Current ear training workout plan

Added a few exercises from my new favorite site to the workout plan:

• 3-note melodic dictation (scale degrees)
• 1-note piano drill

I thought I would try doing the melodic dictation by noting the scale degrees, and I am enjoying the exercise already. I like the thought of connecting the notes to scale degrees, as this helps establish the relation between any note and its tonal center. I seem to be picking up fast as well. Another thing that happens is that I am taking some notes from the Functional Ear Trainer program, which included attempting to hear intervals by how far they sounded from the tonal center. The "middle" is the perfect 5th. I personally would hear a 6th interval as something coming closer to the 8th, than the 1st interval. Where a 2nd sounds as if it has a stronger pull to the 1st interval, than going up towards the 8th. Real tricky to describe, I have to read the directions and clear things up. Meanwhile, you can check it out yourselves in the link above.

And here are other exercises that I am picking from iwasdoingallright:

• Harmonic intervals:
• -minor 3rd (b3)
• -major 3rd (3)
• -perfect 4th (4)
• -tritone (#4/b5)
• -perfect 5th (5)
• -augemented 5th (#5)

I am doing the harmonic interval exercises in order to be able to hear the intervals that make up a triad, as well as quartal chords. I stick to the basic, besides adding quartals just because they are a favorite of mine, so I only practice the intervals that make up these basic triads.

Remember that a major triad has a major 3rd on  top of a minor 3rd, and the root to the 5th is a perfect 5th. Next, the minor triad is made up of a minor 3rd interval stacked onto a major 3rd interval, and the root to the 5th is still a perfect 5th. An augmented chord has two major 3rds stacked, and the root to the 5th is an augmented 5th, or #5. A diminished triad has two stacked minor 3rds, and the root to the 5th is a diminished 5th, also known as a tritone. This tritone is also in dominant chords, the distance is measured from the 3rd of the chord to the b7. Quartal chords are made up of perfect 4th intervals.

I'm not really sure what this will do, besides strengthen my ability to hear the quality of a triad when it is played, which is not a bad skill to have on it's own...especially when transcribing.

Last, but not least, also on iwasdoingallright, a

• 3 note melody exercise. 

I chose to base the melodies from a scale in any key, in a random order. This is just my way of adding difficulty to melodic intervallic practice, by just adding one more note. It is not as easy as it may look. I am taking a tip from Bert Ligon and trying to hear all these intervals in the context of a root, like how tonal music is usually played.


EDIT:

I have removed two exercises from the workout:

• 3-note melodic dictaction
• 1-note piano drill

It's just programmed wrong for each one. For melodic dictation, the pitch and the staves don't match. An A above C is taken as correct whether you notate it either above or below C. Same thing for the piano drill, you can select any key on the keyboard, regardless of the pitch, as long as it's the correct note. I chose these two to practice writing out and playing the notes in the correct position, and that is not what is happening here. I can't lie, with my current workout, it's good to take some exercises out. Matter o' fact, I shouldn't do any of the staves since this problem goes for all of those exercises as well.

Let's look at what we have left:

• 1-note melodic dictation (scale degrees) 15-20mins
• 3-note melodic dictation (scale degrees) 15-20mins
• Harmonic intervals 15-20mins
• Call-and-response: 3-note melodies from major scale in random keys 15-20mins

I added the 1-note melodic dictation in scale degrees to make up for all I've taken out. It doesn't hurt to reinforce thinking in scale degrees as well.

That's all for today, I'll explain more about the current workout plan in an upcoming post. You'll see what I expect to achieve, how I do each exercise, when I do them, and why I chose these exercises.

See you later, happy training.

Time to get the cobwebs out of these ears...

It's been a while since I've posted.

I'm just putting this up as a reminder to myself to not let this baby die another death.

This blog will be an insight to my journey on developing my ear to play the musical ideas inside my head.
My goal is to play what I can hear, and if that is anything like your goal, I know you'll find something in here to help you along as well.

As for my current exercises, I've stumbled upon another bad boy that I'm crazy about. I use it to work melodic dictation, as I am also sightreading. I figured I might as well kill two birds with one stone. But don't alert PETA just yet, try it yourself.

After all that crawling, I start my attempts to walk....it's the same exercise, but with 2 more notes in the melody. See how you do here.

After that, I'm done as far as I'm concerned with that site. There is, however, one more level to go with the melodic dictation series. This time, you're going to have a go all out and sprint. 7 notes to follow and write down. I haven't touched that option since the first time I tried it and got spanked. I'm going to wait until I get more comfortable with the other two instead....which reminds me...how exactly do I measure my progress?

My workout looks like this:

Once per day, or every other day

- One-note melodic dictaction: 15 - 20 minutes
- Three-note melodic dictation: 15 - 20 minutes



My current goal is to beat level 6 (the highest level) within 10 minutes. After that, I'll approach the 7-note exercise and see how I do. If the results aren't favorable, I might make another goal of beating level 6 within 5 minutes before trying 7-note again. Sooner or later though, I'm going to suck it up and get on with that exercise. You don't have to be perfect before going to the next level, and I'm certain all this preparation will give me more than enough experience to rough it out with the big boys.

Until then, happy workout.

Training Your Ear for Intervals | Why YOU Should Start Here to Play by Hearing

I glanced at my analytics for the statistics on this blog and noticed someone found this blog while searching for "ear training struggle with harmonic intervals". It reminded me of what I wanted to share with you all while we are on this journey of mine to playing by ear.

Why I Believe Ear Training Should Start off With Intervals

I like to break things down into the simplest form (that I can manage or break down to) in order to make them easier to understand for myself. When it comes to learning how to play what you hear in your mind, my approach is to get to the root of the problem.

You want to learn how to play by ear. You probably have a song, or a cover of a song, or maybe just a couple melodies in your head that you would like to share with people- or simply manifest into reality to enjoy for yourself.

Let's step back and ask ourselves: What is music? What is music made of?

If you answer with "sound", you are correct, for all I'm concerned right now. No need to bother yourself with asking "what is sound?", that's not involved in the point I'm trying to make right now.

We're going to start from the beginning of producing music and progress onward toward the difficult parts later on. And in the beginning, there was the interval.

Intervals: Building Blocks of Music

Musically speaking, an interval- for those of you who don't know- is the distance between two sounds. They can be the same sound, where the interval is called a unison, or two different sounds - where there are different names for each interval, depending on the distance between the sounds.

Measuring the distance between sound is a difficult thing to do, which makes it that much better that you have an instrument with you when it comes to learning your intervals. The instruments have been built to structure different sounds into a manageable form: for the piano, the sounds are divided up into keys - one key per sound. For guitars, it's divided by the fret. And so on.

If you are still wondering how working with 2 notes (what an interval is made of) is going to help you play a huge piece Vivaldi's Four Seasons, I will delay the wait no longer: all music can be simplified into intervals.

Watch this.

A triad (3 note chord) is made up of 2 intervals. A C major triad, for example, can be broken down into one interval between C and E, and another interval between E and G.

All other chords, no matter how many notes they contain, can all be simplified into a number of intervals.
If you know about 7th chords, then know that you can play numerous 7th chords with just 3 intervals. For those who need help visualizing, let us take the C major 7th chord: consisting of the notes C E G B.
Starting from C, you go up a major third to add E, then a minor third to add G, and last you travel a major third to add B. For those of you who have no idea what I just said, major and minor thirds are two types of intervals, and I will explain the rest in an upcoming post.

Ok, so now we see that we can play chords by knowing our intervals, but what about the melody? Even easier.

Most oftentimes, the melody moves from one note to another- and since an interval is just the difference between two notes- a melody consists of one note moving an interval to the next, then another interval to the next note and so on.

Think of it as walking a certain distance. The total distance traveled is your melody. The number of steps you take are the individual notes in that melody. The kind of steps you take would be your intervals: short steps, long steps, fast steps, slow steps, etc.

Let's use the C major 7th chord for another example of melodies and the intervals that they contain. Instead of a chord, we will play each note separately, and not the same time. So our melody is now C-E-G-B.
Imagine you are crossing a river bank as a frog. The distance to the other side is CEGB. There are 4 lilypads and you determine that you will use these to cross the river and get to the other side. You are starting on on lilypad C. You hop from C to E, then from lilypad E to G, and finally from G to B, where you will have made it to the other side.

Each lilypad is a note that the melody consists of, the melody being the total distance from one side to the other. The part where intervals come in, is the distance between each lilypad themselves, which I chose to leave out. Just imagine that each lilypad is a certain distance away from the next, leaving you to hop a different distance (or interval) from one to the next.

You know, one of the first things you will be able to do, if you haven't already, is play out melodies once you have become comfortable with your intervals.

That's all there is for today, to give you time to let things sink in.

If there is any question on anything, don't hesitate to drop a comment or send an email.

Ear Training Online | The Journey Begins

Welcome to the page. I'm just recording my daily exercises to record my progress and possibly seek areas to improve in my quest to learn how to play by ear.

What you should know before going on: What an opinion is (and isn't). My experiences are subjective, meaning that what works for me (and what doesn't) will not always work (or not) for you.


This isn't just about me, I am just putting my experiences in public view for those who want to know how I got where I am now, and how I got to be where I will be in the future. If you are ever wondering if someone was ever good at what you wanted to be good at, or wondered how they go to be so good at that one thing, these experiences are for you to know about.

Think of it as test driving a car you're thinking about buying, only in this case the car is a specific ear training course you may be thinking about buying that I happen to be trying out, and so on. It also serves as some insight into the things that you yourself can use for your own goal of playing what you hear- we might be sharing the same tools and methods, but use them differently. I believe the more ways you know how to do something, the better prepared you are when a situation arrives in a different manner than you expected. Some things you'll see are solfege/solfeggio, interval training, perfect pitch, and relative pitch.

That said, there will be things I don't use, because I believe they will not assist me in my specific goal. But it doesn't mean I won't talk about them if you're wondering about those methods as well - I don't mind sharing or doing research on other ways to play by ear than what I am personally using for myself, if other people want to know more about those different methods.

With that, know that this is not really a guide, but more of a diary. What I do to play by ear the way I hope to. If you are like me, and want to know how to plan a regimen for yourself, feel free to see how I learn to do it.