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UNPLANNED DOWNTIME: 12th Oct 23:45
Ear Training
Axe_meister
Frets: 4451
in Theory
For the 30 odd years I've been playing I have never done any ear training.
So today I picked up the ear training tool from Justin Guitar.
Just starting on exercise 1. Unison, 4ths, 5ths.
I can do the Unisons, but often get 4ths and 5ths mixed up.
On some starting notes, i.e. the lower ones I tend to get the intervals correct, but higher up and I'm shit.
Are there actual technical reasons why the higher up you go the more difficult it is to hear intervals or is it just
my ears.
Also how long does it normally take, lets say with 10 mins a day, before it comes naturally?
So today I picked up the ear training tool from Justin Guitar.
Just starting on exercise 1. Unison, 4ths, 5ths.
I can do the Unisons, but often get 4ths and 5ths mixed up.
On some starting notes, i.e. the lower ones I tend to get the intervals correct, but higher up and I'm shit.
Are there actual technical reasons why the higher up you go the more difficult it is to hear intervals or is it just
my ears.
Also how long does it normally take, lets say with 10 mins a day, before it comes naturally?
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As for the 4th and 5th intervals I'd always associate the perfect 4th is the "here comes the bride" wedding theme and the 5th as the star wars one.
Learning to sing the major scale in intervals from root to octave is good too.
Another trick is the virtual staircase. Get the tonic / root note in your head then play an interval blindly so you can't see it. Then, if you can't pick out the interval imagine yourself walking up the virtual staircase and every step is an interval in the scale. Count the steps as you go and there's your answer.
For notes lower than the root / tonic, walk down the stairs.
That's what I've done in my so-called book. Sorry, doesn't come out very clearly.
I have basically not done it every day (which is generally recommended) and basically done it randomly a few times over the last few months when I've got 10 minutes spare.
I had some difficulty mistaking the fifth with the octave (apparently quite common according to some youtube teachers), but the fourth/fifth difference hasn't been such an issue.
For the fifth I have found success with the 'star wars' approach. It also feels very 'resolved'. I have a feeling it's also in the chariots of fire main theme.
I've had plenty of problems with other intervals though as I've gradually expanded my skill and I've found that persevering actually seems to just magically improve you.
I definitely recommend the earpeggio app.
https://www.instagram.com/insta.guitarstuff/
It was the minor 6ths that always caught me out.
Love Story (Where Do I Begin) has very strong and memorable minor 6th intervals. There's even a version by Slash for people who find the Andy Williams/Shirley Bassey versions too schmaltzy although personally I love the Andy Williams version.
I eventually got to identify minor 6ths by thinking of The Entertainer, but Love Story is much better example. Strong and memorable indeed!
Don't do the song association thing for intervals, it's a terrible idea!
Ok, now that's got up a load of noses I'll explain. Stay with me till the end then if you disagree I honestly don't mind, but I've put a LOT of time into this and it's not just my opinion, it's the opinion of Charlie Banacos. Look him up before disagreeing.
What's the point of ear training? What is the musical value? I mean there's various right? You want to be able to jam with people and hear what's going on and join in. You want to hear something on the radio and know what it is immediately, you want to be able to translate what you hear onto the fretboard in close to real time when improvising, you want to have a huge sound palette to draw from when composing. I mean if you can't hear it/recognise a sound, you can't use it properly, right?
So, what you need is recognition, real time, and ability to act on it. Here's the thing....let's say you're listening to a thing you like and wondering what it is....you go 'ok, those two notes are a 5th apart, then that was a 2nd between notes 2 and 3, and then a 6th between notes 3 and 4. This gets hectic very quickly, and honestly....so f*cking what in musical value? BTW it's also really, really hard to use the song technique with actual music blasting out at you. You can't stop to sing mary had a little lamb to yourself to check the two notes at the start of the tune, it's gone already and you look like an ass on the bandstand. It's great for listening to two notes in isolation, but really...when does that ever happen? Also, a M3rd sound one way when it's between root and maj 3rd, and entirely another over an altered dominant chord when it's between the b9 and the 4th for example.
What you need to focus on is interval recognition in tonal context. What I mean by that is you hear a chord, a bass note, whatever gives you the tonic, and then you recognise the other intervals being played either simultaneously or sequentially by their FUNCTION. So, you need to know what a m3rd sounds like in a chord, against a root note, not just as the difference between two notes in isolation. When you can do this you can listen to something on the radio and go 'oh right he just hovered about on the b7, then went R 2, 5, 6, 9, back down to R.
One of the problems with the song approach is that you build up an association of that song with that interval and not only does it make it hard to hear in context, but it also INTERFERES with the context hearing at first as you've built up what amounts to a reflex, but the wrong one.
I've written in a tonne of ear training threads on here but basically go get the Functional Ear Trainer app (it's free) and if you are feeling flush get the Rick Beato app as well for a really broad tonal palette of stuff to learn to hear.
When I play by ear I'm not referencing song intervals anymore, I know the intervals but it was a useful tool to get going.
When you work as a mechanic you need to be able to spot the size of a nut and bolt instantly, otherwise you would be forever trying different sockets and spanners on it before you got the right one. When I was a teenager it was little finger width 10mm, ring finger 12mm, middle finger 13mm, thumb 17mm etc. When I work on cars now I don't think about fingers anymore, I've learnt these sizes and just know them instantly .... which is much the same thing really.
The reference I use for ascending minor 6ths is the first two notes of the guitar in "In My Life" by the Beatles.
Danny1969 said:
This end result is exactly what I'm talking about, but live in the moment while hearing music. I don't think you're getting it either, I'm not saying you know the intervals between the notes or can hear the intervals between the notes you're playing, I mean for any given note you play in realtime you can hear its relationship to the chord and know what FUNCTIONAL interval you are playing.viz said: Disagree, again in my post I was giving reasons as to why doing this actively blocks and gets in the way of functional hearing. Can't recall but pretty sure Banacos specifically taught ear training like this and DID say to avoid the other way, I know some of his students say so. He was a great guy, I took lessons from him for a few years by sending tapes back and forth to America. I'd love to see more of his lessons if you know of a repository as frankly, he was a genius teacher.
To anyone reading:
I made a very quick vid demo of what I mean that I've just uploaded to Youtube as an unlisted vid to show you:
Hopefully that basic demo (I was a bit slow and crap there as that's the first time I've done that in months) shows you what I'm talking about....that you can identify any number of notes in a row, it could be a million, as long as you've got the tonic for context. In this case I'd played a C on my piano first so had that locked in my head. Next step up is doing two notes at the same time, then three etc. Wayne Krantz studied with Banacos and could do like 10 notes, i.e. listen to 10 notes played over a single tonic and tell you what they all were intervallicaly. You see this is not the same as identifying the difference between two notes using songs as reference points? Hopefully you can see how much more useful and real this sh1t is for composition and improvisation.
Something I also find myself doing is humming Do-Re-Mi, and I can fairly effectively tell if a particular interval has been flattened or sharpened compared to that. Not sure how the experts feel about that approach.
Cheers.
i.e. if the second note is the tonic and you hear a D then an F then the D is the maj6th, couldn't be anything else, doesn't matter which octave it's in it will always be the 6th. Yeah btw, I did of course do the intervals by song thing, over 20 years ago, and it to this day interferes with the proper ear training stuff, which I why I wrote in this thread. It took MANY years to shift to identifying intervals against a tonic like you would see blue or green, but that's because I didn't know how it should be done. I had to break down what I'd done and start again from scratch, getting really angry because I was shit at doing it the proper way. There is no comparison to it done properly though, none at all.
Viz I know it's different, I said that. I'm saying using songs to pick out intervals is not a good idea because it interferes with the stuff I'm doing in the video and other more advanced stuff. You guys are all effectively saying an interval is a distance between 2 random notes that you are learning by fixed song references. I'm saying don't do that it's counter productive. I said why in my earlier post with several examples. It's also not a note recognition test btw, at all, in the slightest, it's a functional interval recognition test. I'm not thinking 'that's a G' or 'that's a B' what I'm doing is hearing the quality, the function of that note, i.e. that's the 5th of this key, that's the Maj7th of this key, then converting to note names to answer the questions. In order to do this you have to hear an interval in context and know the sound of that, dyed in the wool, which I assume you do given your background. It's why you don't need a C reference tone every time, it's the way you hear it, not as two random notes, but with one as the tonic and the other the note you want to identify. It IS intervals, the difference is I'm saying do it in context and learn the quality of the intervals, how they feel to you on a deep internalised level, not which song the first two notes remind you of which is surface level knowledge. It's depth of understanding and useability, and using songs is a method that needs to get stripped out and rebuilt from scratch to do the other stuff, which is why I'm saying don't do it. I'm also not alone, I've read plenty of opinions from serious players and teachers saying the same. I'm talking best in their field rather than Dan from the pub covers band at the Nag's Head on Friday nights.
Anyway, I knew it would be unpopular and I knew a tonne of guys wouldn't get it or would argue with me so I'll leave it there. I've made my point, chimed in trying to save people what could end up being years of misconception or bad habits. GL all whatever you choose to do, ear training can be a really fun area and has some tremendous benefits if you keep at it! It's actually a huge huge area, and intervals are the basic blocks that builds the rest up.
What you’re doing is really necessary obviously. It’s absolutely findamental, it’s how I learned too. Learning the quality and function of a major 3rd (or a tonic to mediant) for example, well I don’t think you can fully understand or appreciate music without it. The musicality of the notes is the most important thing about notes! (Unless you’re playing atonal music),
I’m just saying that the song method can be useful as well, as a reference, for beginners. Btw in most cases it’s assumed that the lower note is the tonic; the intervals aren’t normally out of context. Nobody hears a major 3rd and says that’s a diminished 4th, I’m hearing the tonic as a semitone above the lower note. Or at least 6 year olds don’t.
Like, a pop song verse follows a simple I-V-vi-IV progression, but the tonic actually has the highest pitch. A V one octave down doesn’t jump out at me like a V that goes up. I don’t know where to start.