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Hello, the context is that I am pretty new to the world of classical guitar and music in general.I'm wondering how folks here improve their ears (relative pitch, chord progression recognition, recognizing sharp/flat, etc). If you could point me to any of your favorite exercises or resources I would appreciate it.So far I have just been using this web app for ear training called ToneScholar (ToneScholar - The Functional Ear Training App) and it seems quite good, but is not specific to classical guitar. In fact it's all voice-based, so probably better for singers.I'd love to be able to improve my ear while improving my skills on the guitar simultaneously. I only have so much time to practice
Thanks in advance!
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10-01-2023 10:52 PM
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Definitely singing.
Originally Posted by invisiblewasp
Hello, the context is that I am pretty new to the world of classical guitar and music in general.I'm wondering how folks here improve their ears (relative pitch, chord progression recognition, recognizing sharp/flat, etc). If you could point me to any of your favorite exercises or resources I would appreciate it.So far I have just been using this web app for ear training called ToneScholar (ToneScholar - The Functional Ear Training App) and it seems quite good, but is not specific to classical guitar. In fact it's all voice-based, so probably better for singers.I'd love to be able to improve my ear while improving my skills on the guitar simultaneously. I only have so much time to practiceThanks in advance!
You don’t have to have a beautiful voice, but singing is far and away the best way to get your ear better. I’m kind of an old fart about it but I don’t really think there’s any substitute for solfège syllables. I used to sing scale exercises the same way I might play them … sequences, thirds fourths etc, triads, adding approach notes, getting more and complex. That was fun. Singing basslines to common chord progressions. Singing arpeggios, playing chords and singing extensions, playing bass notes and arpeggiating upper structures. Sky is kind of the limit,
Start with piano as a crutch and gradually remove it.
There are also some apps out there for chord and interval recognition, but singing will help you with that. If you can sing it, you can hear it.
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Why wouldn't you think to put a thread on ear training in the ear training sub forum? :P
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I use major scale exercises, I used 5 positions. Learned the positions first, so I could play the C major scale across the neck. Then I took the fingerings around the circle (all 12 keys). Then when that got easy I did 123, 234, 345. Then after that, 1234, 2345, 3456. Then after that, up by thirds 1 3 2 4 3 5 4 6. Then triads, and then chords (adding the 7th).
That's been about 2 years work for me, I just spend 5 - 15 minutes a day on it. I just got to chords. It's helped my ear more than anything else, it was mostly a warmup for me as my focus was learning songs to get to gigs as quick as I could.
I noticed after going through the scales I had a better idea where the notes I wanted were, so I stuck with it. Your brain might be differently, but give it a try, it might help.
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Check out the app «Earmaster». It’s got lots of exercises in interval recognition, chord recognition, sight reading and more.
I also like the Politonus apps from Mdecks music.
Of course apps can’t do it all for you. You need to work with your ear on your instrument as others has recommended as well, but these apps are a great supplement.
It’s important do a little of this each day. I like doing a few exercises on the apps while I have my morning coffee each day.
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Recognizing intervals is necessary no matter what genre of music you're looking at.
ASCENDING INTERVALS
DESCENDING INTERVALS
Name Short Song Reference Unison U It's the same note!
One Note Samba (Jazz standard)Minor 2nd b2 Fur Elise (Beethoven)
Major Scale (descending)
Joy to the World (Christmas)
Stella By Starlight (Jazz Standard)Major 2nd 2 Yesterday (The Beatles)
Mary Had A Little Lamb
Freddie Freeloader (Miles Davis)
Suicide Is Painless (M.A.S.H. Theme)Minor 3rd b3 Hey Jude
Misty (Jazz Standard)
Frosty The Snowman (Xmas)
This Old ManMajor 3rd 3 Summertime (Jazz Standard)
Giant steps (John Coltrane / Jazz Standard)
Shoo Fly, Don’t Bother Me (Childrens song)Perfect 4th 4 Oh Come All Ye Faithful
Born Free (Movie Theme)Diminished 5th
Tritone
Augmented 4thb5 John The Fisherman (Primus) First two notes of the riff
YYZ - Rush (the intro riff)
Black Sabbath (Black Sabbath) 2nd to 3rd note.Perfect 5th 5 Perfect Cadence (final classical ending)
Flintstone's Theme Song
Superman Theme
It Don't Mean A Thing (Duke Ellington / Jazz Standard)Minor 6th b6 Love Story (Movie Theme)
Hey Joe (Jimi Hendrix) bass riff at the endMajor 6th 6 Crazy (Country Standard)
Body and Soul (Jazz Standard)
Weaver Of Dreams (Jazz Standard)Minor 7th b7 Watermelon Man (Jazz Standard)
Take The A-Train (melody jump in Bar 3)Major 7th 7 I Love You (Cole Porter / Jazz Standard)
Octave 8ve Willow Weep For Me (Jazz Standard)
Try relating interval recognition to songs you know. That will give you the spacial and intervallic relationships.
Work with absolute intervals, and then relative intervals within chords down the road. Be patient. Use your voice. Work slowly and regularly, a few minutes each day.
Good luck
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This sounds good. every professional choral singer I’ve spoken to about this (who does not also have perfect pitch) swears by functional ear training as the basic engine of what they… and pro singers in London are pretty heavy sight readers. Originally Posted by invisiblewasp
Hello, the context is that I am pretty new to the world of classical guitar and music in general.I'm wondering how folks here improve their ears (relative pitch, chord progression recognition, recognizing sharp/flat, etc). If you could point me to any of your favorite exercises or resources I would appreciate it.So far I have just been using this web app for ear training called ToneScholar (ToneScholar - The Functional Ear Training App) and it seems quite good, but is not specific to classical guitar. In fact it's all voice-based, so probably better for singers.I'd love to be able to improve my ear while improving my skills on the guitar simultaneously. I only have so much time to practiceThanks in advance!
An advantage of functional ear training is that an interval sounds different according to context - while both C/A and G/E are major sixths, for example they don’t sound much like each other in C major. OTOH with functional scale positions the third or second of a major scale is instantly recognisable and basically always the same once you have got accustomed to it. The third of the key is ‘jingle bells’ etc. You can’t be hunting around trying to pitch a tritone when you are flying through some Bach motet or something. You have to know how the notes sound without thought. Functional seems best for that in a tonal setting.
But intervals have their uses. I use them more I think for transcribing non functional tunes and so on.
the most traditional of the functional ear approaches is probably Moveable Do Solfege (but it’s not in fact THAT traditional….) This is not without its detractors! I know people who bloody hate solfege. I suspect it’s a bit culty. The missus who was a pro choral singer fwiw learned it all with numbers as a young adult and she’s certainly a better aural musician than me.
in jazz I think of Charlie Banacos as the big functional ear training guy. He taught Frisell, Mike Stern, the Breckers.
If you can sight sing well, you can transcribe/do dictation.
My journey with this stuff is that it has really had an effect over the years. It’s good being able to recognise without effort the position of a note in the scale. My ears aren’t amazing, but they aren’t bad.
weirdly though, I don’t use it that much on guitar. Mostly I just listen to a phrase and play it on the guitar. If I’ve got a good enough aural fix on it, and can sing it slow, it tends to come out right. Mostly my challenges come from the first bit. I don’t know how that works, sorry! I think ear training helped.
The best I think is to work on things in a musical context. Transcribe and sight sing actual music, starting simple. Ear training apps are good for dead time, but I think doing music is the best way. It’s important to learn to recognise musical objects - scales, melodic figures, chords and chord progressions, cycles and so on.
Anyway I’m going to do my first choir gig for ages so it’s back to the grindstone. Time to practice sight singing…Last edited by Christian Miller; 10-02-2023 at 02:45 PM.
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Thanks! While navigating the ToneScholar app, I chanced upon an article that delves into functional ear training. Do you think this approach is as effective as the one you recommended? The article is accessible via this link: Functional Ear Training Explained.
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A lot of good advice here. I will throw in a recommendation to take harmony and musicianship classes at your local community college. A good teacher can guide you through the process of training your ear and connecting it to a practical knowledge of harmony. You will progress much more quickly if you can interact with someone who can recognize your strengths and weaknesses, feed you examples to strengthen the areas where you need help, and correct you immediately when you mis-hear something. Failing that, a good app is better than struggling with trying to sight-read examples out of a harmony textbook... unless you are a pretty good sight-reader on piano.
To set realistic expectations, however you approach ear training, plan on spending a few years of serious effort. If you do this, you can gain the skill to understand what you hear well enough to play it or write it on first or second hearing. It's a long journey, but it is a valuable skill worth the effort to acquire, and lots of people have done it. Good luck!
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This article is weak and misleading, a perfect example of how trying to teach yourself something by reading random internet articles can actually make things harder than getting comprehensive and well-informed information from a qualified teacher. The ideas of tension and release, leading tones, "home" ... ALL of that is hour ONE of ANY rudiments of music class... which would be a precursor to a one-year diatonic functional harmony class. Originally Posted by invisiblewasp
So the idea of "functional" ear training is sort of weird. There's no such thing as "non-functional" ear training. That is, unless you have perfect pitch, you are not going to identify any note out of the context of its relationship to the notes that come before it, after it, or that sound along with it. That relationship can be one based in functional harmony or non-functional harmony.
Functional harmony follows certain rules that theoreticians developed over years of trying to understand why certain things sound "good" and others sound "bad." These rules underpin a couple hundred years of Western music from roughly the 18th-19th centuries. From the mid-18th century onwards, the Romantic and Impressionistic composers started finding ways to break those rules while still sounding "good." This was the beginning of chromatic harmony and non-functional harmony.
In most situations, you gotta crawl before you walk, so most people learn to hear functional harmony (the "rules") as the basis upon which they learn to identify things that break the rules (non-functional harmony.) So just throw out the idea that there is even such a thing as "functional ear training." That is just a silly made-up term that I never heard while getting a music degree or in decades of playing experience. Ear training is based on two things:
- training yourself to recognize unique sounds: intervals (melodic and harmonic) and sonorities (maj, min, aug, dim)
- learning a theoretical model that teaches you how to understand the relationships that those sounds have with each other.
When you are first starting out, that model is diatonic functional harmony. Then you learn how to introduce chromatics to extend that model to functional chromatic harmony, and then you can learn non-functional harmony. When you have the complete model assimilated, harmony can be diatonic or chromatic, functional or non-functional. For example you can certainly have non-functional diatonic harmony too (such as pandiatonicism). And there are many OTHER ways to think about and play music (i.e. theories about how to sound a certain way, such as atonalism.) And these are JUST Western music... there is another whole world of microtonal music from Eastern (Asian) cultures, as well as all sorts of weird stuff that you can do with instruments that are not fixed-pitch [e.g. synth oscillators... or your voice if you are Jacob Collier :-)]
If you want to really learn ear training, get a good teacher and be ready to put in some effort.
I hope this helped and didn't come off as too curmudgeonly. I am really lucky to have had some great teachers... one of whom was a world-class symphony conductor that chaired the music department at a community college. He was an excellent teacher who demanded a lot of his students and gave a lot to them in return. I learned diatonic functional harmony and the beginnings of chromatic harmony and nonfunctional harmony in two years from him - it was a lot of work and I was a full-time student, plus I came in to that program having played various instruments for about 9 years, with plenty of gigging experience, so I already had a very well-developed ear. I just had to connect it to the mental model that I then continued to expand when I went on to two more years of chromatic harmony and jazz theory at a four-year uni.
Parting shot: you can learn to recognize and play lots of things by ear without knowing all the theory... but you asked whether this was a good approach to ear training. I'm telling you that this article barely scratches the surface and it is a bit misleading. And then I told you what I think is a good approach to ear training. YMMV.Last edited by starjasmine; 12-07-2023 at 02:27 AM.
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I’ve glanced at the tone scholar article and I don’t like the way it talks about tension etc. It’s true the seventh can sound tense, but it doesn’t always.
You have to get to know the sound of the notes in the scale. Here’s a book that I found helpful for laying the foundations, it does work and it’s similar to how my wife learned and as I mentioned as nauseum she’s got the kind of ear I think many here aspire to.
Sight-Sing Any Melody Instantly: Voice https://amzn.eu/d/3muwjAI
however on guitar I don’t think this way. I generally just intuit where the notes are on the fretboard. Sadly like sight reading I find this a bit of a ‘use it or lose it’ skill.
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Yeah I mean, there’s different aspects to this. Originally Posted by starjasmine
Choral singers can have zero theoretical knowledge of harmony but great sight singing chops and zero problems smashing through a Poulenc motet or whatever sight unseen. They wouldn’t necessarily know an augmented sixth from a hole in the ground (they’re not nerds lol) - although some of course very much do (esp those interested in conducting etc.) The dreaded missus is only learning basic chords now so she can busk songs on uke haha, but she was perfectly happy sight singing pretty much anything the classical choral rep could chuck at her within reason (maybe rehearsal necessary for Ligeti haha, she’s not BBC singer)
All the ones that don’t simply have perfect pitch or learned when they were six, can’t remember how and find it weird that most people can’t sight sing Bach (which is a lot of them) tended to recommend scale positions (do re mi or 1 2 3) and they are all beasts - sight singing is a bit of a thing in the UK, the choral tradition and choir schools etc.
As soon as I focussed on that, my sight singing of common practice music improved a lot. So it works for that task. (It doesn’t work for everything of course.)
As Peter Amos said elsewhere a lot is experience and exposure to the repertoire. Many professional choral singers have been singing this stuff since childhood.
instrumentalists may learn to audiate according to their instrument. I know a lot of players who say they visualise the piano keyboard. That’s a type of visual solfege. The classically trained instrumentalists I know also tend to be good at sight singing the pitches. Audiation is of course important for correct intonation with orchestral strings, or forming the lips correctly for notes on a trumpet or trombone… something we miss on the fretted guitar perhaps?
And as a singer you view music as a set of single lines. I imagine to get to the level of being able to audiate orchestral scores at a glance (not a skill I have lol), as pro conductors can, you might well need a different approach…
Interesting point though - Gustav Mahler famously said he couldn’t hear Schoenberg’s Five Orchestral Pieces from the page (iirc). Audiation is based on norms and gestalts quite heavily. Common practice music is of course really a large collection of norms and patterns - cadences, common harmonic sequences, common basses, and so on and so forth. The same also most definitely true of standards and bop. (Which I suppose is why people still learn Common practice music and bebop at music school - they are finite.)
anyway not really disagreeing. In fact it kind of supports what you are saying. I think it’s all true.
However, from the perspective of ‘how should I work on my ears?’ I suppose it all depends on priorities and context.
By extension, if you are transcribing single lines, trad functional ear training (of the do re mi or 1 2 3 type) is very useful, because quiet as it’s kept most bop lines are fairly diatonic with chromaticism used mostly in a decorative role. Certainly I’ve found it useful for that music and earlier. Perhaps less so for more contemporary sounds. For chords, you kind of need to develop your ears in a different way, but single note ear training can still help sometimes.Last edited by Christian Miller; 12-07-2023 at 07:41 AM.
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What classical musicians would struggle with in jazz is audiating the rhythms… now that’s absolutely necessary for any kind of sight reading of course, and yet we tend to obsess fixate on the pitches when people talk about ear training.
bellson modern reading text will sort you out for that
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I’ve been working with this elementary school rhythm section and we’ve been focusing on solfège and rhythm dictation. I think the solfège will help for chords when we get there. For me I think I use that a lot when I’m hearing chords. Lots of it is knowing the bass line (a single note line) and the melody note (a single note line). Beyond that most jazz harmony is pretty functional and predictable. My ear isn’t spectacular, but that stuff has gotten me a long way.
And then Rhythm of course is huge.
Weve started improvising in the class and I’m having them do call and response with little short melodies spanning a third and they’re doing a great job of getting them actually. Lots of the time they get the notes. They always get the shape. Kind of making up the sequence as I go, so hopefully they’re able to keep going with it later. If they do, they’ll be monsters when they get to high school.
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Incidentally I’ve also been giving “composition” lessons to a thirteen year old. I’m not remotely qualified to give composition lessons, but it’s been lots of ear training and fun stuff like that and writing short melodies against bass. So I’ve been in the ear training deep this fall.
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Been working through this on and off for some time -
The Complete Musician: An Integrated... by Laitz, Steven G. (amazon.co.uk)
Unfortunately it's not cheap, especially with the two workbooks that come with it, but it is very good.
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I mean tbf solfege in one form or other has been used in western music for almost is a millennium and in Indian music for even longer (I think). There may be a reason for that….
Hungarians are beasts at the moveable do solfege… I worked with a guy called Atilla Korb a few times (he does the ear-regulars with Munisteri when he’s in town) and he’s an east MONSTER and it’s all solfeggio via Kodaly.
One company I work for is basically all Kodaly for classroom teaching. It’s interesting. I wish I could synch it better with the guitar stuff.
OTOH I think any of these systems can be a bit cult like. Solfege is a means to an end, some go a bit nuts with it lol.
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Yeah my wife is a bit Kodaly person. Not tied to it — she got into GMLT for a while too. But Kodaly is the primary. I remember her singing and signing three part rounds. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
Her musicianship teacher was ridiculous.
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I have a good suggestion.. maybe.
When practicing scales, end the practice with playing a few simple tunes on your scale by ear.
There's an extra bonus beyond the obvious one.. But the OP didn't touch this wish
The trouble with common ear training is............
IT DOESNT INVOLVE EMOTIONS! ! ! !
Playing feel-good tunes by ear on your freshly learned scale will make it happy. It makes the scale happy now. Um... I teach kids.. Sorry for this kind of pep-talk
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Originally Posted by emanresu
I have a good suggestion.. maybe.
When practicing scales, end the practice with playing a few simple tunes on your scale by ear.
There's an extra bonus beyond the obvious one.. But the OP didn't touch this wish
The trouble with common ear training is............
IT DOESNT INVOLVE EMOTIONS! ! ! !
Playing feel-good tunes by ear on your freshly learned scale will make it happy. It makes the scale happy now. Um... I teach kids.. Sorry for this kind of pep-talk
This is great and eventually you should be able to play songs you don't know using the inner ear.
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Hi all,
I'm the developer of ToneScholar. I receive notifications whenever Google Search finds a link that's been posted about the site and occasionally I will check out where it's been posted. Seems like there's a great discussion here!
First off, thanks @invisiblewasp for checking out the the app. Feel free to message me directly at hello@tonescholar.com if you have questions going forward. I'm more than happy to answer there.
I appreciate all of the thoughtful criticism of the method I'm pushing. I guess I wanted to share my general thoughts behind it and would be happy to take more feedback. My general goal with ToneScholar was to build an ear training app that uses a completely different paradigm from all of the others out there. There are a few parts to this. I hope I don't sound spammy, but I'm going to post a few links that more broadly outline my thoughts on some of these topics so I don't need to type as much.
1. I believe that singing is beneficial if not essential for ear training, so I wanted to build an app that is highly focused on singing (using the Moveable Do Solfege method). The app actually detects your vocal range and tailors all of the exercises to fit within it, and most exercises recommend or require the user to sing. (Why Singing is Essential for Ear Training)
2. I haven't found learning intervals to be particularly helpful for most learners. You memorize them all and then what? It's not obvious to most learners how to go from memorizing intervals to skills like identifying chord progressions by ear for instance. And the same interval can sound different to a beginning musician depending on harmonic context or even which register it's in. My app is supposed to train people to operate effectively a in western tonal harmony context. I figure for most musicians, it would be better to excel in that context than to have middling skills in both tonal and atonal contexts.
I compare memorizing intervals to memorizing vocab flashcards and using functional ear training as akin to learning grammar and word parts. The former is helpful, but if you haven't memorized it it's useless. The latter can by used more dynamically in various musical contexts.
In western tonal harmony, melody is inseparable from harmony. So why do we try to teach students melodic ear training separately from harmonic ear training? I feel that they should be taught together, as that is how they will be used "in the wild" if you will
Why Interval Based Ear Training is Ineffective
I hope this at least clears up the intention behind the app. Let me also mention that it is 100% free, no ads, no data sharing, etc. Some day I will probably try to monetize it to make it self-sustaining but it's really just been a labor of love for the past couple years.
Cheers!
- Bryce
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