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Posted by: zoom Nov 17 2011, 12:04 PM

So I'm wondering what you guys are doing when it comes to ear training. I'm a bit frustrated with my ear not being able to recognize different intervals very well. I can work out easy songs by listening to them. Trail and error but I can't say ok thats a 1-4-5 just by listening.
lately I've been working out melody's to songs which I've found good. I've tried recognizing intervals on programs with limited success.
So I'm just wondering what some of you guys have done and how much time you should put into this.
It seems to me that some people find it easy and some don't. I know of a guy who went from picking up a guitar to playing in a serious band (newsboys) in front of 20 thousand people in 3 years. He rated earing training No1.

Posted by: MonkeyDAthos Nov 17 2011, 12:15 PM

all i have to say is, David Lucas - Relative and Perfect Pitch curses : ) try it!´

it doesn't matter if that X guy master it in one year or 4 months, take your time, untill you feel comfortable with it.

Posted by: crushpuppy Nov 17 2011, 12:42 PM

As far as identifying intervals, try and find a melody that your familiar with that starts with the interval.
Then listen for the beginning of that melody when an interval is played. I found "Here comes the bride" works well to ID a
"Fourth" and the theme to Star Wars when IDing a "Fifth"

Posted by: Cosmin Lupu Nov 17 2011, 02:44 PM

Yes indeed! David Lucas Burge's course is totally awesome! And I might add one more trick to the list: try and associate intervals with sounds you know very very well! For instance, I associated the perfect fifth with the sound made by the trumpets announcing the arrival of someone important at a medieval castle ta (tonic) taa (fifth) ta (tonic) taaaa (fifth) Have you ever tried that?

Posted by: dark dude Nov 17 2011, 06:45 PM

I recognise intervals via the method crushpuppy and Cosmin mentioned, definately works for me. If you want to recognise them faster, use the same method not only for ascending intervals, but descending too. If you're lazy, you can just swap the notes in your head after a while e.g. an ascending minor second is the first bit of the Jaws theme, while a descending minor second is the start of Fur Elise.

What Monkey pointed out is also very important - take small steps towards your goal, and relish your small accomplishments. Don't get frustrated, it just drains your motivation.

I'd definately stick to figuring out simple songs, I find that helps. If you want to train yourself to recognise chord progressions, it's a matter of drilling them. Firstly, you have to identify the chords, so drill yourself in major, minor, diminished, augmented, sus2, sus4, dominant, etc chords. Your interval training will help you to identify their qualities.

Take your time succeeding at small things, you'll make faster progress than trying to rush through and becoming frustrated.

Posted by: SirJamsalot Nov 17 2011, 06:54 PM

MusicTheory.net published a few iPhone apps that are pretty cool for just this purpose. Costs a few bucks though.

http://www.musictheory.net/


Chris

Posted by: Ivan Milenkovic Nov 17 2011, 09:01 PM

Have you tried singing your licks or singing scales while practicing? That will do wonders let me tell you

Posted by: Cosmin Lupu Nov 18 2011, 10:52 AM

+1

I remember I was totally amazed and mesmerized watching Andreas Oberg last year as he effortlessly parallel sung everything - voice and guitar while improvising! That's an incredible skill, WE ALL should strive to achieve!

Posted by: zoom Nov 18 2011, 12:54 PM

Thanks Guys for your replies there's some good ideas in there for sure. I actually brought dave burke's perfect pitch some time ago but I guess it seems like hard work and results don't come fast.
I played in a church band a while ago. The guy leading played piano and if he'd heard it he could play it and expected every one else to be the same. I played alot of acoustic and felt frustrated as I couldn't follow at times except play some scale stuff which on electric is ok but on acoustic is pretty average. I gave it a miss after a while but I appericated the skill in being able to do this well.
Generally though I prefer a well arranged song than an improvised one.
I must admit I would love to see some more stuff on this site to do with this subject. Lesson or challengers. Just a thought

Posted by: Gabriel Leopardi Nov 18 2011, 04:39 PM

Learning songs by year is the most funny ear training for me. I've been doing this for more than 15 years... I also agree with Cosming about associating intervals to very known sounds.

Posted by: jstcrsn Nov 18 2011, 06:09 PM

I take this one step further
find an old familiar song ( usually from your childhood, but not necessary),one that you could sing without thinking about it(Amazing Grace,those first 2 notes are an interval--- 1st and 4th)also as crushpuppy stated , Star Wars first 2 notes are a 1st and 5th .find a song for each interval
l,then you will have an easy reference for every interval and before you know , you will suck at intervals as much as I do

Posted by: JamesT Nov 18 2011, 06:45 PM

In my ear training classes in school, we studied intervals exclusively for a few weeks. It was kind of boring, but after we were done with that part of the class, we had a test where the instructor would play an interval, first by playing each note separately, then by playing them together. We had to write down the interval we heard... minor 2nd, 2nd, minor 3rd, 3rd, perfect fourth, fifth, etc. all the way to octave. Of course the teacher would not tell us what interval he was playing, but we had to identify it by the sound.

To study this, we did the same thing. We had several practice rooms with pianos in them where I remember working through each interval on the piano until I could recognize them all. It was good training and certainly sepparate from all other aspects of music especially performance and the guitar.

After those basic interval studies, we went on to study triads in the same way until we could recognize three intervals played together.

Posted by: Daniel Realpe Nov 19 2011, 05:40 PM

If you can recognise chord progressions you already managed to do the difficult part, intervals can be easy if relate them to famous songs

Posted by: Cosmin Lupu Nov 19 2011, 11:21 PM

Working on all sorts of chord progressions - it's a good exercise to use jazz fake books and learn various chord progressions, record them and then try to recognize the chords

Posted by: Nihilist1 Nov 21 2011, 08:20 AM

Check out the Functional Ear Trainer(it is a free program). It works quite well. I use it for an hour a day. I noticed that once I started singing along, my skill level increased far quicker than it did beforehand.

Don't be afraid to sing along with the notes! Or hum for that matter. It will do wonders for your ear training.

Posted by: Cosmin Lupu Nov 21 2011, 08:32 AM

I totally agree singing can make you evolve as a musician, faster than the speed of light!

Posted by: Sinisa Cekic Nov 21 2011, 01:45 PM

A lot of good advice here! Singing in unison with the solo instrument is a great way to exercise your hearing! Also the knowledge of the modal progression is one of the ways how you can improve this technique .
Someone have an absolute hearing (God's gift), the rest of us have to practice ...

Posted by: Ben Higgins Nov 21 2011, 01:54 PM

Wow, a very popular topic !

Once I'd learned some very basic chord progressions (stuff like Smoke on the Water.. riffs that usually shifted in minor 3rds, 5ths etc.. typical power chord progressions) I was able to recognise when songs used a similar progression.

Also, when I started using one basic barre chord shape to try and figure out every song I wanted to, that forced me to find the correct (or nearest sounding) chords by moving the shape around until I got the required sound. By doing that, I gradually became acquainted with visualing the progressions on the guitar neck. So if I heard a song that used a similar progression, I could see it in my head before I played it. If you take a typical Iron Maiden style chord progression - C5, D5, E5.. and get used to how that sounds. If you get used to the sound (and how it looks being played on the fretboard) you'll also be able to hear the same intervals even if the progression is transposed to another key, for example.. F5, G5, A5. Same intervals just different chords. Start with smaller things like that and eventually you'll start 'seeing' progressions instead of just hearing them.

Posted by: Alex Feather Dec 21 2011, 02:59 AM

I second this. I practiced with musictheory.net a lot and it really helped my interval recognition.