Training my hearing

I was browsing through the forums today and I was in awe. Most of you guys compose without an instrument, and can hear it well inside your head(well I saw that from your posts). And also intervals seem to be not much of a problem for you guys.

As a dude who must struggle to sight-sing a single line of melody, I would like to ask you pros some tips to training my hearing. I would like to improve it so that I can compose without an instruments, because composing with it may be troublesome sometimes:P ... haha.

Are there any drills? And how long would this whole process take?

I was just born with it: I never learned it.

Well, I kinda learnt it without actually noticing, if you understand, I just thought in the beginning that I guessed right note :P

What you want to learn is not like homework, and it can variey a lot from person to person. Well all i can say just practise writing without instr. listen it out, see if it is how you wanted it. If not then just re-try.

How long does the process of ear training take?

A whole lifetime.

Even those born with perfect pitch and a great ear for tone color can do things to develop the sensitivity of their ear.

I actually have a whole philosophy about ear training and I am probably going to write a book about it some day. My belief is that ear training -- the kind that helps musicians become better musicians, that is -- starts and ends with singing. To my mind there is no better way of completely internalizing an interval, a chord or a whole melody than to sing it to yourself.

To this end I would say to start with intervals. Sit down at the piano. Play a perfect fifth. (If you don't know your chords and intervals you need to start with a bit of basic music theory so that you have something to build your ear training on.) Play that fifth and sing it back to yourself. Now play another one. Sing it from the top down. Sing it from the bottom up. Sing the note names. Do this for a few days and then test yourself by playing a single note and then seeing if you can sing a perfect fifth up or down from it. When you feel like you've internalized the perfect fifth, you can go on to other intervals.

You can make it through all the intervals up through the octave (and probably even greater than that, if you're feeling really motivated) this way. What is more, you can extend this technique to chords -- major, minor, augmented, diminished -- hell, you can even think up your own kinds of chords to sing. But I think once you have sung all the intervals, you can move on to sight-singing of melodies. There are lots of books out there that are simply collections of one-line melodies, in order of increasing difficulty, and you can start at the beginning and blaze right on through.

You can also take some pieces of music and do a semi-dictation on them. Bach's Two-Part Inventions and Three-Part Sinfonias work well with this idea, as do many smaller keyboard works of the great classical composers. Listen to a piece, or even just one phrase from it, several times. Use your instrument to get the first note, and then use your ear to figure out what's going on with the rest of the piece. I don't think obsessively writing down every single note has any value other than to waste your time -- but certainly writing down the melody is a good idea, and then writing down the quality (Major, Minor, etc.) of the harmony, and even the names of the chords if you can manage it.

What I've laid out above can take years if you go about it slowly and methodically. Of course, it is always a good thing to think up your own exercises for ear training along the way.

And one last thing...

And when I say sing, I don't mean halfheartedly squeak. I mean all-out, balls-to-the-wall, I'm-in-the-shower-and-no-one's-listening singing. You don't have to be a vocalist, but you do have to feel the pitch and commit to it. I'm very serious about this point -- there is a psychological validity to it that I have come to understand in the past couple of years.

I use EarMaster Pro....it seems quite good...also listening to music with scores in hand

Oh!

M_is_D was born with a perfect hearing! He sure is the master of us all!

Wow, I wish I was born perfect as you are M_is_D. With your talent and all your modesty!!!

I developed my Relative Pitch very quickly a few years ago. Where Perfect Pitch people will tell you every note just sounds different to them, the same goes for me. Every note sounds different to me, although instead of hearing where the pitch is, I hear where the pitch wants to go, or resolve. Melodies don't consist of notes to me, they consist of resolutions; consonant and dissonant intervals resolving. When I hear things in my head, I hear how they resolve instead of exactly where they are. At the same time, with the resolution of the melody, harmony comes into play.

I don't really know how to do it well without just sitting down at a piano with someone and having them play intervals and notes. I haven't yet tried the ear training software, so you may give that a try.

Though my relative pitch was excellent going into college, our music theory courses required us to learn and sight-sing using Solfege syllables. Solfege can be very helpful in helping people learn intervals, though if you're like me and you can do the intervals without Solfege, it becomes more of a hinderance than a help when you're trying to sight-sing any given passage.

How long does the process of ear training take?

To this end I would say to start with intervals. Sit down at the piano. Play a perfect fifth. (If you don't know your chords and intervals you need to start with a bit of basic music theory so that you have something to build your ear training on.) Play that fifth and sing it back to yourself. Now play another one. Sing it from the top down. Sing it from the bottom up. Sing the note names. Do this for a few days and then test yourself by playing a single note and then seeing if you can sing a perfect fifth up or down from it. When you feel like you've internalized the perfect fifth, you can go on to other intervals.

From top down means that I have to sing 2 notes, from top to bottom? Or all the five notes (considering it's a perfect fifth)?

I use EarMaster Pro....it seems quite good...also listening to music with scores in hand

Oh!

M_is_D was born with a perfect hearing! He sure is the master of us all!

Wow, I wish I was born perfect as you are M_is_D. With your talent and all your modesty!!!

Listen closely you n00b: Nigel asked a question and I answered him. I didn't brag about anything, I just said I never learned it, and I'm sure I must still improve my relative pitch a lot.

What it does sound like is that you're acting like a dick just because you're jealous of something as miserable and insignificant as being born with perfect pitch. Change your attitude or get the hell out of this forum.

Listen closely you n00b: Nigel asked a question and I answered him. I didn't brag about anything, I just said I never learned it, and I'm sure I must still improve my relative pitch a lot.

What it does sound like is that you're acting like a dick just because you're jealous of something as miserable and insignificant as being born with perfect pitch. Change your attitude or get the hell out of this forum.

OK, M, this is uncalled for. First off, your first post in this thread did come across as smug -- if not completely unnecessary. Nigel wanted some help training his ear, and he didn't need to know that you don't know the answer to his question. While Christian's response may have been unwarranted in turn, two wrongs don't make a right. With an attitude and language like that you're going to scare people away from this board, and there is not a single person on this board -- not you, not me, not an admin, or anyone else -- who has any sort of executive power to be filtering out the kinds of individuals they personally don't want posting here.

That aside...

Nigel: An example would be to play C-G on the piano. Now sing just the G, and just the C. Then go play, for example, Ab-Eb. This time you can sing the two notes from the bottom up, so you would start with the Ab. Sometimes you will want to play both notes at the same time, and sometimes you will want to break them up, play them separately, oscillate back and forth between the two. Remember that the only real rule is that there are no rules -- ear training, like so much else of music, should be free and creative and spontaneous.

Nigel, studying scores is another way - choose something simple at first like Mozart's famous sonata in C or the one in A, or a chopin prelude. Listen to a CD while watching the score. Just do a few bars at a time at first, until you can recall the sound by looking at the score and without the CD. Later, you can start looking at orchestral scores. Regardless of whether you have perfect pitch or not, you'll get approximately the pitch of the score sooner or later.

M

Hey Nigel!

aerlinndan gave some great, thoughtful suggestions.

I myself am struggling with my ear training right now. I have been on the brink of tears for a solid month with frustration! It is definitely not easy for all of us. I , in the past, have spent a lot of time at a piano double checking myself when I compose and am trying to be less dependent on an instrument when I write. It has been really difficult for me.

My problem is not about finding a pitch, it's finding it quickly and easily. Maybe this is your problem too - perhaps you have to really think and sorta hum up chromatically until you reach the note you want. If so:

What has helped me...I think...is to not rush it too much. I pick one interval a day now, and work with it all day long. I sat down at a piano, played it until I knew it well, and then quizzed myself about it all day long in my head. Singing and humming under your breath can be helpful.

I don't have perfect pitch, so I just pick a note and hum what I'd guess it is in my head, and then try to figure out what the note is that is [interval of the day] above it and [interval of the day] below it. I do that all day with different notes and after a period of time I get comfortable connecting the sound with the interval AND the notes I want to write down.

I agree with all the suggestions about chords and stuff, but at the same time it's nice to just hear something and just feel what you want to write down, not have to analyze it first. I hope I improve as the year progresses, and you as well!

(okay, that was just me rambling...I just wanted to let you know that not everyone has this skill without any effort)

Another idea is to learn intervals through songs you know well. For example, since many students at my college seemed to have particular difficulty singing a tritone, someone came up with the idea of singing the first two notes from "Maria" from "West Side Story" (you know--the one that starts out "Maria, I just met a girl named Maria."). Those first two notes are a tritone apart, and thinking of it in the context of the song helped a lot of people (including myself).

Ok. I have a question now. When I sing the intervals from a song, What should the lower note of the interval be? The key of the song? Or the note that comes before it? Or the chord of the measure I'm singing?

Just a little confused...

I agree with aerlinndan...

Sorry for being sarcastic with you.. to me, it did sound like you wanted to show off.

Oh yea christian. I downloaded the earmaster (school edition). Hope it would improve my hearing as well.

Ok. I have a question now. When I sing the intervals from a song, What should the lower note of the interval be? The key of the song? Or the note that comes before it? Or the chord of the measure I'm singing?

Just a little confused...

Sorry--I meant singing the melodic line of the song. The first two notes in the melodic line of "Maria" form a tritone.

I , in the past, have spent a lot of time at a piano double checking myself when I compose and am trying to be less dependent on an instrument when I write. It has been really difficult for me.

OK, I have a very strong opinion on this, so here goes. There is absolutely nothing wrong with using the piano or any other instrument as an aid while you compose. You're not somehow a 'better' composer if you have the ability to do it away from the instrument. An instrument can be a valuable aid to either (1) making sure the notes in your head are the same as the notes on the page and (2) playing around with different possibilities for what comes next in your piece.

The only caveat I would give to using, say, the piano to compose for an orchestra or some non-piano medium is that you don't want your orchestra music sounding too pianistic. Use the piano, I say, to nail down your melodies and harmonies, but texture must be entirely a function of the medium for which you are writing.

And not rushing it too much is a great idea as well.

Ain't rushing. I tried singing perfect 5th today. down to up and up to down. Now I can get down to up like 70~80% of the time, but up-> down a little less than that.

However, sometimes I tend to "cheat" by singing all the notes in the arpeggio and picking out the perfect fifth, for example I would sometimes sing D -> F#(in my head) -> A and not D->A straightaway. Is that bad?

However, sometimes I tend to "cheat" by singing all the notes in the arpeggio and picking out the perfect fifth, for example I would sometimes sing D -> F#(in my head) -> A and not D->A straightaway. Is that bad?

Of course not. I do that, too. Like, for a minor 6th, I'll think of a perfect 5th (more stable interval) in my head and raise the 5th a half step up, so I sing a minor 6th. I think a major thing to remember is that there are a lot of ways to skin this cat, and I don't see how any of them are "bad" (unless it somehow involves killing your mother to hear that minor 9th).

All my ear training has been from constant improvising and experimenting :w00t:. I never actually learned any chord progressions or harmony, I just listened to music and played on the piano and experimented to find chords that sound good. From playing all those so long, I now know what many of the chords/intervals sounds like because they're stuck in my head. I can't recall them perfectly and as fast as I'd like to....but I can write music without an instrument, if I need to. So try improvising (if you play an instrument, preferably piano) to train your ears:).