Best Method

Dear Ear Training Deputies,

One question I get a lot is about what the best method for ear training is. Well, what is the best method?

The first thing to do to make sure you get the most out of the time that you spend ear training starts with getting good night’s sleep, eating well and being active. I know that’s a mouthful of stuff you’ve heard 100 times before, but if you’re in a good state of health you will be able to learn more, faster, and retain it for longer. Fact!

The second thing to do is to practice for short periods of time. Your ear training practice will be quite a bit different than your normal practice. Unlike practicing your instrument or singing, you don't need to warm up. You do need to focus your attention, but you don't have to loosen up your muscles or joints, and you don't have to gather your dexterity. As a result you can get into the grit of your ear training faster than you can with your normal practice which will really test your mind. When your practice your instrument part of what you're doing is teaching your body parts to move as you want them to, which requires much less mental activity than ear training does. I am sure you're aware of how mentally relaxing, almost meditative working on a repeated passage again and again can be. Well ear training is different, it's all brain cells, flaring white hot all the time. Your brain will fatigue faster during ear training than it will during practicing, and so the best length of time to spend ear training is between 20 and 45 minutes, depending how you feel that day. You can trust that the first half hour will be many times more productive than the second.

Thirdly, how often should you practice ear training? EVERYDAY! For serious guys! How much time do you spend a day watching stupid t.v. show x, or lame web game y? There's a lot of good reason to watch those shows or play those games, because everyone needs a break. Well guess what, ear training is our new break. If you're just looking for 30 minutes where you can put your problems aside and not worry, look no further. If you manage to put aside that much time a day for your ear training it will show dividends in no time at all. You'll learn music faster, enjoy your playing more, and be a more perceptive and gathered musician over all. I figure that's worth 30 minutes of your time.

Last of all, make sure you're working at a good level of difficulty. You don't want your training program to be so easy that you get every question right every time, because you'll never get any better, you'll actually get worse! It shouldn't be too hard either, because you'll start to feel your efforts are futile, and that confident and interested learning is quick learning. Make sure you practice something until you are confident and comfortable with it, and then find a way to increase the difficulty. Are you having no problems with identifying your chords? Well you only need to add in some new types of chords to stretch your understanding.

That's all for today, keep sending in those questions,

The Ear Trainer

Preparing for Auditions

Hello ear trainer friends,
I thought I would write a short post with some advice on how ear training can be helpful for those who are preparing for auditions, a common enough event. There's really three pieces of advise I can offer that will make a world of difference when the big day comes and you've got to show others that you've got what it takes.

The first part is to be able to play your piece from front to back, in time, as soon as possible. This means setting your metronome slow slow slow. A common way for people to practice is to work on the piece in sections, which is necessary for polishing those little parts that need extra work, but often they wait to long to put the whole piece together, and then stumble into problems with awkward transitions after it's way too late. Save your self the headache, practice like you perform, play entire pieces.

The second thing to do is to learn how to sing the piece. Humming of whistling along is one matter, but that's not what I mean. It's not even important that you be able to sing the piece in  time, or up to speed. What's more important is that you really know what each interval is, where the melody notes are in relationship to the harmony, and exactly how all the chords are stacked. It can be very time consuming, but there is really no better way to know a selection of music inside and out. This exercise can be really helpful to prevent some developmental problems, especially in musicians who do a lot of reading, but little improvising. I'm sure you're all well acquainted with the tone deaf pianist, someone who can play beautifully, but is too used to being seated at a machine that simply produces the right pitches for them. This exercise solves that type of problem, by taking your music making implement out of your hands, and then really concentrating on the content of the music.

The third thing to do would to be able to recite your piece simply as a series of intervals. For example, if you were learning how to play "Oh Christmas Tree", you would say "perfect fourth, unison, unison, major second, major second, unison, unison, unison, major second, major second, minor second, tritone, minor third, major second, unison, unison." Once you had that figured out, you would have the intervallic content known, and so it would be no problem to go through the whole thing and name one note after another: "g, c, c, c, d, e, e, e, d, e, f, b, d, c, c, c". Want to learn you piece in another key? No sweat, you've got everything you need and you're ready to reproduce the song and transpose from memory. Now you're really learning "Oh Christmas Tree" inside and out. In the key of D Major: a, d, d, d, e, f#, f#, f#, e, f#, g, c#, e, d, d, d. The effectiveness of this method is altered by the length of your selection however; it might not be to useful too learn your Chopin nocturne in another key, but give it a try and tell me what you think.

Keep practicing, and  good luck!

Lesson #17 - the Biggest Intervals Yet

Hi gang. Welcome back!

In this episode a new set of intervals is reviled. The intervals between an octave and a perfect 15th, some time called compound intervals. To top it off we've got melodies and more. Make sure to tune in next week when I finaly introduce seventh chords. As always, you can get your copy of the lesson guide here. It's got all the solutions you need to follow along with this episode.

If you've any questions or comments, feel free to drop me a line or two at eartrainer@gmail.com

Lesson #16 - Ears from Beyond the Stars

You're back for another episode of ear training fun,

In this episode it's business as usual as the ear trainer plows right ahead. The countdown for intervals continues, look forward to the much needed changes next week. Also, the countdown begins for the triads section, two weeks to wait for that one.Make sure to download your copy of the lesson guide, and keep training those ears.