Ear training

[Nihilist37]

I'm really new at mando (3 months) and Beside just being able to play a few tunes I don't seem to be progressing. I've been playing guitar for 13 years and hadn't learned a piece of theory. Just get the tab and play it, Im only now realising how stupid that was. So I'm frantically trying to pick up as much theory as possible and it's just so amazingly overwhelming how many things people need to know are thinking of when they are soloing. I have absolutely no idea where to start on it.

I really want to be able to play in any style of music I please. Ie. having enough theory under my belt to just say "oh that tune uses these modes/ scales/ chords etc. i can play that." So I'm wondering whether there would be any benefit in purchasing one of these CD sets http://www.perfectpitch.com/home.htm .

it seems like it would be really helpful to any musician to learn what this course offers. Has anyone had any experience.

[kudzugypsy]

ok - are you ready for the good news first or the bad news?

the good news is that yes, i think developing your ear is about THE most important (along with the right hand=tone) that you can do to improve your musicianship - and the effort will pay off big time.

the bad news is that you dont just buy a book or set of cds and listen to them and come out the other end with a set of golden ears that can instantly identify any chord progression, melodic idea, etc, etc.
this may take a lifetime! - i took ear training in college and I HATED IT - i would have been better off in an advanced chemistry lab or something - it was pure torture - but you gotta do it - it took me about 2 years and even then i could barely pass a college level ear training course - (one thing you learn really quick in the music dept is that you cant *cram* for exams like this - it takes time-repetition)

if you REALLY want the challenge - get the Relative Pitch course on the site you mentioned and then get ready to spend a year (or 2) with it - i'm not joking - building the ear is like building a muscle, you cant just do push-ups for a month and say, ok, you are an athlete now. the way those courses work (and they WORK) is that you really CANT move to the next lesson until the one you are on is 99% correct - you cant say, ok, i got half right, i'll go on to the next one - you many spend a month on one lesson to perfect it - and only then can you advance. i wouldnt get the Perfect Pitch btw - what you want, believe it or not - is good RELATIVE pitch. Perfect pitch is cool to show off at a party or to tune your mando, but it aint gonna help you like being able to distingush a A9 from a A-7(b5) chord, etc

i'm not trying to be negative about your post, i'm just saying that yes, there is A LOT to learn - its NOT that hard - but there is the organization of the skills & knowledge and then the hard part of being able to pull it off in the heat of playing. joe pass (the great jazz guitarist) use to tell all the young wild eyed students that in order to PLAY fast, you have to THINK and HEAR fast - and that is a lot harder to do than just running scales and modes. i think you might be surprised to learn (as i did) that the best improvisers ARE NOT thinking "i will play this mode/scale over this chord" - hardly ANY of the great improvisers think that way - ALL the BOOKS will tell you that - but, believe it or not, the best ones are simply humming musical ideas in their heads (learned from YEARS of listening and practice) and being able to connect the mind > ear > hands to be able to play those ideas. if you try to complicate your thinking up on the bandstand or jam - you simply can not process that kind of information in the few bars you are allowed before it moves on to the next measure - that is the main brick wall that most people hit.

good luck! - try the Relative Pitch course, if you can stick with even 1/2 of it, you will be well on the road to a well rounded musician capable of anything thrown at you.

[Nihilist37]

There was no bad news in that. It's exactly what i wanted to hear.

I know that I would be a fool to think that I can just whizz my way through it an be a good musician. I'm only 22 and I'm at college so I have plenty of time to work at it and understand it. A few years is what I had thought it would take to get through it all. And it's not as if I won't see any progress until I'm finished the whole course. Generally if I know I'm on the right track to something I'll stick with it and do it properly. ( I just wish I had have stuck with classical guitar and learned from music rather than just playing from tab. Any other tab players out there beware of its downfalls. Can you believe up until last year (12 years into my playing) i had no idea what a key was or a scale or the difference between major or minor. )

Anyways I think by working away at this stuff properly it will only benefit my musicianship. I play a lot of instrument's so knowing this kind of theory is beneficial for changing between instruments.

I'm just starting to get into jazz and Pass was one of the first people I heard. Wow that guy know how to play.

thanks for your kind words on the subject. anyone else got anything to add?

[dj coffey]

Kudzugypsy,

THANK YOU for the the well written/well reasoned post. I picked up the mandolin last January. Prior to that my background was classical piano and strumming the easy chords on guitar.

At this stage in my life, I think I've recognized a fallacy in classical music instruction - (BTW, I truly love classical music) - it's like learning Latin - the form has been frozen on the page in that conventions of playing are strict. Don't get me started on contemporary classical music!!!

I've long envied the by ear players of the piano - and I could never do what they did - primarily because I spent more of my time on technique and focusing on scored music with teachers who only taught that way.

Now with the mandolin, I'm approaching the music in an entirely different way - recognizing the limitations of the score, trying to internalize the melodic and harmonic lines and play with the best sound possible.

My aspirations exceed my skill, but the nice thing about the mandolin - even at slow to moderate speeds, the instrument has a gorgeous sound!

[kudzugypsy]

well, i was about your age when i started really working on my ear - because i realized as i hung out with *good* musicians (not the ones who played licks and fluff, but the ones who could really play) they ALL had exceptional ears. i was sort of in the same situation you are - in that i was playing other peoples music from transcriptions and even the evil tab) - NONE of those cats were doing that - they were using their ears and finding their own way - yeah, they swiped ideas from others, but again, you got to have good ears to steal ideas - how many times has a good player shown you something and you just couldnt remember it!

i have spent A LOT of money on *stuff* over the years, but it was the time i took to develop my ears that paid off more than anything - you just cant go out and buy tab for EVERYTHING you want to learn, at some point you have to stand on your own musical two feet.

that Relative course is pretty intense too - this is the one i'm talking about ( http://www.relativepitch.com )to be honest, i never made it thru the whole thing - its not that it gets harder, it gets FASTER in the drills - but like i said, the ear is in a way a muscle, and i had just reached a limit to what i could hear - and how fast i could hear it...but remember, these are drills mostly and music isnt as hard as these drills - after you learn some music fundaments, you can pretty much figure out what is going on in that tune (unless you are into some heavy modern free jazz, etc) - even making it 1/2 way thru will give you 80% of everything you will ever need - the other 20% you will probably never use anyway (unless you want to sit in on a jam session in NYC with the big boys)

i've read a lot of posts on other forums where people (even educators at high levels) talk down on the DL Burge stuff - mainly because he claims to give people perfect pitch when its debatable that you can do that (i dont know if he can or not) - BUT the Relative Pitch course is the real deal - its like 2 years of college ear training condensed into like 40 lessons. plus, its the stuff you will use in the real world.

[g_mc]

You might find the following links of some interest:
http://www.aruffo.com/eartraining/software.htm
http://www.wehearandplay.com/forum/
This fellow has done quite a bit of research and writing on ear training and absolute pitch. An interesting read. I've been playing with the demo version of his computer based training. very interesting.
There's also a good relative pitch course on homespun tapes by Matt Glaser. A lot of information, but you'll have to make and record your own excercises. Not to discourage you from getting the above mentioned course.
I have Burge's perfect pitch course. Don't bother. He spends about 4 hours talking incessantly on nothing in particular, and only finally gives about 10 minutes of usefull instruction in the whole thing. It's like those get rich quick books that spend the first 10 chapters telling you how great it's going to be when you finally get the information they have to offer. Then in the last chapter they say 'buy low, sell high'. I've heard other favorable comments on the relative pitch course though.
A freebie is 'functional ear trainer' - relative pitch. Don't have the web site but if you do a search I'm sure you'll find it.

[steve in tampa]

Try playing a fretless bass. Helps timing and pitch at the same time. Being on the other side of the chop really offers an insight.

[lkb3rd]

A good start is learning to sing "do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do" Sing it top to bottom, bottom to top, sing "do-mi-so"(a I major chord), "re-fa-la"(a II minor chord) and on up the scale. Stuff like that will really help, but a good book or course where you can work with someone else is really a good way to do it.

[ApK]

A good start is learning to sing "do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do" #Sing it top to bottom, bottom to top, sing "do-mi-so"(a I major chord), "re-fa-la"(a II minor chord) and on up the scale. #Stuff like that will really help, but a good book or course where you can work with someone else is really a good way to do it.
I'm curious about such excersises. It seems like they'd only help if you already are good at hitting the right pitches, otherwise, you're just imbedding the wrong sounds in your head, no?

Like sensei says: Practice makes permanent, only PERFECT practice makes perfect.

[lkb3rd]

Yea, you have to make sure you're singing the proper pitches. Using the mando or guitar to reference them is helpful for practicing. Just as you've suggested, yuou really need to learn to hit the proper pitches as exactly the point of this. You need to "hear" the correct notes before you can sing them

[Lee]

Learn to tune a piano. While you're at it, learn to repair them too.
Not only will it train your ear, you'll also be developing a skill you can turn into a musical profession.

[ninevah]

For free you can download a very useful ear training program at this link

[URL=http://www.solfege.org/]

[jim_n_virginia]

I'll tell you what helped me develop my ear and it didn't come out of no book,DVD,class or course. It came from my weekly music jam I go to and others that I occasionally attend. I have been attending this one jam about 2 or 3 years now and just listening to all the fiddlers play and just trying to figure out the fiddle tunes (I know about 2/3rd's of then now) and just trying to play along with everybodies songs, many I did not know, has helped me tremendously.

It is only recently that I have discover sitting in on all those sessions have helped my ear training. I can figure out the key and play along with just about any tune (not jazz thought!) and take some sort of a break in any tune.

I can't stress enough how important it is to get out there and play music with others and not just sit in your room or back porch and practice by yourself.

[arbarnhart]

There is a mandolin specific eartraining CD set. I had it for a while. It actually is mostly about another aspect - memorizing phrases so you can repeat them accurately while noodling to find the notes of a melody.

Also, I strongly concur with Jim's comments. I play with a guitarist once a week who is much better than me. he teaches me a lot of songs by calling chords, but usually at least once a night he starts playing something and tells me to just figure it out.

[jmcgann]

Learning to hear the difference between chord types (minor, major, the 7ths etc.) and intervals is a marathon, not a sprint, so take your time, settle in, and realize progress is made in what feels like geological time...being consistant on a daily basis, with much patience, and very stubborn, will get you through.

The longer you do it, the easier it gets, and the more fun it gets, which keeps you going. The first hill is a bitch, though http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[dough-re-mi]

I found this essay (direct and logical path) (http://www.pipersloft.com/html/eartrain.html) to be very helpful; I have not digested it fully, but the first part at least rings very true to me. Here is an excerpt:

<excerpt>
Play and sing the following pathways until they become automatic poems. Allow the first note to sustain long enough to settle in your ear (two or three seconds), then resolve it to Do using the shortest diatonic path. After they become familiar, play and sing them in random order for several minutes each day.

Continue this process using random starting notes diatonic to C major. Allow the keyboard to be your aural as well as visual guide through the pathways. Make sure you sing everything in tune. Do not try to confuse or trick yourself. Games and challenges will come later.

do

re do

mi re do

fa mi re do

sol la ti do

la ti do

ti do
</excerpt>

Among the other approaches I had tried was Buce Arnold's (http://www.muse-eek.com/) ear training method. Both BA and Directandlogicalpath emphasize relative pitch within a key center, but BA's approach (sound two notes, you name the interval) was missing something important to me. I felt like I was just guessing and had no method or system to use. The Directpath approach literally provides the intermediate steps, the explicit steps from an arbitrary note up or down to the tonic.


This (http://www.ibreathemusic.com/article/44) and this (http://www.ibreathemusic.com/forums/archive/index.php/f-14.html) are also nice explanations; you can explore there to find the set of essays.

Here (http://home.scarlet.be/~abenbass/index.html) is a set of links, and here (http://www.alisdair.com/educator/eartraininglinks.html) are some more links that I thought were very nice.

[dough-re-mi]

Here's a cool interview (http://www.artlevine.com/solfa.asp) with Art Levine on solfege.

[gnelson651]

I'll tell you what helped me develop my ear and it didn't come out of no book,DVD,class or course. It came from my weekly music jam I go to and others that I occasionally attend. I have been attending this one jam about 2 or 3 years now and just listening to all the fiddlers play and just trying to figure out the fiddle tunes (I know about 2/3rd's of then now) and just trying to play along with everybodies songs, many I did not know, has helped me tremendously.

It is only recently that I have discover sitting in on all those sessions have helped my ear training. I can figure out the key and play along with just about any tune (not jazz thought!) and take some sort of a break in any tune.

I can't stress enough how important it is to get out there and play music with others and not just sit in your room or back porch and practice by yourself.
I have to say "Amen" to that brother

This weekend I attended a BG pickout in the Northern Nevada mountains. I just came to jam and to#h a n g o u t (have to spelling it this way or I get censored, it's so silly). I was talked into entering a band scramble and ended up being the only lead instrument. Since I've been going to a biweekly fiddle jam for the last two years, I've trained my ear to the point that I was able to carry on in the scramble by taking the breaks to BG songs I didn't know. It wasn't perfect, I need alot of work still, but I agree that the way to train your ear is to play with other people and try to figure out the tune and what key it is in.

I've found that knowing the pentatonic scales and playing around with them during a song will kick start me into learning the basic melody. From there I use the melodic devices I'm learning using John McGann's "Developing Melodic Variations on Fiddle Tunes."

But playing with others, for me was the key. If you don't have or know of any jams near you, you can atleast start by playing along with a CD.