Ear training has been a regular part of my practice routine since the beginning of 2004, when I created the first version of my free online ear training tool. Back then, I couldn't play anything accurately by ear. Every attempt to play by ear felt like trial and error as I went from one bad note to another, hoping to eventually land on the right pitch.

Over the years, my ear training tool has helped me to gradually improve my skills, literally one note at a time. I began playing two notes (intervals) by ear. Once I was fairly accurate with two notes, I added a third note, and so on. Eventually, I reached a point where I could play random melodies that were six and seven notes long. I couldn't play these longer melodies accurately 100% of the time, but I was able to play them accurately most of the time.

Having become decent at six- and seven-note random melodies, I began focusing on even longer sequences that were based on jazz licks and simple songs. I also practiced with faster tempos, thus minimizing the amount of time I could spend thinking about each note. I even added random chord progressions to my online ear training tool, so I could work on all of these ear skills while navigating through chord changes. Basically, I was gradually modifying my ear training studies to come as close as possible to the conditions I'd face in a real improvised jazz solo.

Now that I'm able to play longer melodies and navigate through basic chord changes by ear, I've begun a new phase of ear training. Unlike my previous efforts, this new phase didn't require me to add any new features to my ear training tools. In fact, this new phase doesn't even use my ear training tools. And while this new phase might be new to me, it isn't new at all. It's actually the same form of ear training that pretty much every great musician has used to develop his or her ears since the dawn of recorded music. In this new phase of ear training, I'm finally listening to actual jazz recordings as I try to play back what I hear entirely by ear.

In all honesty, the notion of playing along to recordings isn't truly new to practice routine. I've tried many times over the years to mimic what I hear in jazz recordings. But, until recently, my ability to play by ear wasn't strong enough for me to get very far. At best, I'd pick out a few notes before becoming frustrated and giving up. Now, however, I'm actually able to play entire heads and sections of (slow) solos!

MY ATTEMPT AT EAR TRAINING WITH A JAZZ RECORDING

iwasdoingallright - audio clip Here's a recording of me playing along with "Moonlight Becomes You" from the album "Curtis Fuller with Red Garland." That's Sonny Red Kyner on saxophone.

This recording begins with me listening to the saxophone and playing back what I hear by ear. About half way through the clip, I start to improvise along with the saxophone, as I play over the unfamiliar chords. I don't normally jump so quickly from emulation to improvising when practicing ear training with recordings, but I did so in this clip for demonstration purposes.

This clip captures my first time ever listening to and trying to play along with this Red Garland recording. It probably would have been a good idea to listen to it a couple of times before trying to play along, but I wanted to record the results of hearing something for the first time while trying to play by ear. This gives me a benchmark from which to compare myself in the years to come. It's admittedly not the best recording I've shared (it might be the worst!), but I think you'll agree that I'm at least somewhat successful at playing back the melody by ear and blending in with the chord progression. And I did it all by ear.

BENEFITS OF EAR TRAINING WITH RECORDINGS

• Learn rhythm and phrasing from the masters - My ear training tool already has over 100 jazz licks that I can use for call and response exercises, but let's face it: they sound stiff and lifeless compared to an actual jazz musician. Ear training with recordings allows you to emulate the pitches, rhythm, and phrasing of your favorite jazz musicians. It's like real-time jazz transcription!
• You can practice ear training and improvisation simultaneously - Your ear training doesn't have to be limited to repeating what you hear in the recording. You can also mix in improvisation. For example, you might start with a chorus or two of playing back what you hear in the recording. After that, you could play counter melodies that complement, rather than copy, what you hear in the recordings. And after that, you could go off on your own, improvising over the chords as you challenge your ears to play over the unfamiliar chord changes.
• You can learn new tunes while you train your ear - When I was in college, anytime I wanted to learn a new tune, I'd open the Real Book and commit the tune to memory. Often, I'd memorize new tunes without even hearing the original recording; or any recording, for that matter. And look where that got me - not very far! It would have been much better if I had learned those new tunes directly from the recordings. In doing so, I would have challenged my ear to play what I heard and I would have learned how the tunes were intended to be played.
• You'll never run out of material - A challenge of ear training is keeping things fresh so you're playing by ear rather than playing by memorization. That's the key advantage that software ear trainers have over ear training CDs. The ear training CDs will always play the same exercises over and over and eventually you'll start to learn the sequences by memory. With a good collection of jazz recordings, you'll never run out of new source material to challenge your ears. You could use a free service like Pandora as your source for jazz recordings, or you could use a subscription-based service like Rhapsody. I've been a happy Rhapsody customer for many years and highly recommend it.

ADDITIONAL READING

• Ear training with recordings, part 2 - A sequel to this article, part 2 contains additional ear training exercises
• Learning to improvise: ear training - Learn more about the importance of ear training for jazz improvisation
• Shredding (and playing) by ear - Guitar players strengthen their ears while learning "Stairway..."

Over the past few months I've been working on an ear training application for the iPhone. I finally finished the application last week and I'm pleased to report that it's now available for download from the iTunes App Store!

My iPhone ear training application is called "Play By Ear" and like my other ear training applications, it's free! If you've got an iPhone I hope you'll give it a try and let me know what you think. This is my first iPhone application and I think it's pretty cool. Hopefully you'll agree.

MORE INFORMATION

You'll find a list of the basic features and some tips at my iPhone ear training application's homepage. It's similar to my Java ear training applet, but there are some significant differences. For starters, the iPhone ear training application is a much simpler application. It doesn't have the rhythm section feature, nor does it have stuff like the jazz licks and song-based melodies. The iPhone ear trainer does have one nice feature, though, that my Java ear trainer doesn't: pitch recognition.

Unlike my Java ear trainer, my iPhone ear training application uses pitch detection to listen to the notes you play. It then displays the correct notes as you play them, coloring them red or green depending upon your accuracy. I spent a lot of time tuning the pitch recognition to work with a variety of instruments (trumpet, piano, voice, guitar) and I'm sure I could spend even more time, but in my experience it works pretty well for pitches within an octave or two of a piano's middle C. I tested on both an iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS, but I don't really know if it works on an iPod Touch since it requires a headset to use the microphone. At least that's what I've read.

That's all for now. I just wanted to get out a quick message about my new iPhone ear trainer so you can start using it. Please let me know how it goes!

ADDITIONAL READING

• Read Play By Ear - six months later for the status of the iPhone application six months after its original release.

Last week I attended a master class hosted by jazz trumpeters Joe Gransden and Andy Gravish at Carere Music. As you may know, Joe Gransden is one of the best jazz trumpeters in Atlanta. You can hear him at a variety of Atlanta venues including the wildly popular big band concerts at Cafe 290 (1st and 3rd Monday of each month) and the Tuesday night jam sessions at Twain's. Joe�¢����s also the owner of that beautiful Monette trumpet that I played a couple of months ago. You'll see that horn in the photo below (Joe is on the left, Andy on the right).

No, your eyes aren't deceiving you. They're both playing Monette Prana 3 trumpets.

Perhaps less familiar, at least to my Atlanta readers, is Andy Gravish. Andy Gravish is a New York City based jazz trumpeter who has toured throughout the United States and Europe, playing in bands with notable leaders such as Buddy Rich, Artie Shaw, Paquito D'Rivera , and Toshiko Akiyoshi.

Joe Gransden met Andy Gravish several years ago, when they both lived in New York City. The two became fast friends and would regularly get together to practice jazz improvisation. In a typical practice session, they'd spend hours trading solos, with one person improvising while the other plays a counter melody or bass line. Or sometimes, the person not soloing would simply listen and absorb new ideas to incorporate in his next solo. Which reminds me, I actually had the opportunity to do this very same type of thing with Joe Gransden about a month ago. For about 30 minutes we improvised over the chord changes to Cherokee, without any accompaniment. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and was happy to have (barely) been able to keep up with Joe. And by that, I mean I didn't fall flat on my face. Well, except for a couple of times. But I digress...

Joe and Andy began the masterclass with a demonstration of their old practice sessions. For about ten minutes they played, bouncing ideas off of each other as their solos intertwined. When they finished playing, Joe asked the master class audience to name some of the prerequisites for that type of improvised jazz soloing. A variety of skills were mentioned including having good time, knowledge of the changes, and good trumpet chops. All of these skills are important, but Joe was looking for a different answer that just so happens to be one of my favorite musical topics. Ear training!

JOE GRANSDEN'S INTRODUCTION TO EAR TRAINING

The ear training discussion started with a brief recollection of Joe Gransden's early days in New York City. Fresh out of college, with a degree in jazz performance, Joe was hoping to make a name for himself among the best jazz musicians in with world in New York City. Unfortunately, things didn't go quite according to plan. Try as he might, he couldn't keep up with the New York City jazz musicians. The disparity was especially noticeable when he was forced to play unfamiliar tunes and/or tunes in non-standard keys. For example, if somebody asked Joe to play Cherokee in F#, he would have to transpose the changes in his head from Bb (the standard key). That might be doable at a slow tempo, but I think most of us would struggle if we had to do that in real-time at ~300bpm. Yet, the great NYC jazz musicians could do that and more because they were able to play accurately by ear.

The turning point for Joe Gransden came during a discussion with the great jazz trumpeter, Joe Magnarelli. Gransden mentioned that he owned several transcription and jazz pattern books and was looking for some pointers on how he could use them to improve his playing. Magnarelli's advice was simple and to the point. He told Grandsden to throw the books away. Magnarelli saw the books as a crutch that would hinder Joe's ability to play by ear. In other words, if we aren't exercising our ears by forcing them to guide us through music, then we're likely not to develop them. So, instead of reading from written music, Magnarelli advised Gransden to listen to recordings and learn jazz by ear. And that's what he's been doing ever since.

During the years that followed, Joe has spent many hours playing along with recordings, practicing call and response with other musicians, and testing himself by playing along with random notes he hits on a piano. He can still work with written changes if he needs to, but when he solos it's pretty much all by ear.

As I've mentioned before, I used to be one of those players who are totally dependent upon written music. I was one of the best high school trumpet players in the state of Florida and more than anything I wanted to be a professional jazz musician. It might have been an attainable goal, except for one thing. I couldn't play anything accurately by ear. There simply wasn't any way I could have succeeded as an improvising jazz musician without the ability to play the ideas in my head. So, I quit playing the trumpet. It wasn't until several years later that I realized how foolish I was for not working on ear training when I was younger. Although I guess it wasn't entirely my fault since nobody ever told me about it until my freshman year of college. The good news is that when I finally started playing the trumpet again, I created some ear training tools and have been making steady progress with ear training ever since.

CALL AND RESPONSE WITH THE AUDIENCE

At the end of the master class, Joe Gransden and Andy Gravish played some call and response ear training exercises with the master class participants. About 30 trumpet players were in attendance, with the youngest being high school age. They were all serious about playing the trumpet and a few of the audience members were professional trumpet players who give trumpet lessons. Keep that last part in mind as you read on.

The call and response exercises consisted of Joe or Andy playing a short phrase followed by the entire audience playing the phrase back on their trumpets by ear (i.e. without written music). To keep things simple, the phrases were all based on a concert Bb blues. I was really impressed during the first few attempts since it sounded like most of the people were able to play back the phrases accurately by ear. That changed, however, when Joe asked them to do it with their eyes closed so they couldn't look at his fingers. Since I didn't have my horn, I looked around the room during the closed-eye attempts and noticed that most people were stumbling through the notes as their fingers moved frantically from one valve to another after guessing incorrectly. And it wasn't just the young players who were fumbling. Even some of the professional musicians, the ones giving private lessons, were unable to play blues phrases accurately by ear.

In truth, the professional musicians in the master class don't actually need the ability to play accurately by ear. To my knowledge, none of them are jazz musicians and I'd assume that just about everything they ever need to play is written down. But that doesn't mean they should neglect ear training studies with their students. On the contrary, their students absolutely deserve exposure to ear training. And the sooner the better. You never know, one of those students might dream of becoming a professional jazz musician someday...

STRIKE FIRST, STRIKE HARD, NO MERCY EVER!

To close things out, here's a video clip of Joe Gransden and Andy Gravish playing at Churchill Grounds on the final night of Andy's visit to Atlanta. The clip begins with an energetic drum solo by Kinah Boto. At the two minute mark, you'll hear Joe and Andy as they engage in a friendly trumpet battle (to the DEATH!!!).

Thanks guys!

ADDITIONAL READING

• My ear training tools which feature exercises for all sorts of things including: intervals, chords, melodies, call and response, jazz licks, and more!
• Learning to Improvise - Introduction - Here I discuss the absence of adequate ear training in my jazz education
• Learning to Improvise - Ear Training - Ear training is essential for jazz improvisers!
• Dave Douglas on Ear Training - Yes, THE Dave Douglas

Last year, I saw an announcement from Dave Douglas, mentioning some of the classes he was going to teach at the 2007 Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music. One of the classes, "Ear Training for Improvisers" really piqued my interest. Not only was it an ear training class specifically geared toward improvisation, but it was also being taught by one of my favorite jazz musicians on the scene today.

Real quick, for those who are less familiar with Dave Douglas, here's a (very) brief bio: Dave Douglas is a two-time grammy-nominated jazz trumpet player, composer, and educator who has recorded over twenty-five albums as a leader and he's appeared on over one hundred recordings as a sideman. In addition to leading his own band, Dave Douglas is well known for his work with John Zorn's Masada group and more recently as a member of the SFJazz Collective. Dave Douglas also started his own independent record label, Greenleaf Music. Here's an even shorter bio: Dave Douglas is a bad ass! For more information, read Dave Douglas' official bio.

Since I knew I couldn't attend Dave Douglas' ear training class in person, I sent him an email hoping to learn more about the class and possibly his thoughts about ear training in general. We exchanged a couple of messages after my initial inquiry, and Dave graciously agreed to write an article about ear training for his GreenleafMusic.com blog. He did warn me, however, that it would probably take several months due to his busy playing and touring schedule. And boy has he been busy. Since that first email Dave Douglas toured around the world with the SFJazz Collective and separately with his own band, he composed a 75-minute suite for big band and quartet, and he recorded and released a new live album with his Keystone band. Oh, and don't forget all the other requests he has to contend with from demanding fans like me!

Given Dave Douglas' hectic schedule, I wasn't expecting him to send me anything more than a few paragraphs about ear training. And honestly, I would have been thrilled just to get that. So, you can imagine my surprise and delight when Dave recently sent me six pages worth of ear training exercises and valuable insight!

Below, I'll highlight a few sections of Dave Douglas' ear training article. I encourage you to read the entire article at the GreenleafMusic.com blog.

IS EAR TRAINING IMPORTANT?

If you've read any of my ear training articles, you already know my answer to the above question (hint: my answer rhymes with "chess"). While I'm absolutely confident in my beliefs about ear training, it certainly helps to have some supporting evidence about the importance of ear training, especially when that evidence comes from professional musicians.

I think the following paragraph from Dave Douglas says it all:

Ear training is the most valuable training for any musician, and maybe most of all for an improviser. Improvisation puts a musician on the spot in unpredictable ways -- you have only your ears to help you learn what's going on and decide how to respond to events or initiate them. Basically ear training underlies anything a musician does: melody, harmony, rhythm, timbre, form, density, community (who you are playing with), legacy (how you choose to deal, or not deal, with the traditions of music). You name it -- to be handled fully it has got to be heard deeply and accurately.

IS EAR TRAINING QUICK AND EASY?

If you've searched around for ear training materials, you've probably seen at least one of those ear training programs boasting super fast results. Some even go so far as to suggest that you can develop perfect pitch within a few weeks. I fell for one of these programs myself, many years ago (it was a waste of money). Unfortunately, I've yet to find a "silver bullet" for ear training. It's much more realistic to say that while most methods of ear training will improve your aural skills, the results come slowly, and only through practice and perseverance. Ear training can also be very humbling when you realize you can't play simple things accurately by ear. Dave Douglas echoes these sentiments in the following statement:

Ear training takes a lot of time to master, and it seems like the more you work on it the more you see your own shortcomings. It's slow going...

I don't know about you, but I certainly feel a lot better about my own progress with ear training now that I know a fantastic jazz musician like Dave Douglas can relate to the slow (and frustrating) process of ear training.

EAR TRAINING EXERCISES

In his ear training article, Dave Douglas describes several exercises which became part of his practice routine at one time or another. There's a lot of great detail in this section, so be sure to check out the original article for more information. Following are some highlights from Dave Douglas' ear training exercises:

Practice With A Metronome

Dave Douglas illustrates several different ways to practice with a metronome, including everything from playing along to clicks on 2 and 4, to subdividing individual beats so each metronome click represents dotted quarter and dotted half notes. He even goes on to explain how you can use the metronome to practice over tricky meters like 7/8 and 9/8. As Dave states, "These exercises are about developing a solid time feel. Part of my motivation stems from the philosophy that each musician in an ensemble should be equally responsible for the time."

I occasionally practice with a metronome on 2 and 4, but I hadn't even thought about some of these more advanced ideas. I'll definitely give some of them a try, but I probably won't spend too much time with the 7/8 and 9/8 stuff. I'll leave that to the pro's ;-).

Seeing Structures

Dave Douglas' structure exercises involve taking a section, or cell, of music and using that section as source material for improvisation. The improvised material should be the same length as the source material, should sound at least somewhat similar, and should be followed by a repetition of the original source material. For example, let's say you begin with a melody that's two measures long. You'd start out by playing that two-measure melody at a steady tempo (this is a good time to use that metronome). After playing the original melody, you'd improvise for two measures, keeping your improvisation faithful to the original melody. You might stick to the same notes, the same rhythms, the same dynamics, the same general form, whatever. The main point is that the improvised section should be derivative of the original melody and it should be two measures long. After those two improvised measures you'd replay the original two-measure section followed by another two measures of improvisation and so on.

I currently practice a variation of Dave's structure exercises when practicing licks from jazz transcriptions. I'll pick a measure or two that I really like from a transcription and I'll use that lick as the inspiration for my improvisation, occasionally returning to the original lick. If the lick has lot of interval leaps, I'll have a lot of leaps in my solo. If it's bluesy, I'll also try to play bluesy. You get the idea. I don't, however, obey such a regimented structure where I improvise for the same length of the original lick nor do I repeat the original lick after each improvised section. I'm definitely going to spend some quality time doing this exercise as Dave Douglas describes to see where it leads me.

Playing In All Keys

Dave Douglas' final ear training recommendation involves playing music without written materials, in every key. As Dave states, "It should be obvious that this skill is important in improvisation because it entails, essentially, the removal of barriers between the musical imagination and the musical instrument." In other words, the ability to play equally well in any key, and actually without even thinking about key, frees you to play any musical idea that pops into your mind. Dave recommends taking a familiar tune and playing it without written material in each of the twelve keys. You'll only use your ears to guide you from one note to the next.

If you've tried either of my ear training tools, you know that I've got several different exercises to help you play melodies by ear in every key. My simple song randomizer will give you random tune names and starting notes and my ear training applet has random melodies, simple songs, and jazz licks, all of which can be sequenced and modulated. You can even modulate the melodies over the complete cycle of 5th (and 4ths).

A side note... As you probably noticed, Dave Douglas doesn't like to use the term "playing by ear" to specifically mean playing without written materials. In his mind, all music is played "by ear" even when reading from written music, since we're always using our ears to guide us on some level. For instance, even if you're reading from written music, your ears are still able to tell you whether or not you hit a wrong note or whether or not you're out of tune. So, to Dave, there's always a "by ear" element to playing music. I definitely see where Dave is coming from on this and he obviously sees where I, and others, are coming from when we talk about playing (exclusively) by ear. We simply have a different default definition of the phrase "playing by ear". Just thought I'd address that in case anyone was confused, since I use the phrase "playing by ear" throughout this site.

THANK YOU DAVE DOUGLAS!

Dave posted his ear training article to his GreenleafMusic.com blog a few days ago and I've already seen it re-posted on a couple of jazz message boards (TrumpetMaster, TalkBass). No doubt, his article will inspire and motivate more people to spend time with ear training in their daily practice routines. I, for one, am extremely grateful to him for taking the time to share his thoughts about ear training.

If you haven't heard much of Dave Douglas' music, I'd recommend starting with his "Live at the Jazz Standard" recording, which was released in 2007. The interplay between Dave and saxophonist, Donny McCaslin, is crazy good. It's an excellent example of what you can do with strong aural skills!

ADDITIONAL READING

• In April, 2012 I attended a Dave Douglas master class that discussed composition and ear training.

This post lists all of the updates I've made to the latest version of my ear training tool. The ear training tool is free to use and contains exercises for intervals, chords, random melodies, call-and-response, jazz improvisation, and more!

TRY MY EAR TRAINING TOOL!

If you'd like to learn more about the importance of ear training, especially for jazz improvisers, please read my Learning To Improvise - Introduction and Learning To Improvise - Ear Training articles. Also, the ear trainer itself contains a lot more information.

RECENT UPDATES

UPDATE 3/10/13 - Random melodies now includes diminished and altered scale options.

UPDATE 10/25/12 - The ear training tool now saves most (if not all) of the settings from your previous session, so you won't have to re-check your interval, chord, etc options every time you use the ear trainer. Also, Mac users with Java version 7 or above will now use a higher-quality MIDI soundbank.

UPDATE 1/24/12 - Random melodies no longer repeat notes sequentially unless you only have two notes to choose from. I added dozens of scale patterns to the random melody feature. There's a new jazz blues progression on the RSection tab and you can now generate random chord progressions of mixed chord types. For example, if you select one of the "Mixed..." options under the RSection "Randomization" menu, it will generate a single sequence that includes random keys and progression types like "C7 Eb-7 F Bb-7b5" etc. I also tried to fix some of the Mac OSX audio issues, but my research and tinkering suggests that the Java runtime's MIDI sequencer isn't reliable on Macs right now, especially with the long sequences generated by the RSection tab.

UPDATE 4/10/10 - My iPhone ear training application, Play By Ear, saves the various settings after you use the ear trainer. I've become used to that and whenever I return to my online ear training application, it feels tedious to always have to set the key center, the play mode, and some of the other basic options. Well, as of today that's no longer the case! The main options that you set every time are now stored in a cookie so I can recover them on your next visit. I also added some new keyboard commands so you can now press ">" to play the next exercise, "<" to stop, "m" to do a melodic repeat, and "n" to do a harmonic repeat. That was requested in the comments by Sam.

UPDATE 9/12/09 - Thanks to a suggestion from Jean-Francois, the starting cadence now has a "Follow Exercise Key" option. When selected, the ear training tool will play a major cadence in whatever key the next exercise is about to use.

UPDATE 7/26/09 - I added "drop 2" to the inversions shown on the chords tab thanks to the suggestion from a guitarist named Rod. Drop 2 chords move the second highest note of 4-note chords to bottom of the chord voicing.

UPDATE 5/10/09 - I added some new modulation options to the ear training tool's Advanced tab. The new random cycle feature works like the existing Circle of Fourths & Fifths features, however you now have random movement and a shorter 3-time option. I also added a few more tunes to the "Simple Song" option under the Melodies tab.

UPDATE 4/28/09 - The RSection's chord progressions now include Randomization within a single exercise. For example, you could setup randomization so every 4 measures the key changes randomly to one of your selected "Keys To Play." This is a great workout for your ears as you try to improvise over randomly changing chords.

UPDATE 3/15/09 - The ear training tool's Random Melody feature now includes a chromatic scale option which includes more note options (higher and lower notes) than if you select individual notes.

UPDATE 2/6/09 - I added "Cherokee" to the RSection's list of chord progressions.

UPDATE 1/2/09 - I've had several requests for altered chords and finally got around to adding some to the ear trainer. You'll find the new ones on the online version of the ear trainer, on the "Chords" tab.

UPDATE 6/1/08 - As requested by Svetlana, the ear trainer's interval and chord samples now obey your "Root Note" settings. This allows you to specify a specific root note for all of the samples, or you can have random root notes if you select the "Any" option.

UPDATE 5/25/08 - Thanks to a suggestion from George, you can now click on interval and chord names to play a sample. Each sample will adhere the settings you specified in the ear training tool options. For example, if you click on "Perfect 5th" and you have the "Sequence Type" set to "Harmonic" the ear trainer will play the interval harmonically (both notes at the same time).

UPDATE 3/2/08 - I just added cycle-based modulation to my ear training tool. Cycle-based modulation will play the existing exercise over and over again, changing keys through the cycle of 4th's or 5th's. I recommend that you try this with random melodies, jazz licks, and simple song exercises (all under the Melodies tab). By playing the same exercise through a circle of 4th's/5th's, you're challenging yourself to play something by ear, but you're also giving your ears a chance to become familiar with the new melody, thus making the exercise a little easier. You'll find the new cycle-based modulation option on the Advanced tab of the ear training tool.

UPDATE 1/27/08 - I've been meaning to add compound intervals to the ear training tool for a while now, but George's comment today finally made it happen. You'll now see a new "Compound" checkbox on the intervals page!

UPDATE 1/26/08 - I added a "Starting Cadence" feature to my ear training tool (online version only for the time being). Several people have asked for this feature because it gives a reference point from which other notes can be identified. It also allows you to hear intervals, melodies, etc, within a key. You'll see the "Starting Cadence" dropdown on the "Controls" panel. If you don't want to use the cadence, simply set it to None.

ARCHIVED UPDATES

UPDATE 12/25/07 - I added about a dozen more simple songs to the ear training tool's random melody feature. That makes a total of 72 different simple song melodies! You can access these by selecting "Key for simple song" under the "Each box is a..." dropdown on the "melodies" tab.

UPDATE 11/4/07 - Version v2_22 introduces simple song melody exercises to my ear training tool. Right now there are about 25 different simple song melodies that will randomly play, but it's my goal to eventually have over 100! You'll find the new simple song melody option in the "Each box is a..." dropdown located on the Melodies tab. I'll update the offline version of the ear trainer once this new version has had a few solid days of testing.

UPDATE 9/8/07 - Version v2_21 of the ear training tool adds three new features. The first new feature is the ability to change the octave range of the exercises. The new octave options appear in the "Key Center" drop-down. This is particularly useful for bass players and other people wishing to expand the lower (or higher) ranges of their ear training. The second new feature is the ability to toggle between treble and bass clef in the staff. To do so, click on the little blue arrow icon located near the treble/bass clefs. When necessary, "8va" or "8vb" will display beneath the clefs. This lets you know that the notes shown on the staff are being played one or more octaves higher (8va) or lower (8vb) than the staff notation. The third new feature is the addition of Major7th jazz licks for call-and-response exercises.

UPDATE 7/8/07 - Version v2_20 of the ear training tool includes Major7th jazz licks as well as a few more Dominant 7th jazz licks.

UPDATE 6/25/07 - Version v2_19 of the ear trainer contains a lot of little updates and one big update. The little updates are mostly GUI-related, so you'll probably find them on your own. The big update is the introduction of jazz licks to both random melodies and the rhythm section's call-and-response feature. Also, you can now select between a short and long call-and-respnose phrase. So far I've only got Dominant 7th jazz licks going, but I'm definitely going to add licks to Major, Minor, Half-Diminished, and Diminished chord types. This will be an ongoing process, so you can expect a lot of "jazz lick" updates in the coming months.

If you've got some jazz licks handy, feel free to send them over. If I think they're suitable for the ear training tool and for the audience of this site, I'll definitely put them in. For inclusion with the ear training tool, they should be 2 measures of eigth notes followed by a single note and the key should be clearly labeled. Also, the lick shouldn't be over a progression, but rather a single chord type (one of the following: CMaj7, C7, CMin7, C7b5, CDim). Here's an example of what I'm looking for (I used finale notepad for this):

UPDATE 5/19/07 - I added interaction between a computer keyboard and the ear trainer's piano. The various keys to press are now shown on the ear trainer's piano. If for some reason you want to disable keyboard interaction, you can do so under the ear trainer's advanced tab.

UPDATE 4/8/07 - I made a few changes to the ear trainer's rhythm section feature today, including a slightly modified layout and some new chord/progression types. New chord/progression types include Half-Diminished 7th, Diminished 7th, Minor II-V7-I, and Minor Blues. Some of these additions are in response to visitor requests, so thank you to all who have helped improve the tool. I haven't had much time to test yet, so please let me know if you run into any problems.

UPDATE 1/24/07 - This past weekend I added a new call and response feature to my ear trainer. I've been using it for a couple of days now and I think it's worth sharing with all of you...

The new feature offers note-limiting call and response with randomly generated rhythms and melodies (there's a new drop-down menu on the RSection tab). When I get a chance, I'll record a clip or two of me practicing along with it, but for now you can listen to examples of similar call and response exercieses in my LEARNING TO IMPROVISE - RHYTHM article. Those clips are done by me with an Aebersold, but they should give you a general idea of how to practice with this new feature.

I have a lot more planned for these sorts of call and response activities. So much so that I'll probably end up creating a new tab just to contain it all. I'll also make it easier to use and control.

UPDATE 1/14/07 - Fixed issue where random melodies were playing notes outside of selected scales. The online and offline versions has been updated with this latest version.

UPDATE 12/5/06 - Fixed issue where Root Note option no longer worked for intervals and chords.

UPDATE 12/2/06 - I've had a few people ask if they can download and run the ear trainer when they're offline. As of today, the answer is YES! Just DOWNLOAD THIS FILE, then unzip and open home.htm.

UPDATE 11/19/06 - Fixed several more bugs, including issues where wide modulations went too high or low. I've now successfully tested the new ear trainer in Firefox 1.0.x (Linux), Firefox 1.5.x (Win, OSX, Linux), Firefox 2.0 (Win), Opera 8.5. (Win), Safari, IE6 (Win), IE7 (Win). Please let me know if you have any problems with different (yet still widely-used) browsers.

UPDATE 11/19/06 - I just added some audio files to my ear trainer 2.0 page. The audio files were recorded during various parts of my daily ear training routine. Hopefully they'll give you a better idea of how I use the ear trainer to practice. Additionally, there are some new auto-configure links next to each audio file which will setup the ear trainer to play the same exercise you hear in the clip.

Also worth mentioning is the new ear training home page. I created it for anyone who wants to link to my ear training tools. On the landing page, you'll see links to both ear training tools, descriptions of each tool, and some background information about ear training.

UPDATE 11/11/06 - Fixed a couple of bugs and added II-V7-I progressions to the rhythm section feature.

UPDATE 10/28/06 - I fixed a couple stability problems that occur when the applet first loads. I can't say for certain, but it might even fix the problem with Firefox 1.0.x. I've also noticed that the rhythm section feature seems a lot smoother under version 1.5.x of the Java JRE than it sounds in 1.4.x. 1.4.x may sound a little choppy...

UPDATE 10/10/06 - A few people have reported that it does in fact work in Firefox on OSX, at least with Firefox 1.5.x. The one instance where it didn't work in Firefox and OSX, the person was using Firefox 1.0.3, so maybe it was just an issue with that early version of Firefox.

UPDATE 10/4/06 - I've heard from a few people that the new ear trainer does work properly with Safari browsers. Apparently there is an issue with Firefox on OSX, however. If you happen to have OSX and a Firefox browser, please give it a try and let me know how it works.

Tonight I also added blues and rhythm changes! I still need to work on the piano part to get it smoother for rhythm changes (especially with leaps in range), but I think the bass is sounding pretty good...

10/1/06 - Today I finished version 2.0 (BETA) of my Ear Trainer. It's hot off the press and lightly tested, so some bugs are to be expected. Also, I've only tested on IE6 (Win), Firefox 1.5.x (Win and Linux), and Opera 8.5 (Win), so I have no idea how well it works in Safari and other browsers.

There are quite a few little new features, and one big one, which I'll let you find for yourself. Please give it a try and let me know if you run into any problems.

I receive quite a few emails from people who are just getting started with ear training. Usually they've read a few of my ear training articles and they might have even tried one of my free online ear training tools. They're eager to improve their ability to play by ear, however they're also frustrated by their early attempts at ear training. The simplest of intervals elude them and chords sounds like a mishmash of notes. At this early stage it's easy to give up and so they wonder: do we need to be born with the ability to play by ear, or can we really learn it through practice?

I think it's natural for people to wonder if the ability to play by ear can actually be learned, especially when you consider how few people seem to have the ability. In an average high school band program, for example, the vast majority of students can't play anything accurately by ear. They might be capable instrumentalists, but they can't play any music unless it's written down. I was one of these students myself. When I was in high school, I just assumed that everyone depended upon written music (unless they memorized the written notes). I had no idea I was musically-challenged!

It wasn't until I was a junior in high school that I finally encountered somebody who could play anything perfectly by ear. I discovered his ability one day while I was rehearsing a tricky spot in one of my solo pieces. He was standing about ten feet away from me, listening to me play the same three or four measures over and over again. When I stopped to take a break he picked up his trombone and played the exact passage I had been playing, and it was perfect. I asked him how he was able to figure out the notes without reading the music and he stated simply, “I don't know how I do it, I just can.” Shortly thereafter I then tried to play by ear a few times myself but failed miserably. I couldn't even get close to the right pitches. In the end I figured it was something you had to be born with so I stopped trying. Boy do I wish I hadn't given up...

As I discussed in an earlier ear training article, I believe the reason that most of us cannot play by ear stems from our music education. Most of the people I knew in middle and high school learned how to play their instruments the same way I learned, in concert band class. From day one, everything we were ever asked to play was written down and we never bothered trying to play anything unless we had written music to read from. Unfortunately, since we didn't try to play by ear that ability was never developed and we ended up with poor aural skills. While band classes churn out loads of students who are similarly dependent upon written music, there is a relatively large group of musicians who can play well by ear precisely because they learned to play WITHOUT reading music all the time. To which group of instrumentalists am I referring? Well, I suppose you might guess from the picture... I'm saluting those who are about to rock: guitarists.

When I attended music school in college, I was surprised to discover that almost all of the guitarists that I knew could play very well by ear. There were plenty of occasions where they'd hear a melodic passage and within seconds they'd be playing it perfectly on their guitar. Similarly, they could listen to a tune for the first time and readily figure out all of the chords by ear. I'm not saying every guitarist can play well by ear, but in my experience all of the good ones could play at least fairly well by ear. By comparison, all of the good trumpet players I knew couldn't play well by ear. In fact, most of the trumpet players and other concert band instrumentalists that I knew in college couldn't play much of anything by ear. So, why were the guitarists so much better at playing by ear? It would have been too much of a coincidence to suggest that they were all born with the ability. No, that wasn't it. They were better because that's how they learned to play.

Guitarists are a great example of how the ability to play by ear can indeed be learned. While us band class students were only playing stuff that was written down, guitarists were learning tunes and riffs by ear from day one. Imagine the budding guitarist who wants to learn the solo from Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven." Believe it or not, there was a once a time when he or she couldn't readily access the full score to that solo (the horror!). Instead, the "Stairway..." solo had to be learned entirely by ear, note for note, while listening to the original recording over and over. Similarly, if you wanted to learn the Hendrix intro to “Hey Joe,” you didn't look at sheet music. You learned directly from the recording. This continual process of learning from recordings would gradually improve one's ability to play by ear, making each successive tune easier to pick up. In time the ability to play by ear becomes second-nature. Coincidentally, learning by ear is also how the early jazz musicians learned to play jazz. It really is the best way to develop strong aural skills and those lucky guitarists just stumbled into it!

It's funny to me how the band geeks (French horn and trumpet players, I'm looking at you) get all high and mighty about how they're real musicians because they can read music and because they play serious stuff like John Philip Sousa marches and tunes by Aaron Copeland, yet it's those devoted guitarists who are more actively developing the skills required to become real musicians. To be fair, though, guitarists do have an advantage. As a guitarist you can't help but want to learn all of the riffs and solos of your favorite rock songs. After all, you hear those songs all the time and the lead instrument is the same thing you play: dude, the guitar! And due to the fact that those riffs aren't all written down for you, you're pretty much forced to learn them by ear. As a French horn player, however, you'll probably NEVER hear your instrument in popular music so you're much less likely want to pick up your horn and emulate something you hear on the radio. That's too bad for us band geeks. We missed out on a lot of free ear training practice. The good news is that it's never too late to start learning to play by ear.

Before I go, I would like to encourage the young guitarists of today to resist the urge to learn tunes from the abundant online tab archives. Sure, it's easier to play something if you've got all the notes in front of you, but doing so will make you a music-dependent band geek just like the rest of us. And that's not rock and roll at all...

ADDITIONAL READING

For more information about ear training and jazz improvisation, as well as introductions to my ear training tools, check out my Learning to Improvise - Ear Training article.

PLAY BY EAR - SUPPORTING EVIDENCE

In my Learning to Improvise series and elsewhere on this site, I've written about the importance of ear training and the ability to play by ear. I firmly believe that the ability to play by ear is an essential skill for quality jazz improvisation. Put simply, if you can't play well by ear you'll never be able to play the ideas in your head. You might be able to get by as a "lick" player, playing one pre-learned jazz lick after another, but that's not what I'd call quality jazz improvisation.

While I'm totally confident about my belief in the importance of playing by ear, I'm sure some readers of this site would appreciate a little more evidence before they begin to ear training seriously. After all, I'm by no means a great player (my jazz recordings are testament to that fact) and I certainly don't have a degree in music or music education (I dropped out!). With these facts in mind, it's perfectly understandable that some of you approach my views with skepticism.

To add some additional credibility to my views about ear training and playing by ear, I've created this ongoing article. Here, I'll feature interviews and articles where professional (jazz) musicians and educators discuss the importance of playing by ear. With any luck, their views (along with my own) will give you the confidence and motivation you need to start learning to play by ear. And when you are ready to start, be sure to try my free ear training tools.

If you have any articles you'd like me to add to this page, please send me a message.

ROY HARGROVE
Jazz Trumpeter

Excerpt:

Richard Scheinin: What do you teach the young players who come under your wing?

Roy Hargrove: I tell them 99 percent of this whole game is about ear training. You have to be able to hear the music and play it on the spot. You don't get a chance to go home and work on it.

Full Article:

mercurynews.com, December 26, 2012

ROY HARGROVE
Jazz Trumpeter

Excerpt:

Don't sleep on the ear training, because if you can play what you hear, you're about halfway there. Most of the time when people hire you, they just want to know if you can play what you hear. Leaders don't want to have to bother with writing out a lot of music. They want to be able to give you a recording of something, you listen to it, and then you know it. That's basically what they are paying you to do.

Full Article:

jazztimes.com, December 2008

DAVE DOUGLAS
Jazz Trumpeter, Educator

Excerpt:

Ear training is the most valuable training for any musician, and maybe most of all for an improviser. Improvisation puts a musician on the spot in unpredictable ways -- you have only your ears to help you learn what's going on and decide how to respond to events or initiate them. Basically ear training underlies anything a musician does: melody, harmony, rhythm, timbre, form, density, community (who you are playing with), legacy (how you choose to deal, or not deal, with the traditions of music). You name it -- to be handled fully it has got to be heard deeply and accurately. It's as simple as focused hearing.

Full Article:

greenleafmusic.com blog, July 7, 2008

STEVE VAI
Rock Guitarist

Article Excerpt:

I could never overstate the importance of a musician's need to develop his or her ear. Actually, I believe that developing a good "inner ear" -- the art of being able to decipher musical components solely through listening -- is the most important element in becoming a good musician.

Full Article:

Guitar World, March 3, 2016

JIMMY BRUNO
Jazz Guitarist

Excerpts:

JB: A lot of people suffer from the misconception that you begin by thinking, 'If I play these notes over this chord then I'll make some music.' First you make the music and then, later, sure go ahead and analyze it, but it should only be after the fact, after the music's been played

JB: You have to break free from thinking about a certain scale over a certain chord and you have to listen to what you're playing to really understand the nature of the instrument. I find people sometimes are just moving their fingers and not really listening. -Rick's note: this is definitely one of problems with knowing theory but not knowing how to play by ear. You end up rambling your way from one safe note to the other but you don't how things will sound until after each note comes out.

JB: ...the other point I want to make, is that with all the 'real books' and 'fake books' available today, while people learn tunes from them, you can never develop an ear for music with them. If people learn music from CDs they have to really listen, to hear the music. When I was younger we'd all play records over and over again and figure out what the guitarist was playing -- note by note. It really doesn't take that long if you sit down with a CD player and figure out music the old way. Within two years, most people would have developed a fairly good ear. The education thing is a double-edged sword. The books are great sources for people who can already play guitar, but I think they're a detriment to someone just starting out...

Full Article:

modernguitars.com, February 3, 2005

In addition to stressing the importance of using your ear, Jimmy also touches upon motifs, note limiting, and the importance of learning by listening. It's well worth the read.

CHASE SANBORN
Jazz Trumpeter, Educator

Excerpts:

CS: The jazz musician needs two basic abilities in order to improvise a solo: You must be able to play what you hear. You must be able to hear something worth playing.

CS: Ideally, all music should be taught by ear. Explaining to a student that a C7 (b9) chord calls for a diminished scale is virtually useless until she not only recognizes the sound of that chord and scale, but also has heard it used in context. Every day you should learn something by ear, simply trying to reproduce on your instrument what you hear. This is the way all the great jazz musicians learned to play, and even today, when most jazz musicians have had the benefit of jazz education, most will tell you that they really learned to improvise by listening and copying, rather than by reading jazz improv texts or practicing scales and patterns.

Full Article:

trumpetguild.org youth site

I have to say, when I first read this article by Chase Sanborn I was really surprised to discover the importance that he places on playing by ear. The surprising part wasn't the message itself (since I obviously agree with it), but rather I was surprised by the person delivering it. I say this because I've read Chase's book "Jazz Tactics: Jazz Explained" from cover to cover and not once does he even remotely mention the importance of ear training or playing by ear. Not once! Instead, it's just another book on theory. This is a real shame since I know "Jazz Tactics" is a favorite among many beginning jazz musicians, especially trumpet players. All of those people would benefit tremendously to learn about ear training and the importance of playing by ear, but they won't read a single page about it in "Jazz Tactics"...

JOHN MURPHY
Jazz Saxophonist, Educator

In 2006, I interviewed John Murphy on the subject of ear training. Follow are a few excerpts from that interview:

JM: Very high levels of aural skills are necessary. Hearing well is fundamental.

JM: Ear training is essential. If you're going to build a cohesive solo, you need to recognize cohesiveness when you hear it in someone's solo and you need to hear what you are playing.

JM: I want my students to develop a seamless kind of musicality in which they can sing everything they play, play and write down what they hear, and hear what they read in notation.

Full Article:

John Murphy - ear training interview

GREG FISHMAN
Jazz Saxophonist, Educator

Excerpts:

GF: The academic approach I've seen used in a lot of schools is one that trains students by sight, rather than by sound. In other words, students are taught reading - looking at dots on the page, moving your fingers based on those dots on the page, and figuring out how to count. These are definitely valuable tools. However, I feel that there is not really enough emphasis on what the student is hearing in his head. Students look at the chord on the page and they have been trained that it is "appropriate" to play an E or a Bb when they see a C7 chord. Those are fine note choices, but if you just play them because you're "supposed" to, that's not a good enough reason. You need to hear them for yourself.

GF: Some students learn to play a diminished whole-tone scale when they see an altered dominant chord, and so they are going to play it because it is the "correct" thing to do. The problem with that is that it's meaningless if they arrive at those note choices by theory alone, and not by ear. I call this phenomenon "empty note playing." These are notes without specific harmonic intent. The notes may be technically correct, but they won't be as convincingly played as the same notes arrived at by a gut-level, emotional feeling to play those particular sounds.

GF: Many of today's players learn to play jazz in college. As a result, I think that a lot of them have more of an academic approach to the music. Many of the older musicians didn't have much academic training, and I think that's why they had much more of a "gut level" approach. I call it a visceral approach to playing. This approach relies much more on the ear and gut-level feeling than on intellect.

Full Article:

Greg Fishman interview at saxontheweb.net

The Greg Fishman excerpts shown above begin near the bottom of the second page of the interview. Greg's description of "empty note playing" closely resembles my experiences with jazz theory as explained in my Learning to Improvise - Jazz Theory article. Like many aspiring (and struggling) jazz musicians, I was using theory as my primary method for choosing which notes to play in my solo. The notes may have fit in with the chords, but my ears weren't guiding their selection. Consequently, my solos sounded like I was just playing one random note after another, with no melodic interest whatsoever. Theory is a useful tool for jazz improvisation, but to successfully play the ideas in your head, your ears need to be the primary guide for note choice.

MICKEY BAKER
Jazz Guitarist

The following is an excerpt from Mickey Baker's Complete Course in Jazz Guitar, Book 1, which has remained a popular guitar instruction book since it was originally published in 1955.

MB: Before we go into this I want to make a few points clear to you, and you should always keep this in mind. It is impossible for anyone to teach you how to feel music, this is, to stand up and play solos one after another. This has to come from your soul. Now, in order to develop a soul for music, these are the things you must do constantly. Practice playing your guitar with records, listen to solos by horn players, learn to steal solos from records. Anything that you hear another musician play, try to play it yourself. Strum the chords to any song that you like and hum ideas, - then apply the ideas to the guitar. This will be hard to do at first and some of it may sound silly, but if you keep doing this long enough you will develop an ear for music, and once you have an ear you'll be stealing solos from everybody and building your own ideas around them. You will also develop a beautiful soul for music which will in time enable you to play anything you want to at will.