Over at Ultimate-Guitar.com, a neuroscience student is inviting people to try an informal experiment with him, to test a method of developing absolute pitch.

It’s an interesting approach. He’s using a recording of a pure tone of middle C (261.6Hz for you Frequency Fundamentals students!) to ‘meditate’ on. Click to read the rest…

Alright, we’ve covered quite a bit of ground in the last three articles and by now you might feel a little overwhelmed by the enormity of ear training. So, let’s go back over the highlights of what has been covered so far.

Ear training requires a focused attention

Training the ear to distinguish between the various musical sounds takes about as much effort as learning to speak a new language.

A consistent practice schedule is crucial

It doesn’t matter if you just practice 15 minutes a day. Just make it consistent. This is what makes the difference. Click to read the rest…

It’s important to find time for ear training – regular practice is essential to develop and maintain your skills. Setting aside time for focused training is vital, but there are a lot of other ways to keep your training progressing…

Whatever area of ear training you’re focused on, you’ll find there are recommended exercises and training techniques for you to concentrate on and repeat, in order to develop new hearing skills. In this kind of concentrated practice, you’re often going through a process of:

1. Familiarisation and training
2. Testing yourself
3. Checking your answers, to reinforce correct instincts and squash the bad ones.

This type of training is key at the beginning, as you need a strong basis to work from when approaching a new area. For example, if you want to train audio EQ, it’s important to start by learning the standard frequency bands and getting a sense of their sounds. Likewise, somebody just starting off with interval training should spend some time learning the names of the intervals, memorising their order, and getting to know their characteristic sounds.

(Click here for more about ear training and how we learn)

Click to read the rest…