Ear Training

[scottbass71]

Hi Guys and Girls on the forum Question(s) if I may

After a few months of not gigging I have been wood shedding heaps and discovered my ears aren't as good as the use to be

Does any one have any good ear training ideas?
Has anyone tried those "perfect pitch" courses advertised in music mags?

I look forward to your responses

Rock on

Scott

 

[maddog]

Sing along.

Seriously.

Do scales and arpeggios and sing before, sing during and sing after. Then move on to singing the line you want to play.

I hated when my tuba instructor started me doing this. Felt like a fool doing this in front of him. Luckily his office door was soundproofed. In the long term it really helped me in terms of playing the music and not the notes. Taught me that the instrument doesn't contain the music but to develop it as an extension of the music inside of me.

















Then I found out that there isn't much music in me asking to be let out.

 

[scottbass71]

Thanks Maddog I will give it a try

 

[Psycho Ward]

I recently bought one of those Tascam bass trainers, it really sharpened up my ears quite a bit. I don't know if it's just listening more because of messing with with this thing or what, but it has helped me.

 

[Alvabass]

There are some excellent pieces of shareware for ear training, like EarMaster and Earope. You should give them a try if you're interested on developing your relative pitch skills.

As for perfect pitch, I've never tried those courses but in my opinion they're a fraud. Perfect pitch is something that you have or you don't. Another different history is that maybe you have it but you don't know that, so you can train that skill after you know you have it. To me, the perfect test for determining if someone has perfect pitch is: Have you ever noticed that when a popular singer is interviewed in an entertainment news TV show (for instance) and he/she is asked to sing a fragment of his/her latest hit a capella they never sing it in the same key they recorded it? (I haven't seen the first who do it, at least) If you can sing any song on the same key it was recorded just by sheer memory, that means you have perfect pitch (if you haven't noticed before) and you can work on it (one of those perfect pitch courses may work). But if you can't do it, I think any effort to develop this will be in vain. I can tell you this based on my own experience. I have perfect pitch and I teach an ear training class at the university. Some students have asked me about that and I've told them to take that test. Some of them could do it and after they let me know that I always ask them the actual pitches I play on the piano without any reference and they're gradually improving their perfect pitch ability.

Hope this helps.

 

[Fuzzy Dustmite]

Scott,

Check out www.earplane.com. Cool site with a lot of different ear training stuff, intervals (harmonic & melodic), scales, site reading, etc.

I used to use it a ton, but kind of drifted away from it, for no reason other than that's the way I am .

Hope it helps!

 

[SteveB]

Alvabass, I'm jealous!

I had 4 years of theory classes, and one of my classmates had perfect pitch. She was also 1st chair violin in the school orchestra, go figure!

I always marvelled at her skill. I have excellent relative pitch from my 4 years of courses.. ear training was something we did for a portion of every day. I think I was born with good relative pitch though, 'cause I never had to work at it. Too bad I didn't get perfect pitch!

 

[Alvabass]

Alvabass, I'm jealous!

I had 4 years of theory classes, and one of my classmates had perfect pitch. She was also 1st chair violin in the school orchestra, go figure!

I always marvelled at her skill. I have excellent relative pitch from my 4 years of courses.. ear training was something we did for a portion of every day. I think I was born with good relative pitch though, 'cause I never had to work at it. Too bad I didn't get perfect pitch!

But musically speaking, what really counts is having a good relative ear. I mean, perfect pitch is a cool ability. It's also cool to see others being impressed with that (you feel like an X-Man or something like that), but from the musical point of view is almost useless IMO. OK, maybe it can help you to figure out certain things faster, you don't need to carry a tuning fork, but learning to differentiate intervals regardless of the names of the notes is the real asset a good musician must develop (or be concerned about developing it). You don't need perfect pitch to recognize a Maj7-#9 chord. On the other hand, perfect pitch may be problematic at times. Fortunately I don't play a transpositional instrument like the alto sax, for instance (bass is a transpositional, but to an octave, so notes are spelled the same). It's so complicated to me to read or say a note name knowing that it isn't the real one. I feel I was lucky when I did my diploma concert on double bass: Solo double bass music is written in scordatura, which means that you should tune the bass a major second higher for making it sound brighter. So if a piece is in G major, it is written in G major for the DB, but it sounds in A major. The accompaniment piano part is written in A major. Fortunately, when my diploma concert took place the university hadn't bought an acoustic piano for the auditorium and there was a Yamaha Clavinova there instead. My master agreed that it wasn't a good idea to tune the DB one second higher having orchestral tuning strings installed, so it was just a matter of hitting the transposition key in the Clavinova. There's a guy now who is practicing his DB diploma concert and doesn't have solo tuning strings in his bass (and nobody has them here, plus they're very hard to find and expensive), but now there's an acoustic piano in the auditorium, so he's transcribing all the piano parts one major second lower. That's such a task. Again, I feel I was very fortunate. I think it would take me double the time to learn those pieces played in scordatura.

One thing's for sure: Many people think that guys/gals with perfect pitch don't enjoy live music because they're always aware of out of tune or wrong notes. That's a true misconception. I enjoy live music as much as I can and only smile when I catch something wrong. Besides, you also can detect mistakes with great relative pitch alone. The only diference is that you can't tell note names if you don't have perfect pitch (is that necessary?).

I'm just recalling a single situation in which PP has proved to be VERY USEFUL to me: In the tropical music band I play, there are some tunes in which the pianist transposes his instrument one semitone lower because we decided at rehearsals to change the key and he's too lazy to relearn the song, so he just transposes the keyboard. After playing one of those tunes, most of the times he forgets to return the piano to standard tuning. Fortunately he has the vice of playing some notes before the next tune starts and I always notice it ("Heeey!!! Watch out! The piano is transposed!!!" -it really pisses me off. Why doesn't he learn the tune in the new key??-). But he didn't do it a couple of times and it was a complete disaster. I remember once that we were going to play a tune which started with just the piano and the singer. We just played a "transposed" tune and he didn't "warn me" about that. When they started, no way to stop. I was in my mind like "Ewwww!", Just imagine the result when the rest of the band (a five-piece horn section plus bass and latin percussion) entered.

 

[SteveB]

Alvabass..

Ah, yes.. we just discussed transposing instruments in a 'theory' thread recently. I've been required to compose and score music for concert and non-concert pitch instruments combined. It's a pain! I guess perfect pitch could make that even more of a headache!

That stinks about your keyboard player. Maybe he thinks the rest of the band should learn to play all the other songs 1/2 step lower?

 

[tommyindelaware]

learn to sing all the modes starting on the same note.
sounds silly to most people....but it works very well !!!

Hi Guys and Girls on the forum Question(s) if I may

After a few months of not gigging I have been wood shedding heaps and discovered my ears aren't as good as the use to be

Does any one have any good ear training ideas?
Has anyone tried those "perfect pitch" courses advertised in music mags?

I look forward to your responses

Rock on

Scott

 

[Alvabass]

learn to sing all the modes starting on the same note.
sounds silly to most people....but it works very well !!!

Not silly. It's a great exercise. When learning modes, most people think of C Ionian, D Dorian, E Phrygian (like playing just the white keys on a piano)... but don't think of C Ionian, C Dorian, C Phrygian and so on. Modes should be understood that way from the beginning as well.

 

[phatduckk]

LOL

you guys rule. really ... theory has always escaped me. i wish i knew more and have tried to learn but my attention span hasnt allowed. over the years ive picked up a little here n there and have tried to peice it all together sensibly but its hard. ... im jealous. i gotta get me some books or dvds or something

 

[scottbass71]

Thanks guys for all your help I will try a lot of the things you suggest
This Forum Rocks

Scott

 

[maddog]

Not silly. It's a great exercise. When learning modes, most people think of C Ionian, D Dorian, E Phrygian (like playing just the white keys on a piano)... but don't think of C Ionian, C Dorian, C Phrygian and so on. Modes should be understood that way from the beginning as well.

Aagh! I always get into it with my co-workers on music theory. They see no difference between modes and scales. Also, they think it only takes two notes to make a chord. Just venting. Feel better now.

Tom