If you haven’t read Part One of this article, here’s a quick summation: in ear training, as in most musical pursuits, some of the most productive moments don’t come from dedicated practice time or specific exercises. In fact, they come from those fleeting moments of inspiration that strike you powerfully when hearing a surprisingly great song, seeing a favorite band live, and myriad other unexpected and seemingly random musical occurrences.

It follows, then, that a great deal can be accomplished by creating personal methods for capitalizing on these moments, rather than letting them pass by (and eventually fade).

I also mentioned that the operative word in this approach is “personal” – hence why this advice should be taken as informal suggestions for developing methods that work with your creative process.

The tricks we’ll look at today, along with those from Part One, are ways I’ve found helpful in reframing ear training as a constant daily process. In order to make any of them fit snugly with the rest of your daily responsibilities and pursuits, it will probably have to be tweaked!

So let’s continue, with some ideas that might inspire you to approach ear training, composition, and learning music theory in less orthodox and more personal ways…

Suggestion #3: Theory’s Not Math – It’s Grammar!

Musicians have an unfortunate tendency to compare theory with mathematical rules and equations. It’s easy to see why: in a theory class it’s likely that you’ll be graded on your ability to follow the rules (e.g. of proper part-writing), stick to guidelines (e.g. for clear notation), and obey other (arguably arcane) specificities.

The trouble is that unlike, say, the quadratic formula, we can look around after class… and find a nearly unlimited body of music that intentionally breaks any of these rules!

It’s more accurate, therefore, to compare the rules of theory (which, of course, define what we are attempting to train our ears for) to a proper dialect – like “Standard Written English”.

In English, there are all sorts of arguments for and against obeying rules (like avoiding split infinitives, and so on). Somehow I can’t help but think of corresponding musical issues (like the dreaded ‘parallel fifths’) when I remember my old English classes.

Treat musical styles as dialects

Click to read the rest…

If you have a lot of experience with theory classes or with playing in an organized ensemble, you’re probably familiar with two different but equally important types of ear training method.

When we sit down to practice though, we tend to focus only on one of them: the basic, practice-the-interval-until-you-could-recognize-it-asleep memorization method (or derivatives of it, like sight-reading). I like to refer to this approach as “melodic”, as it emphasizes the musical elements necessary in carrying a tune or solo improvisation.

It’s the second type, “harmonic”, that musicians sometimes forget: training your ear to hear the subtly different types of chords beyond the basic triad. Practicing one type improves the other, and a well-balanced approach is the fastest way to start hearing results from your training in everyday jam sessions.

In this post we’ll take a closer look at both of these styles of ear training and identify the best techniques for developing them.

Before we move on it’s important to note that any classifications like these are, of course, only effective as basic guides to help these concepts sink in. For instance, you might find it just as helpful to adapt what we’ll refer to as “melodic” methods to do harmonic training, and vice versa. These subdivisions of ear training are not rules – just a logical dichotomy between the two general types that, if practiced in parallel, could help you develop a better ear.

Type 1: Melodic

Melodic ear training is the type we tend to emphasize – sometimes to a fault! If you’ve ever quizzed yourself on intervals with a keyboard or practiced sight singing, you’ve been training melodically. This type of training can be extremely important in developing the ability to solo instrumentally or in composing vocal melodies, and it will help you become familiar with different types of scales and modes. If, for example, you were working on a song built around a harmonic minor scale, you could practice running the notes up and down to get acquainted with the distinctive characteristics of the scale.

Click to read the rest…

Learning to recognize intervals is an important part of any musician’s development. Guitarists who play by ear should be especially interested in developing their aural skills so that they can recognize musical elements such as intervals in harmonies and melodies. For players of improvised forms like jazz a good ear is critical for improvising as well. This article reviews intervals on the guitar and teaches a very simple method for learning and identifying them.

Review of Intervals

Musical intervals measure the distance between any two pitches. We identify intervals by their size and quality. We determine the size of an interval simply by counting from one pitch name to the other. For example, the interval from the sixth string, E, to the fifth string A, is a fourth: E F G A, one two three four.

The quality of an interval, whether ‘perfect’, ‘major’, ‘minor’, ‘diminished’ or ‘augmented’, is a refinement of its size. Both an interval’s size and quality make up its unique sound: a major third sounds different than a minor third.

For the guitarist, the smallest musical distance is one fret. This distance is called a semitone. We can list the most common intervals by their number of semitones or frets:

How To Practice Intervals On The Guitar

Shortly we will review how to play some of these intervals on the guitar, but first we can take a peek at a simple method for learning how they sound. This method really involves two parts. We first want to learn how to produce an interval, and then we want to be able to recognize it.

First we play the interval we wish to learn, and sing it back. You can sing using a neutral syllable like la or ta. Below is a minor second. Play it and sing it back:

Minor Second

Minor Second Example

We repeat this play and sing back process for several different minor seconds across the guitar:

Click to read the rest…