It’s an exciting time for musicianship, aural skills and new methods of ear training. Here’s our top picks for the news you need to know.

Contents:

• New Musicianship Initiative Launched
• Theta Music at TEDx Tokyo Teachers (video)
• How important is the silence?
• Download new interval packs
• Ear training for composers
• Easy Ear Training on Soundcloud
• There are no mistakes on the bandstand (video)

New Musicianship Initiative Launched

An exciting new initiative has been launched, to foster discussion around the topics relevant to musicianship in the 21st century.

They’ve also published a recording of the panel discussion from the first official event, “The Future of Musicianship”, which I attended earlier this month. Listen to the panel on SoundCloud or read my impression (Christopher Sutton’s blog) or the official Loving & Living Music blog.

You can learn more about the initiative on the website and blog. They’re keen to hear opinions from all corners, so if you have something to say on the topic, be sure to leave a comment on their blog – or perhaps contact them about writing a blog post.

Theta Music at TEDx Tokyo Teachers (video)

Steve Myers, founder of Theta Music Training recently gave a fantastic talk at the TEDx event in Tokyo. He explains what drove him to create Theta Music and how effective online gaming can be for developing aural skills. Watch the 7-minute video below (and then go try out Theta Music Trainer!):
Click to read the rest…

Thanks to everyone who entered our iAction Giveaway competition!

We had lots of great entries and I wanted to take a minute to showcase some of those ear training goals people shared, as well as announcing our 3 winners!

Without further ado, our winners (selected at random from the 10 entries) are:

• Daniel, who said his goal was to play the keyboard by ear
• Petri, who said his goal was to improve his ear as a musician and improviser and react better to other players on the bandstand
• Pete, who said his goal was to know what chord is coming next in a song by knowing what it sounds like rather than having to read the music

We’ll be in touch with the winners to get them their free copies of iAction and help them progress towards those goals!

There were some interesting commonalities and themes in the answers. Although we don’t have copies of iAction for every entrant, there are other resources here at EasyEarTraining.com which can help:

Many goals were focused on relative pitch hearing skills, such as intervals and chords. We have some great articles on those topics, and our Pitch & Harmony series is a great place to start. Our new intervals training pack (free) and Introducing Intervals album can help you practice relative pitch. And of course our ear training iOS apps all focus on interval and chord skills!

Playing by ear and improvising are clearly important target skills, mentioned by several entrants. Conservatory entrance and other music exams which rely on aural skills were mentioned too. As Kiana pointed out, iAction is a great tool for pursuing these kinds of goals and tying together your daily ear training practice into something that really helps you step-by-step towards your real goal.

To learn more about iAction check out our introduction or howto guide.

And if you want a copy of iAction for yourself, you can visit the App Store – or there’s actually still a little bit of time left to enter our Facebook and Twitter giveaways…!

Thanks again to all who entered our iAction contest. If you start using the app out for your own ear training be sure to let us know how you get on!

… and hey – what’s your big ear training goal?

Today we’re excited to bring you a guest post from Eugene Cantera, partner at the Dallas School of Music, whose innovative Discover, Learn, and Play training system is helping lead the way in learning music, instruments and ear training online.

At DSM we often say “one of the great things about music is the people you meet through it”, and though we’ve never actually ‘met’, I have been a follower of Christopher Sutton on Twitter and a fan of Easy Ear Training for quite a while. We blogged about them back in 2010 and ran a contest that gave away an EET app last year. So when Christopher asked if I would write a guest post, I jumped at the opportunity.

There is little doubt that technology is infiltrating just about every facet of our lives.

Just look at Click to read the rest…