Singing the Next Note

There's a great trick you can use to both learn music and improve your ears, and as far as I know it doesn't have a formal name to sport, so I'll just call this trick by a name that describes it, thus Singing the Next Note.

It's quite simple really; take a peice of music you are learning or working on and sit down with your instrument or a piano (if you're a singer) and play yourself a triad based upon the key that the piece of music is in. Now that's you've got the key in your ears, try to predict in your mind what the first note will sound like, then sing the first note of the piece, and then strike the note on your instrument.

At this point something very interesting happens, you're likely to get three differnet pitches, the note you sang, the note you played on your insturment, and the note that you have in your head that tells you what the song is actually supposed to sound like.Which one is right? Any of them could be, or none of them really, but at any rate it should be fairly clear which one is which. You'll know it when the piano is out of tune and you're sure you sang the right pitch, and you'll know it when you sang a minor third above the root of what is supposed to be a major triad. It's a strange interaction of your abilities, even though it's not a piece you know, unless it is much more difficult than anything you're used to you'll always know which of those three sounds is wrong. You have the ability to predict pitches that can correct your ability to sing them, and you have an ear that will help you tune, and you have a intelectual ability that will put pitches in their correct place even if you don't know what they're supposed to sound like ahead of time.

The goal of this exercise is to not over use any one of your assests but rather to come to an understanding of when you're using one to compinsate for the other. The result you're looking for is the ability reproduce the piece correctly by any of the three means, to be able to sing the piece accurately and in tune, to be able to hear the piece in all it's detail in your head, and (unless you're playing an instrument like the guitar or piano) to be able to play the piece accrurately and in tune on your own instrument.

It's a slow process, moving through a selection of music note for note, but you have my word that you'll never forget music that you learn in this way.