How to Approach Ear Training

My ear training classes in college were far from perfect, to say the least.

Everyone sat at their own computer/keyboard station in the piano lab. We put our ear training CD into the computer, took out the complimentary workbook, and proceeded to work out various exercises in melodic and harmonic dictation. This was all fine and dandy except the professor’s approach to teaching ear training was essentially “sink or swim.” This was beyond frustrating (except for the one person in the class that had perfect pitch) and I can remember much griping among my friends in the class.

Perhaps the worst outcome of this particular professor’s approach was the bewildering and mind-numbing effect it had, not only on me, but on the other students as well. With no set of fundamental principles or structured plan laid out by the professor as to the method of ear training, the only recourse was to assume that it was some strange and unknown property of the ear that a lucky few would somehow figure out how to use. The closest thing we got to helpful advice was the vague “You just got to keep practicing it.”

Now, as someone who has taught private lessons before, the last thing I’m going to do is tell a student to “just keep practicing it” Click to read the rest…