Originally Posted by
christianm77
the mistake was to assume 'ear training' only relates to the audiation of pitch.
EDIT: actually, no the problem, is more this. There's a divide.
Audiation = the aural imagination in action. Hearing the music
Ear training = the categorisation of sounds (most often pitches) by ear
The first thing is actually WAY more important. Ear training - the ability to dictate notes to paper, is a reductionist activity ('I hear C#!', 'I hear eighth, quarter, eighth', 'I hear a sax section in four way close') which is a useful skill for a professional musician, but you have to hear it first.
Audiation on the other hand is a holistic thing. You imagine the phrase with all its nuance. Rhythm is part of that. It is the specific trait that makes someone a musician.
Gross rhythm can be what you might call 'syntactic' - for example, I can write down a Parker solo as a bunch of eight notes and so on, but what is going on with feel, accentuation, beat placement etc is a lot deeper.
Which of course is the real value of learning solos, not simply writing them down as an assignment for class... And why I would always prioritise deep listening over ear training. Tristano understood this implicitly, for example.
The side of it that people think is important - the playing of notes on the instrument, writing them down etc - is easily achievable if you have clear enough audiation, and enough time to practice. It's an easily quantifiable practice activity.
Also, I hate the way many ear training approaches (not Banacos necessarily) focus on individual pitches, not phrases and other gestalts.
And in jazz, I would say rhythmic audition is first in the order of importance. Usually pitches are pretty easy to work out once the rhythm is understood, as many jazz devices (bop scales, enclosure lines etc etc) are pitched manifestations of rhythmic devices.
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