Hi!
I play guitar for a less than a year. I try to develop my ear singing a major scale with and without playing it on the guitar... What I'm looking for is more exercises that I could practice away from my guitar, in car or public transport (so, no singing!) on the way to work and back.
Any ideas?
Thanks!
If you are after ear training (intervals, notes, harmonies, etc) software there's a great application called Karajan for the iPhone ( http://www.karajan-eartrainer.com/en/ . If you are after PC/Mac applications, there are many to choose from (one of them is http://www.earmaster.com/ . I believe that there are also some free sites out there....
Another option if you don't have a smart phone but do have an MP3 player is to get one of the CD type courses and use the shuffle play on the MP3 player (after ripping the CD into MP3s of course). You could do pure listening exercises on the bus but if you're in the car you really should try just lightly singing the Do and the note you need to identify - it will help stick it in your head better.
As far as the singing practice you need to extend it beyond just singing the scale from Do to Do. Some of the CD type courses you could get for the option above will have a book with it that includes a number of good exercises. One that you should consider is to sing the scale by alternately referring back to Do. So, what you would do is pick a Do (play it on the guitar to give you a starting pitch) and then sing: Do Re Do Mi Do Fa Do Sol Do La Do Ti Do DO (octave up Do) Do. When you can do that go the other way (which is harder): DO Ti DO La DO Sol DO Fa DO Mi DO Re DO Do DO. You want to do both of these to make sure that you have the intervals from Do (or DO) in your head and not just the 1/2 and whole step intervals (the distances from the preceding scale degree).
There are a lot more beyond that but any good book/CD set you get should cover them.
Pop music is about stealing pocket money from children. - Ian Anderson
