Ear training?

[EthanBaldwin]

I am having trouble.

When I hear something, either made up in my head or through someone else's playing, I would like to be able to play, as many of my friends can do. But I really need help on how to figure out how to "play by ear". It is something that would be extremely useful in playing, composition, and improvising.

[Grey Loki]

I am having trouble.

When I hear something, either made up in my head or through someone else's playing, I would like to be able to play, as many of my friends can do. But I really need help on how to figure out how to "play by ear". It is something that would be extremely useful in playing, composition, and improvising.

A nice little fun exercise I like to try is to set my (rather vast) digital music collection playing on 'random', and then try to jam along to tracks - I find having to switch from Toto to NiN to Dream Theater to Reich to any number of other artists in completely different genres helps to speed up 'getting my ear in' on a new piece.

HTH.

[EthanBaldwin]

Okay.... So you have the ability to jam to Steve Reich? Hahahaha, unless there is another Reich that I am unaware of.

Okay, I kinda see what you're saying. I have always been in favor of someone making a CD with tracks specifically made to jam with, kind of like the Jammie(spelling?) Aebersold(spelling? hahahahaha) series for jazz.

[Maddolis]

Improve your knowledge of chords and chord patterns as well (eg use the Trainers at http://www.musictheory.net/ to help with chord and scale/key 'vocabulary' as the other thread puts it, and listen to a lot of jazz or whatever to assist learning chord patterns).

[Grey Loki]

Okay.... So you have the ability to jam to Steve Reich? Hahahaha, unless there is another Reich that I am unaware of.

No, I do mean Steve Reich the minimalist - when I say 'jam', I obviously don't mean shredding out solos - just finding a nice patch on keys and joining in as if I was another musician at the recording; Music for 18 Musicians is quite good for this, as is Drumming.

I wouldn't recommend it with Four Organs or Piano Phase, though ;)

[EthanBaldwin]

Ah, yes. I think something that would be fun would be to "jam" to Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Copland, etc. That would be awesome, hahaha.

But yeah, I see what you mean, I'll try some of these techniques. Still open for suggestions!

[Christopher]

Actually I improved(and improve still) my absolute pitch(don't know if this is the right expression) in 2 steps: I "jam" along with songs humming(as humming is much more forgiving and is possible nearly everytime^^) and then later try to play what I'm humming(Humprovisation!).
I do that mostly because my keyboard is 3 floors down from my PC(with song library and such) and well, plugging my iPod into my keyboard amp never really came to my mind :biggrin:
What music do I hum to? Well... the songs I like to hear: Opeth, DT, Ayreon, but with Opeth I really have to stop myself grunting along instead of humming baselines/solos xD

[EthanBaldwin]

Sounds like a good idea... I kind of need to either buy a keyboard or tune my piano first XD

[Comma]

Humming is good. And having an exposure to the sound. A lot of people develop relative pitch, knowing their C4/A4 so well they can just relate the pitch from there.

I'm lucky, I have perfect pitch (Which has been tainted by over-watching my bands members guitar fingers in their Drop-C# Tuning and playing the Clarinet/Tenor Saxophone), so I've never really analyzed it, but hum/sing along to help yourself out and internalized the more common notes.

Maybe take in a few notes for your pitch basis (Starting with A4 I think), then work from there.

[glassprison]

Humming is ok, but really your pitch will be more steady if you sing it.

My advice is, if you can, take a sight singing and ear training class.
4 months ago, I couldn't have told you anything I was hearing, I didn't hear the difference between intervals, heck! I couldn't even tell you if I was in tune.
After taking a semester of that class, I can hear intervals pretty well, sing a lot better, play what I'm hearing (from the music in my head, and recordings). Everything became easier.

Also, that site posted earlier is a great place to start. It can help you hear different intervals, chords, and scales. It's a really good tool. Just go to trainers, and spend time working on those.

For testing yourself, you could take some music and listen for the different intervals, try to write out what you think it is, then figure it out with your keyboard. And, see how close you were. (Don't worry about what key it's in, if you can hear the right intervals then you're doing great.) Start with simple music that doesn't go through any key changes, and don't try to do the whole song. Just a few bars.