Justin Guitar’s Ear Training app is good to have on your iPad or phone

hollywoodrox · July 2023

I have been using it & can get to level 5 at the moment using songs to recognise ascending intervals.
I can usually pick out a 4th “born free” descending or a fifth if I remember (Andy pandy ending - Good Bye ) this gets you to level 5 or 6 . I’ve not learned many more ascending pneumonics but by picking them out on my guitar I can get to level 10 .

my pnemonics

minor 2 Jaws
M2 do ray / frer Jacque
m3 bond part 1 (you’ll recognise it when you play it)
M3 bond part 2 (as above )
P4 Amazing grace
#4 Simpsons /dissonant
5 Star wars
b6 First 2 notes of Baker Street
M6 from out of a wood did a cuckoo fly

min 7 Star Trek (old theme )
M7 take on me

Descending
M4 born free
5 Andy Pandy Good - Bye

wizbit81 · July 2023

Hi mate, don't do that.....using song intervals is absolutely the wrong way to do it. I think we've talked about this before, I've definitely posted about it on here multiple times. If you do that you lock in those things in your memory and it makes it harder to do it properly (key centre hearing)

Real world example....sure you know those song intervals to determine the difference between one note and the previous one. Great....you can transcribe stuff one note at a time by knowing how far it was from the next. That's about it.

Key centre hearing.....you determine the root note or the home chord in the key and hear every chord/note against that. What does this do? You can recognise and learn entire melodies in one go. You can analyse a tune at first listen. You can analyse the components of a chord in one listen. You basically know what you're listening to. You know what gets in the way? If you have extra and totally useless information popping into your brain like 'oh that was here comes the bride and now there's jaws and there's Star Wars.

Basically, stop the interval thing before you really burn those things in, and start doing key centre stuff instead.

hollywoodrox · July 2023

Damn & I was enjoying the intervals . I’m not young & I have been familiar with the 5th 4th octave & thirds for a few years perhaps it’s too late. I’m pretty cloth eared but thought I could use this to help transcribe like you say ,one note at a time. I’ll read up . I just did a search but all I got was one result related to music & loads of stuff on hearing tests

hollywoodrox · July 2023

Is this what you mean ?

https://youtu.be/8Ldj9PLhI1I

hollywoodrox · July 2023

I found your original comment in this thread

https://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/232677/

roberty · July 2023

I learnt to hear intervals with pnemonics and can play a lot of things more or less instantly by ear. I don't think there's any danger in it. You forget the pnemonics once you can identify the intervals

As @wizbit81 says though you will need theory to hear the key and relate the chords to each other

Being able to hear intervals is a big part of the picture

wizbit81 · July 2023

hollywoodrox said:

I found your original comment in this thread

https://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/232677/

Yeah I've commented more in different threads about it too. Ear training is something I care about and I think it's important and it just gets so little attention and gets done completely wrong. If I'd been taught the proper ways from being a teenager I'd be an utterly different musician today.
My advice....do 3 things....
1. Get Functional Ear Trainer (free app) and use that. It will be hard at first but you will learn to hear a note against a tonic and know it's function, what it is, but not by comparing to a mental list, you will just know. Then you can do 2 in a row, then 3, then infinite basically. It will also allow you to start doing 2 notes at once, then 3 etc if you have the time and patience for that. I amazed myself when I started being able to do 3 at the same time accurately.
2. Get the Beato Ear Training course. There's nothing around that replicates what that does in terms of teaching you many, many sounds.
3. Make playlists of chord types (all minor, all major etc) in all 12 keys and practice improvising to them on random, so you have to adapt in the moment to new chords.
4. Transcribe stuff and learn to identify the things you like so you can steal them and use them.

That's it really. There's a good 3-5 years worth of work there. If a million people pipe up with different opinions then fine, I won't argue about it. That's my opinion and it's based on a lot of work in that space.

viz · July 2023

** Boring post alert **

If you use the mnemonics wisely they can help tremendously. But Wizbit's right, ultimately you'll need to know the notes and intervals you encounter in the music, wherever they lie in the scale, and you'll want to understand their functional purposes, and even more importantly, their musical effects.

Here's an example of the issue, but also how mnemonics can help, using the Major 6th.

So the major 6th is often exemplified by either:

My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean, the interval between "My" and "Bonn":

Or, The Day Thou Gavest, Lord, is Ended, the interval between "The" and "Day":

However, to wizbit's point, these two mnemonics are highly context-specific. They don't actually span the 1 to the M6 (the tonic to the submediant for the theory lovers) like many other interval mnemonics; they span the 5 to the M3 (the dominant below the tonic, to the mediant above it). Yes the interval is a major 6th, but it's really a 4th plus a major 3rd. Most examples of the major 6th in actual music span dominant-mediant in this way, so My Bonnie is usually fine.

However, If you want a major 6th constructed from the 1 to tonic-submediant you'd have to go to something like Meatloaf's Hot Summer Night - "You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth" - the interval between "You" and "Took". I don't suggest you click on it because it's revolting, but here it is anyway:

The intervals are both major 6ths, but they're in different parts of the scale, which is what Wizbit's stressing.

Where I differ from Wizbit, is that I think the mnemonics are still a great tool for beginners, and I don't think there's much evidence of them damaging peoples' ability to move beyond them. They've been used for hundreds of years by just about everyone. The trick is to let them fall away once you don't need them any more; but I believe that naturally happens anyway as you advance.

------------------------------------------------

There is a very specific additional problem with mnemonics though: they don't cater very well for enharmonic intervals. For instance the major 3rd vs. the diminished 4th. We all know what a major 3rd is, and what it sounds like, but what is a diminished 4th? It's usually found in a minor piece in a harmonic minor or melodic minor situation, between the leading-note (M7) and the Minor 3rd (m3). That interval could (wrongly) be called a major 3rd because it's the same size, but it contains four notes.

I can't find a good video that combines a description of the diminished 4th with examples of its use. But you find it in loads of minor music, for example, the Pink Panther theme tune, which is in E minor; after the piano / bass intro, the sax comes in with the tune, and the first 4 notes span D# (the leading note) and G (the minor 3rd).

That interval is the same as a Major 3rd (well, Db to G would be be a major 3rd), but it's actually a diminished 4th, and you'd never use a mnemonic like While Shepherds Watch their Flocks at Night to recognise that interval, because the notes in between are wrong and the whole context and function of the interval is different.

--------------------------------------------------

I also get slightly triggered when people call a minor 6th an augmented 5th when it's inappropriate. But I don't like to make a fuss.

Supportact · July 2023

wizbit81 said:

hollywoodrox said:

I found your original comment in this thread

https://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/232677/

Yeah I've commented more in different threads about it too. Ear training is something I care about and I think it's important and it just gets so little attention and gets done completely wrong. If I'd been taught the proper ways from being a teenager I'd be an utterly different musician today.
My advice....do 3 things....
1. Get Functional Ear Trainer (free app) and use that. It will be hard at first but you will learn to hear a note against a tonic and know it's function, what it is, but not by comparing to a mental list, you will just know. Then you can do 2 in a row, then 3, then infinite basically. It will also allow you to start doing 2 notes at once, then 3 etc if you have the time and patience for that. I amazed myself when I started being able to do 3 at the same time accurately.
2. Get the Beato Ear Training course. There's nothing around that replicates what that does in terms of teaching you many, many sounds.
3. Make playlists of chord types (all minor, all major etc) in all 12 keys and practice improvising to them on random, so you have to adapt in the moment to new chords.
4. Transcribe stuff and learn to identify the things you like so you can steal them and use them.

That's it really. There's a good 3-5 years worth of work there. If a million people pipe up with different opinions then fine, I won't argue about it. That's my opinion and it's based on a lot of work in that space.

'Functional Ear Trainer' is the one I use and I've found it very good. I'm not at an advanced level and still make mistakes but once you get into it it's quite a fun way of learning.

When I started with it I still used the mnemonic tunes ('star wars' etc) to pick out the intervals because that's what I'd been shown before, but I actually find the way it is in the app easier and just do that now. It plays you a little run of notes up and down to the note you want, and you learn to hear that, and what the character of each interval is. I've probably not explained that very well but the point is eventually you can just hear it and know, rather than work it out in your head.

As I say, I'm only at a fairly basic level and I can't do them all consistently, but it's helpful and quite fun when you start getting them right. I played in bands and wrote songs for years and hadn't even considered this. Because of that i feel like I know some of this stuff by feel but I didn't know the terminology before, so it's kind of giving you a structure to understand things you might already have absorbed subconsciously. I only really started learning theory a few years ago and this is part of that.

Supportact · July 2023

Should add in relation to the original post, I haven't tried the Justin Guitar app, but I do find his stuff in general very good, so I'm sure the app is equally as good. In fact it's his online Practical Theory course I've been following and I've found it very helpful.

hollywoodrox · July 2023

I downloaded functional ear trainer last night & it’s a superb free app. I’m only right at the. Dry beginning & am going to read all the stuff on it again today , but it seems very good . At the moment it plays me a short progression & I have to identify one in four notes & then it usually shows me how it resolves to the tonic / root . I’ve put my settings to do reh me as it suggests in the app. My first score was 45 % but I was not concentrating so hard & trying to figure out what was happening . But I can see me using it every day as it’s quite pleasurable to do

hollywoodrox · July 2023

.

hollywoodrox · July 2023

That functional ear trainer is brilliant
I’m only at the basic level but it’s very compulsive to keep having another go

Blueingreen · July 2023

Functional Ear Trainer is good to get you started but limited. If you want to get on to more advanced stuff once you've got through it I'd recommend Tonedear, a free online resource.

hollywoodrox · July 2023

Blueingreen said:

Functional Ear Trainer is good to get you started but limited. If you want to get on to more advanced stuff once you've got through it I'd recommend Tonedear, a free online resource.

Thanks I did have a look at that site it looks very good , does it keep in line with the principles Wizbit mentioned ?

pacodelucia13 · July 2023

so, earmaster was the best that I've seen. At some point I got a professor and started solfeggio, so basically you get a score and you sing it. Was not that good, but after some time could tell my ear is improving as I could sing even more chromatic stuff. So they teach that in music schools. I have meet once a pianist that looked at a score and started to hum it and said it was nice

Blueingreen · July 2023

hollywoodrox said:

Blueingreen said:

Functional Ear Trainer is good to get you started but limited. If you want to get on to more advanced stuff once you've got through it I'd recommend Tonedear, a free online resource.

Thanks I did have a look at that site it looks very good , does it keep in line with the principles Wizbit mentioned ?

Eventually yes. For example the first exercise is just intervals, but as you progress through the exercises you start working on recognising intervals in context. The "scale degrees" exercise is iirc the same or very nearly the same as the Functional Ear Trainer exercises. The next two exercises build on the same principles but are more challenging.

To be fair, Functional Ear Trainer does one thing that Tonedear doesn't, ie it tests you on recognising intervals in a minor key.

Shelders · August 2023

I downloaded the functional ear training app after reading this post a couple weeks ago - and I must say it's made a big difference already. Still working through the major scale parts but my ear is generally piss poor so getting to this point (recognising intervals in different major keys/octaves) is a huge step forward. Great app and free to start with - thanks for the recommendation guys

wizbit81 · August 2023

@Blueingreen just out of interest, you say 'when you've got through it' when talking about Functional Ear Trainer....have you got through the whole thing then? I mean obviously all of basic training but then all 20 levels averaging above 90% for major and minor keys, multioctave, with all chromatics, 8 notes in series at 180bpm, then doing custom levels and making it multi-note simultaneous? If you have I tip my hat to you as I worked pretty hard on it every day for a long time while my kid was a baby (couldn't practice but could do stuff like this with my phone in hand) and I'm nowhere near finishing it.

Blueingreen · August 2023

wizbit81 said:

@Blueingreen just out of interest, you say 'when you've got through it' when talking about Functional Ear Trainer....have you got through the whole thing then? I mean obviously all of basic training but then all 20 levels averaging above 90% for major and minor keys, multioctave, with all chromatics, 8 notes in series at 180bpm, then doing custom levels and making it multi-note simultaneous? If you have I tip my hat to you as I worked pretty hard on it every day for a long time while my kid was a baby (couldn't practice but could do stuff like this with my phone in hand) and I'm nowhere near finishing it.

No, we seem to be talking about different things. The app I used called Functional Ear Trainer was much more limited than the one you're talking about here. Maybe it evolved or something. I don't still have it because I replaced the computer it was on and never put it on the new machine because I hadn't used it for ages.

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Justin Guitar’s Ear Training app is good to have on your iPad or phone

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