Do you love music? You could hear so much more!

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Learn

Not sure where to start with your ear training? Try the Ear Training Quiz to find the area that’s right for you, or browse the articles below:

• What is ‘Ear Training’?
  - Start here!




• Get Your Groove On: Beat Basics
  - If you’re worried about your sense of rhythm, worry no more! Sabrina starts from scratch in this intro to the ever-present beat.




• Ear Training and How We Learn
  - Don’t waste time training in an ineffective way! Learn how to make your practice really pay off.




• Surviving Ear Training 101: The Reference Pitch
  - Internalising a reference pitch is an incredibly useful tool for musicians – this article explains how to do it, no expertise necessary!




• Wii Music: Ear Training Through Play
  - Discover the secret ear training facilities in the ‘Wii Music’ game by Nintendo, and improve your ear by playing video games!




• Become a Rhythm Guru with GarageBand in 5 Easy Steps
  - If you’ve bought a Mac in the last 5 years you have an excellent ear training tool at your fingertips! Sabrina shows you how to get started.




• Introduction to the Drum Kit
  - Before delving into detailed percussion ear training, make sure you know your way around a typical drum kit. Nick Long gives a tour.




• Getting Started: The Importance of a Warm-Up Routine
  - Learn why warm-up before practice is as important for ear training as it is for playing an instrument, and find out how to do it.




• Ear Training Fun With Your iPhone, PS3, and Satellite Radio
  - Find out how you can use everyday technology to make ear training fun!




• Want To Play It? Hear It First!
  - A guest post at MusicLessons4YouOnline, on using ear training to bring great freedom to your playing.




• Ear Training All The Time
  - Find out how you can use everyday situations to practice active listening and continue training your ears.




• A Few Words of Encouragement
  - Frustrated by your ear training progress? Read these tips for staying motivated.




• Absolute Pitch Meditation
  - Interested in absolute or ‘perfect’ pitch? Read about an interesting training experiment!




• 21st Century Ear Training
  - Find out how modern methods can help take ear training into the 21st century.




• Perfect Pitch is Not Magic
  - There are a lot of confusing theories about how absolute pitch works. Find out the simple explanation in this post.




• Audacious Ear Training
  - The free audio program ‘Audacity’ can help you improve your sense of pitch as you practise singing or playing.




• If it ain’t got that swing…
  - Learn about ‘swung’ rhythms, and a clever new software tool to automatically give any recording a swung beat.




• Check your hearing with ToneTester
  - It’s important to take care of your ears, and to be aware of any reduced sensitivity you might have. This free tool lets you check.




• Let your ear training soar with Noteflight
  - Noteflight is an easy-to-use online music score editor which you can use to help in your ear training




• Broken Chords and Arpeggios
  - The different kinds of broken chord are explained so you can listen out for them, and use them in your compositions




• Rock Band II – The Ultimate Ear Training Hero
  - Learn how playing the Rock Band II video game can help you refine your sense of pitch




• How to write better songs (…by developing your ears!)
  - Some tips on areas of ear training that will really pay off for your song writing.

Quizzes

	If you’re not sure where to start with ear training, or you’re looking for a new direction to stretch your ear in, take our “Intro to Ear Training” Quiz, and find out what you could learn. (more)
	Check and develop your knowledge of percussion by taking this 10-question quiz on the different parts of a typical drum kit. (more)
Frequency Fundamentals	Read the series
	Training with the Frequency Fundamentals course? Or just reckon you know your 110Hz kick drum from a 220Hz snare drum? Take the quiz and check your skills! (more)
	Focusing on the second half of the Frequency Fundamentals course, this quiz will test your knowledge of the 10 core frequency bands and their characteristics. (more)
	If you think you’ve mastered Frequency Fundamentals or you want to brush up, try this Recap Quiz to really test your knowledge! (more)

Series

Pitch & Harmony

1. The Importance of Ear Training for Musicians – Learn about the kinds of pitch and harmony training you can do, and how it will help you become a better musician.
2. An Approach to Ear Training – Learn the core technique for developing your sense of relative pitch.
3. Learn to recognize intervals – Use this approach to learn to reliably sing and recognize musical intervals, starting with major and minor thirds and seconds.
4. Learning to Recognize Triads – Part 1 – Once you’re comfortable with the individual intervals, start recognising their combinations as chords. The two most common forms of three-note chord are introduced.
5. Learning to Recognize Triads – Part 2 – Learn about augmented and diminished triads in this continuation from Part 1.
6. Working with Seventh Chords – Extend your knowledge of triads with four-note ‘seventh’ chords. This article introduces the four most common types!
7. Inversions of Major or Minor Triads – Once you know the characteristic sound of major and minor triads, get to know their inverted forms too.
8. Inversions of Diminished and Augmented Triads – To round off the series, Thomas Evdokimoff explains how to recognise inverted forms of augmented and diminished triads

Frequency Fundamentals

1. What’s ‘Frequency Training’ All About? – Find out why ‘Frequency Fundamentals’ is the series for you.
2. Introduction to Frequency Training – The core concepts and learning techniques for training your ear to recognise and analyse frequencies in sound.
3. Percussion Frequencies Part 1 – Drums – Using drums as a reference, you can begin learning to recognize frequencies.
4. Percussion Frequencies Part 2 – Cymbals – Continuing the practice of using a drum kit to introduce frequency ranges.
5. Frequency Band Characteristics – Part 1 – Learn about the characteristic sounds of the 5 frequency bands which cover the lower octaves of human hearing.
6. Frequency Band Characteristics – Part 2 – Find out the defining sounds of the top 5 frequency bands in this continuation of the Frequency Fundamentals series
7. Background: EQ Feathering and Spectrum Analyzers – A slight diversion to cover two important topics in frequency training and audio engineering
8. Harmonics and Distortion – In the final part of the series, Fotios explains the harmonics of a pitched sound, and how they are key to distortion effects

Open Your Ears

1. Creation Multimedia Oratorio – The premier of a new intermedia composition for Choir, Tape, Video, Percussion, and Electronic Keyboard
2. Musical Bridge to Burma – A fusion of traditional Burmese music with classical Western music.

Wired for Sound

1. Part 1: Playback – Learn about the different types of audio playback device, and how you should choose them to optimise your sound for ear training.

Last updated: January 3, 2011 at 2:13 pm