Ear training is extremely important for understanding and creating music. Unfortunately, it's also typically absent from early stages of mainstream music education. I created a couple of ear training tools to help improve my skills. Hopefully, these tools and my experiences will strengthen your aural skills as well. Featured posts: Ear training tool - version 2.0 // Play by ear - supporting evidence // Ear training - reader email // Suzuki method - music education // John Murphy - ear training interview // Starting at the bottom // More of my ear training articles // Ear training and improvisation
Archived "Ear Training" blog entries are listed in the left-hand column.
This is WAY cool Rick. Great tool. I will definitely pump it up on my site next message...
Thanks, Eric!
I forgot to mention in my original post that I hope to grow the current list of "simple songs". If anybody has any suggestions, please don't hold back...
Hey Rick - quick question for you... how would you suggest someone get started with the ear training tool on your site? Maybe start with intervals? Major triads? Minor triads? If possible, approach your comments from the perspective of a cat not doing a lot of ear training.
Thanks Bro!
I recommend that you start with intervals, since they are the building blocks for all chords and melodies. You'll want to learn them one by one, so you can both identify and sing all intervals in ascending and descending order. I'd start out with ascending order and add descending later. I'm going to be building one more ear-training tool to help learn intervals, but it won't be ready for a while.
As you gain mastery with intervals, you'll probably notice that intervals are jumping out at you when you listen to music. This occurs more and more as your ear improves. Eventually, entire phrases will jump out and you'll be able to play them entirely by ear.
While building your interval skills, you should try some simple song playing (with my new randomizer!) and random melody playing (with my original ear training tool). For each of those, you'll find some guidelines below the tools.
My ear training tools are still somewhat a work in progress. Once I've got the last tool built, I'll put together some more material for getting started, daily practice, etc. Hopefully the above will help for now.
Tremendously. Thanks Rick.
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