It might be bollocks, but a lot of current education is based on that idea that you want to teach in different ways at the same time, visually, aurally, kinaesthetically, because students respond differently to different approaches.

I have no peer reviewed evidence for you, I'm afraid. This might be an 'article of faith', but I think there is some truth in it.

EDIT: I did write an essay on it for my diploma which did have references, but can't be bothered to dig it out :-)

On the other hand, if it all works every time, then no problem? If it doesn't then problem. It just sounded from one of your previous posts that your approach doesn't work as well for everyone, but may be I read it wrong.

I would say, that educational theories aside, one of the hardest things for me is to learn to be a flexible educator, rather than use the same system for everyone....

That said, it sounds like your system works very well. Would be interested to learn more... Maybe it can help me!

[destinytot]

This puts VAK in context and offers a pretty good overview of learning styles.

Personally, I draw on Stephen Krashen's 'natural approach' to language learning.

I think the five principles and the seven actions in this TED talk transfer very well to this topic, though some details are obviously not relevant to music.

Jordan's use of the face reminded me of the sixth action Chris Lonsdale talks about:

"The sixth thing you have to do, is copy the face. You got to get the muscles working right, so you can
sound in a way that people will understand you. There’s a couple of things you do. One is that you
hear how it feels, and feel how it sounds which means you have a feedback loop operating in your
face, but ideally if you can look at a native speaker and just observe how they use their face, let your
unconscious mind absorb the rules, then you’re going to be able to pick it up."

[jordanklemons]

Well its something that came up during my training as a music educator. It might be bollocks, but a lot of current education is based on that idea that you want to teach in different ways at the same time, visually, aurally, kinaesthetically, because students respond differently to different approaches.

I have no peer reviewed evidence for you, I'm afraid. This might be an 'article of faith', but I think there is some truth in it.

EDIT: I did write an essay on it for my diploma which did have references, but can't be bothered to dig it out :-)

On the other hand, if it all works every time, then no problem? If it doesn't then problem. It just sounded from one of your previous posts that your approach doesn't work as well for everyone, but may be I read it wrong.

I would say, that educational theories aside, one of the hardest things for me is to learn to be a flexible educator, rather than use the same system for everyone....

That said, it sounds like your system works very well. Would be interested to learn more... Maybe it can help me!

If you ever do accidentally stumble across it Christian, please feel free to to PM in the future. I would love to know the references. I try to cater to my students as best I can as well regarding how each of them learns best. Which isn't always easy. I sort of see this stuff as not needing to be altered...but I could be wrong. It tends to be that the ones who do it improve and the ones who don't not as much. But perhaps there's more to the story than I can see. I've only been teaching this way for about 4 semesters now. And I only get about 15 students a semester.

That said...as per your last comment. I kind of have this dream that one day every child will be taught this stuff while they're being taught about colors. I see it the same way. We're all able to experience colors when we're born. But we don't know what they are, what to call them, or how to communicate about and categorize them. We're taught this stuff. We do this for children with sensory experiences from just about all 5 of the senses. Yet, with hearing...we mostly just teach language (not that that's not a huge thing to teach!) and emergency sounds (bells, sirens, etc). I think it would be cool to teach children to identify the solfeggi syllables in the same way we teach them the colors.

Not that I ever see that happening. But it's fun to daydream about living in a society where everyone has this ability. Imagine what it would do to the music we all create!

[39cord]

Comment on the opening post of the thread. Ear Master is a very good program. Spent a couple years about 10 year ago answering at least 25 interval questions every day then spent a bit of time with chord identification.

On the VAK subject, coming from a sports and mathematics oriented background m77's approach and validation seems right on target. My experience is a good coach or teacher will try to describe the same thing 3 or more different ways in order to improve chances of hitting at least one that gets traction with the student to create a link for the student to 'get' what's being taught. My conclusion with learning is everything in a sense is self taught. Only the individual can organize and commit to memory what is being taught and buy in from the student is essential which I think is one of Jordan's points. Like the song lyric goes 'you ain't gonna learn what you don't wanna know'.