As I mentioned in my previous article, How to Approach Ear Training, my current approach to practicing ear training is modeled around my same approach to practicing my instrument. Whatever your instrument is, you know the importance of a warm-up routine. Besides the obvious intention of getting “warmed-up,” as in a mental and physical preparation for playing, one of the great advantages of a well-structured routine is the application of fundamentals.

For example, my primary instrument is the trombone and I have focused my warm-up routine on fundamentals of brass playing. The idea here is to get as much out of these exercises that I can and, furthermore, to choose exercises that will benefit multiple aspects of my playing. When I go to practice the trombone, I start by playing on just the mouthpiece, without the rest of the instrument and all the extra stuff it requires me to think about. Besides being an excellent way of getting all the facial muscles involved with playing warmed-up and ready to play, it’s also probably the most vital exercise for tone control, tone quality, flexibility and range. It’s a chance to focus on the very basics of brass playing. I could go on through my other warm-up exercises, but you get the idea. This same tactic, though, can be applied to ear training.

Practise listening to long notes to warm up your ears

A great drum groove is the foundation of popular music, but a surprising number of music lovers can’t tell a snare from a hi-hat. There are a number of articles coming up here on EasyEarTraining.com featuring drums so now seems as good a time as any to take a quick tour around the kit.

Being able to identify parts of a drum kit doesn’t just improve your appreciation of music, it’s also a great skill to have at your disposal when songwriting, allowing you to explain your ideas to your drummer or program a groove into a drum machine with something better than trial and error.

Hopefully by the end of this article you should be able to name all the common parts of a drum kit by sight and by sound.

Lets start by taking a look around a typical rock kit:

A Typical Rock Drumkit

1. Hi-Hat
2. Ride
3. Crash
4. Splash
5. China
6. Snare
7. Bass Drum
8. Tom Tom

It may look pretty complicated, but we can soon break it down.
Click to read the rest…

Greetings Ear Trainers! My name is Nick and I am a musician and broadcast engineer.

My personal musical odyssey began at 14 when I started playing the guitar. It wasn’t long before a hobby became an obsession and I joined the first of a succession of bands. For me collaborating with other musicians and playing for an audience is what music is all about. Over the years I’ve played Indie, Soul, Country, Heavy Metal, Punk, Post Rock and everything in between.

I love the challenge of mastering new instruments. Along with guitar I play bass, mandolin and even dedicated some years to playing the drums which will be the focus of my first sequence of articles. At the moment my main musical outlet is playing bass in my band Dark Energy (www.darkenergyband.com)

I’ve been involved with radio since university and spent much of my career working for the BBC designing and building studio and production systems.
Though I’m a qualified broadcast engineer I haven’t had a formal musical education. I’m not the kind of person who is interested in theory for theory’s sake, but as a self taught working musician I’ve found time and time again that I hit a wall that can be overcome with theory and ear training.

In my articles I hope to provide tips and advice aimed at the self taught gigging, or recording musician. Ear training has helped me to transcribe and learn music faster, sing backing vocals at gigs with bad monitoring, and produce better sounding demos and I hope it can help you to do the same!