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I will shortly post my eartraining routine - my goal is to play what I hear. Sounds easy in a way, but I think this is the ultimate goal everyone wants to achieve...
1) From Barney Kessel I learned to strike any chord without thinking what it is and not caring about the extensions and trying to sing a melody on top of it. Later you try to find this melody on the guitar... My main problem is I don't really hear that much melody in my head, I hope with the time it gets better...
2) I try to transcribe every day pieces of Parker (at the moment). I also sing a long, to give my brain some melodies eventually. I apply one lick every day to different harmonic situations..
3) I use earmaster probably some 15min a day. Still going through the basics.
4) When I improvise I make some turns with just playing what I sang beforehand, so not playing and singing at the same time, I want to pretty much connect my brain to the guitar!
Any further tips? Am I on a good way?
Cheers
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07-15-2015 12:51 PM
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Working on your ear in ANY way is massively helpful. I'd go so far as to say that if your ear is not improving...then you, as a musician, are not improving. That doesn't mean we can't become more proficient at playing guitar...but our ear training is one of the primary fuel sources to growing our musicianship.
Originally Posted by Horszt
All the things you talked about sound great. And there are soooo many ways to open our ears.
One thing you might want to try, similar to what you're already doing, is to sing your modes.
Play a CMaj7 chord on the guitar, and sing C Ionian...or C Lydian. I prefer to use the solfeggi syllables as I find it's more helpful.
If we can't sing the modes, chances are good we probably can't use them effectively when we play them because we probably don't truly know what each note sounds and feels like.
Once you can sing up and back one octave of the mode against the chord, try singing through the mode but always singing 'Do' (the root note) in between all the other notes.
First:
Do-Re-Mi-Fa-So-La-Ti-Do....Do-Ti-La-So-Fa-Mi-Re-Do
Then:
Do-Re-Do-Mi-Do-Fa-Do-So-Do-La-Do-Ti-Do(lower octave)-Do(higher octave)
You can also do this descending. From there...you could sing patterns if you want. But ultimately, it's just about learning to know what each note of the scale will sound like against the chord BEFORE you physically play it on the guitar. Then guitar playing becomes an extension of the music you hear and feel internally...it become a tool to express that music externally.
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Hey, man, thanks I am just trying
We are all on the same boat :-) Appreciate that you took your time to write this really...!
Cheers
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One question, are you also using DO-RE-Mi (etc.) over D major for example? Cause it should be probably RE-MI-FA# (etc.) or are you using Do re mi just as parameters in any tonality?
Is your Do always C?
I am getting confused, because over here in Latin America CDEFGABC is taught DOREMIFASOLLASIDO... So it's confusing...
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For sure. What's earmaster? Is that an app? Or software? I haven't come across it.
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Ear master is a program that I've been using for over a year. It is used by many colleges, including my own. It has just about everything related to developing your ears. Could be better in a few areas though.
What has helped me the most, however, is singing along with recordings note for note. Everything else will fall into place if you can do that. If you are not good with singing you will have to work hard at getting the pitches right. Keep at it and eventually it will get better. Do this a lot.
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What all does it cover? Intervals? Chord qualities? Mel/Harm dictation? Anything else? Originally Posted by smokinguit
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For what it's worth, check out the stuff at muse-eek.com. Tons and tons of great ear training material. Right now, I ear train more than I play the guitar. The two and three note courses are a monster, but really helpful for hearing harmony and modulations immediately. He even has courses to help internalize your sense of time. Can't talk highly enough.
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Horszt I am at a similar position.
I am finding singing along to music helps coming up with my own lines. Sing the solo's and/or improv singing solos with one of the greats. Personally I find I come up with much better lines singing/jamming with the likes of Turrentine, Young, Hawkins, Armstrong, Donaldson, Desmond, Morgan etc.
I have been doing this with and without the guitar in hand.
If the guitar is in hand I try 2 things:
1. they play a line I then pause the cd. Sing it then play it.
2. they play a line I then sing my own line. Pause the CD, sing it again and then play it.
This is definitely working for me.
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also play quotes
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Yeah I treat it as moveable Do...so whatever key center I'm working on, I generally let the Do apply to the root note of that context. I prefer that because then each solfeggi syllable always behaves the same, no matter what key. Originally Posted by Horszt
Though, I almost always do this stuff in the key of C...I almost always do all my ear training in the key of C. I've been doing it for the last 2 years that way, and I've found that now I can just sing a perfectly in-tune C scale without needing an instrument to check my root note. I work in that key so much that some part of my brain just remembers its sound. My goal is to get it so ingrained that I can hear a car horn and tell you what pitch it was....to be able to immediately perceive sounds in reference to C.
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Thank you, I'll definitely try this!!! :-) Originally Posted by gggomez
About earmaster - just google it, check it out. I think it is a great program - at the beginning it was hard for me to hear intervals and now it's getting better & better - but you have to combine it with further eartraining of course! but when talking bout a program, it's really a great one if not the best on the market...
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Word, thanks...I'll check it out.
I started doing intervalic (relative) ear training close to 20 years ago now. Had some early teachers show it to me. Studied it in high school and in undergrad while working on my music degree. Continued using and teaching it up until about 2 years ago.
I start my masters program and was fortunate enough to meet 3 different guys who really opened my mind to a way of listening/ear training I hadn't considered before. All 3 have different approaches, and one's not even a jazz guy...he's all classical. But each of them has about as close to perfect pitch as anyone I've ever met who wasn't born with it.
I've been sort of combining all three of their systems and methods, plus mixing in a few things that I think were missing. I call it energetic or emotional ear training, as opposed to relative or intervallic. It's been a very interesting 2 years to see the changes take place. I have some very lofty goals that are years away, but I know they're attainable based on what I've already seen happen since I started.
And that's why I say that working on our ear is the best way to fuel the growth of our musicianship. Regardless of how we approach it. Anything that improves our ear will make us a better musician. All of your ideas and all of the ideas others are sharing are fantastic things to do!
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Hey Jordan, earmaster have a trial version that give you enough time to make a good assessment. Can you elaborate on the method used by those 3 musicians. How exactly are they listening?
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There are many ways to work on this. One thing I found that helps my ear playing is to work on moveable do solfege - the mus-eek courses operate on this principle, and most people who are able sight sing use this approach (which is around 1000 years old, so pretty well tested!)
TBH the mus-eek courses are untested with me - I don't feel I have yet improved enough or spent long enough with them to say if they are effective or not. However, I have found sight singing very useful. The book 'Sight-Sing any Melody Instantly' is a good primer that gets results very quickly.
Transcription is the inverse of sight singing - practice both ways around to cement the link between sound and degree.
To get this on the guitar, I would suggest learning moveable major and minor scale positions memorised in terms of numbered degrees 1 2 3 4 etc - pretty natural to the guitar and useful for scale construction etc anyway. This might help you sight read too - if you start reading notation as moveable do solfege as opposed to absolute pitch. So you could think 3 or Mi in C major, or 5 or Sol in A major, rather than the note E. The layout of written music makes a lot of sense from this point of view, once you have learned to identify key signatures etc.
Intervallic ear training can get you out of a scrape when solfege isn't enough (singing leaps to chromatic notes, for example, for example in a III7 chord), and be useful for non-tonal music (such as 'outside licks' etc) but I find that intervallic ET less useful. I did a lot of intervallic stuff and I found solfege much more useful right away. While still not 100% intuitive, I can now write down phrases away from the guitar with confidence, and with practice I am pretty sure that I can develop this to be faster and more intuitive.
The reason why intervallic training is not enough can be illustrated this way. Try playing a C major chord, and singing the notes G and E followed by C and A. Both are major sixth intervals, but they feel completely different in context. If you can sing one, it doesn't follow that you can sing the other.
Hope thats some help! Above all I think flexibility and different approaches can be very useful, just as with playing.
Also don't neglect rhythmic ear training. Bellson is very good for this, as is any transcription you do, I also recommend the Mike Longo books on the subject. The rhythms are often the hard bit!Last edited by christianm77; 07-16-2015 at 10:00 AM.
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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. Part of playing what you hear comes down to understanding the intervals and chord "colors" as Joe would say in relation to the tonic. Experience is a crucial factor here and learning concrete songs is essential.
Of course, that does not mean that one cannot spend time on specific exercises. I think in that context using a piano or other keyboard is helpful in terms of understanding chord construction and intervals. I'm just skeptical about the idea of 'studying' the concept rather than experiencing it.
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This would be absolute pitch recognition. Originally Posted by jordanklemons
Relative pitch would be the ability to hear that note as a degree of another key centre, but not necessarily able to place it cold. Moveable do solfege etc.
I think many of us could sing the open strings of the guitar.
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?
The interesting thing about music is all the possible ways there are to hear it. I find that one of the most amazing things about our art form.Last edited by christianm77; 07-16-2015 at 10:07 AM.
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Christann,
Finally, a person in the know about the pitfalls of interval training. What are you studying in Bruce's material. I started going back to him for lessons. I am still getting through Vol. 1 5ths in the Two Note series, but it is really opening up my ear. His Hearing Bass Lines stuff is also quite challenging.
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07-16-2015, 10:24 AM #19destinytot Guest
Please could someone explain
(i) the best use of moveable do solfège syllables for singing chromatic alterations, and
(ii) how to handle modulation with these syllables? Does the new key become a temporary do, or do chromatic syllables apply?
Thanks!
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I learned (i) like this in music school: Do Di/Ra Re Ri/Me Mi Fa Fi/Se Sol Si/Le La Li/Te Ti Do.
(ii) for a brief key change, secondary dominant, or only modulating up a 5th or down a 4th and then going back to the original key, we used chromatic syllables. We moved Do for long passages or for "further" modulations like Cmaj to E maj
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Well I learned that from my wife, who used to turn up and sing choral music one voice a part with no rehearsal, for money. Early/classical/romantic/20th century - whatever. She said practicing moveable do solfege was absolutely the way she worked on that. Now she does it without thinking. Originally Posted by Irez87
This skill is no big deal among classical musicians, especially choral singers and string players.
I realised that I needed to learn to do what she did when she walked in and played the A section Joy Spring on the piano in a couple of keys having listened to me play the tune a couple of times, as if it were no big deal....
I thought 'I got to get me some of that' Ought to save some time in the long run.
She also has pretty good absolute pitch sense, so it must be possible to cultivate both ways of hearing - I suppose its a matter of priority - relative pitch more useful short term.
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i) one way is modify the sound of the syllable - do becomes di when sharpened for example. There is a list on Wikipedia/ Originally Posted by destinytot
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.
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My feeling going into my practice 2 years ago was that I should just do everything in C as often as possible (there are times where it's break this rule for different reasons). My goal was to get, what you're referring to as absolute pitch, by reinforcing those sounds in the key enough time that my mind would not need to hear a cadence in C at the beginning to interpret it that way. Originally Posted by christianm77
That said, I do feel that the functional sounds within keys is super powerful. Even with the ability mentioned above, as soon as I hear a song, I don't know what key it's in, and I don't know the exact pitches that are being played, but I will immediately hear the solfeggi syllables as they function in that key. The functionality of them is too strong and powerful and sort of overrides the system...it's like it re-writes the computer software that's listening. With no effort.
My ears tend to go back and forth between the two types of hearing your talking about. Generally in a way that I can't control. Like these days I'm working on playing a chord on the guitar, hearing a note, and having immediate, unconscious recognition of what chord tone it is. Sometimes I hear it based on the root of the chord. Other times I hear it relating to the key center....so if I play a D-7 and I hear an E. Sometimes I hear it as the 9. Other times I hear it as the 3rd degree of the "mother key", C Major.
Doesn't really bother me. As long as I know what it is and can utilize it musically, the names and categories don't matter to me. Perhaps over time I'll find a way to consciously manipulate the 2 types of listening. But again...I'm shooting for more of an unconscious, immediate knowing of the sounds...as long as I get that, the rest doesn't bother me too much.
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Man, that's not an easy question to answer in a response here. I've thought about writing it all out one day, but it would probably require a couple of books. Originally Posted by smokinguit
I suppose the easiest way to explain it is to go back to why I call it energetic or emotional ear training.
Do any of us have a hard time differentiating the sound of a major chord from a minor chord? Maybe a few, but chances are good most people here can do this. How? Because they sound different. They both have an emotion to them. An energy. The major chord is happy, and the minor chord is sad.
But up until I started working on my masters degree and met these guys, this was the extent of THAT type of listening. In the 20+ years I'd been playing, all the teachers, and the undergraduate music degree...aside from this one simple little idea, the rest was predominantly intervallic stuff I was shown and told to work on. Good stuff and worthwhile. But very limiting in a lot of ways.
But we could apply the emotional idea to everything else. That's what 2 of the 3 teachers did. One did it with the solfeggi syllables, and the other did it with chords...he also did it with solfeggi syllables, but he has a different way of doing it that I practice and is powerful, but too hard to type out here. It's very simple and effective, but it requires too much context about him and his approach and things to write out here.
But it's about finding the particular energy and emotions of a given note (or chord) and reinforcing it through practice. The solfeggi syllables will then become as obvious and distinct from each other as a major chord and a minor chord are. We can hear the 'happy' quality of a major chord immediately. It's an immediate recognition. We don't need to sing 1-3-5-3-1 to get it. It's the same for me with notes. If you play a note, I don't need to sing intervals or mentally move through the scale. I just hear it and feel an emotion and know what it is. I'm now in the process of expanding this ability to be able to hear 2 notes at the same time anywhere on the piano and immediately know what both are. This is significantly harder, but requires the same type of listening and I'm definitely seeing improvement. 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.
The same is possible with chords. At my first session, my teacher wrote up 6 different dom7 chords:
1. 7
2. 13,#11,9
3. 7#9
4. 7b9b5
5. 13b9
6. 7#9#5
He played them at random and asked me to identify them the best I could. He'd play one, and I'd immediately go into my mind and try and hear specific notes, try and sing intervals...stuff that takes a lot of time and is useless when I'm actually performing music. And I only got them correct about 50-60% of the time. We spent the next hour talking about the energy and emotion of each chord. We came up with body movement, facial expressions, and even phrases to say that went along with each chord's energy. By the end of the session I was able to recognize each of the chords within a split-second of it being played, without any thinking, and I was correct near 100%. By the end of the semester with him, I'd learned 27 different chord types in this fashion. He once told me he's got roughly 100 of them down cold in his ears. Imagine playing with a piano player and being able to follow their harmonies in that way! Wooooooo....that's one of my long term goals.
If anyone's got 99 cents to spend, check out the app "Ultimate Ear Trainer". It's really good for solfeggi syllable practice. I use it a lot. It also does some cool chordal stuff. But I generally use it for solfeggi, and multiple solfeggi at the same time. It will go up to 8 notes at once. Eesh. You gotta have perfect pitch for that nonsense.Last edited by jordanklemons; 07-16-2015 at 12:31 PM.
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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.
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