I'd like to add to what David said, the best thing you can do is listen.
I try to apply this to scales. I will play each tone and sing or hum the notes. Then I try to make up a little melody and judge the intervals. This is really great practice. With enough practice you will be able to play solos in your head (in that particular scale) almost naturally, just as you naturally sing a melody without thought. But you have to practice it all the time to be really good at it.
That sounds like a great way to do it. :)
I've also been trying playing chords and singing the root note until it feels fairly solid. Then I pluck one of the other notes in the chord before I play the full chord and then hum/sing that note over the chord.
I already have two instruments that I'm trying to learn to match and complement each other (guitar and voice). Plus I've got a keyboard, and various other instruments. So I've never really seen the benefit of using software to do the job. Fiddling about with computers, mice etc seems somewhat unnecessary if you have an instrument that you actually want to play.
Am I missing the point of all this computer stuff though? Is there something that messing around with computer programs is going to do for me that I can't duplicate on my own instruments?
Cheers,
Chris
Chris,
Software ear trainers produce sounds for you to identify and/or match on your instrument. You can't generate random sounds on your own unless you blindly play notes on an instrument and then try to pick things out. But, even then, you sort of know what you just played by feel, so you're not relying totally on your ears to identify the random sounds.
I do agree, however, that most ear trainers are cumbersome to use and that most of them aren't designed to help you play things on your instrument. Instead, they're primarily test-based where you constantly need to click on things in order to hear the next sound. That's why I made my interval/chord/melody trainer. All of the exercises have an autoplay mode, where you can listen and then play what you heard by ear on your instrument. And, you use your ears and eyes to tell you if you've made a mistake. Granted, this is the same type of call-and-response ear training that you can do while listening to any musical recording, but a software ear trainer provides a controlled environment where you can more easily improve your skills.
At the end of the day, I'd simply do whatever method works best for you. There are certainly plenty of people who developed fantastic ears without ever touching a computer...
-Rick
Thanks for the reply Rick, :)
You can't generate random sounds on your own unless you blindly play notes on an instrument and then try to pick things out.
I take your point but, as a beginner, playing random sounds is my specialty. It's playing organised sounds that I have trouble with. :oops:
Seriously though, I guess I don't fully understand the advantage of being able to name the interval between two tones that have been generated randomly. What I want to be able to do is sing along with my guitar, or perhaps a recorded song. And when I'm doing that I more or less know what's coming next - it's matching it that's the issue.
My methods of coming to grips with intervals is more or less like the one Wes outlined. I just play scales, or sets of chords in a certain key, and I keep improvising and mixing up the order until I develop a feel for what effects are achieved by jumping certain distances in certain directions.
Or I take a single string and 'discover' melodies on it. It doesn't take too long to work out Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, or whatever simple songs are already ingrained in your head. The first few notes take a bit of experimenting to place - but by the end of the song you pretty much know where to find the next note, and it all goes much quicker. Then it's on to something a bit more challenging.
It's all very undisciplined, but it feels right to me. I guess, as you say, we all have way that suit us best. But, whatever I'm doing, I try not to assume that my way is better just because it's more comfortable. I know that I can miss out in a big way if I'm not prepared to try as many options as I can before choosing.
That's why I made my interval/chord/melody trainer. All of the exercises have an autoplay mode, where you can listen and then play what you heard by ear on your instrument. And, you use your ears and eyes to tell you if you've made a mistake. Granted, this is the same type of call-and-response ear training that you can do while listening to any musical recording, but a software ear trainer provides a controlled environment where you can more easily improve your skills.
-Rick
Thanks - I'll check it out. It sounds like you've put a lot of thought and work into it, so the penny will probably drop if I try it out. :)
Cheers,
Chris
Seriously though, I guess I don't fully understand the advantage of being able to name the interval between two tones that have been generated randomly. What I want to be able to do is sing along with my guitar, or perhaps a recorded song. And when I'm doing that I more or less know what's coming next - it's matching it that's the issue.
As far as intervals are concerned, my goal isn't to be able to NAME intervals, but rather to be able to PLAY any interval that I hear. Since every melody is simply one interval after another, and since chords are made up of stacked intervals, it makes sense (to me, at least) that learning to identify interval sounds can aid in ones ability to play anything by ear. So, in this regard, intervals are just a means to an end. Now that I can identify intervals well by ear, I spend much more time with multi-note random melodies and simple song ear training. I could have jumped right into that stuff from day one, but it's MUCH easier for me since I put in the time to master intervals.
Also, to take your example of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" you mention that the first few notes are hard for you to place. For people who have practiced intervals, however, the first interval of a tune is typically the easiest because they can quickly relate it to a known interval. Singing "Twinkle..." in my head, I know the first interval is a major fifth. With that knowledge, I can play any starting note and effortlessly play the next note of the tune because I know all of my intervals from any note.
-Rick
As far as intervals are concerned, my goal isn't to be able to NAME intervals, but rather to be able to PLAY any interval that I hear....
but it's MUCH easier for me since I put in the time to master intervals.
OK, we're on the same wavelength there. It's my goal to play them too. What I haven't liked about the ear trainers that I've tried (and I haven't tried yours yet) is the way they go about it. They've used a sort of "Teach by failing" method that's more of a testing than a teaching tool. They just generate random tones and make you guess the interval. It all feels more like an excercise in seeing how many you get wrong, than a real attempt to teach them. I suppose it could be useful if you'd made progress and liked applying that sort of test. Some folks like doing little tests and getting scores. Some don't.
I prefer to learn by sticking closer to my real goals - which are playing and singing - and by having fun at things along the way. I don't find drills and tests much fun. So I like to first learn about intervals by playing known intervals, rather than by trying to guess unknown ones. I play a few notes in a scale and see how they relate to each other - then I work out what they were called, and maybe try the same interval in another place and compare the way they sound, and so on. And I do something similar with chords. And I keep making little pieces of music with them as I go along. Because that's what I really want to know - how to apply them.
I like to improvise when I play, so the goal for me is to have some options at my disposal for the next note or chord. So perhaps that's the difference. Others in this thread are talking about wanting to copy music, so their learning focus and approach is perhaps a bit different. A tool that throws things up and says "copy that" is probably appealing. But my goal isn't to copy music it's to generate it, so I learn best by doing just that - generating something, many times, and build in the knowledge and feel for what I can do with it.
Also, to take your example of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" you mention that the first few notes are hard for you to place. For people who have practiced intervals, however, the first interval of a tune is typically the easiest because they can quickly relate it to a known interval. Singing "Twinkle..." in my head, I know the first interval is a major fifth. With that knowledge, I can play any starting note and effortlessly play the next note of the tune because I know all of my intervals from any note.
-Rick
Wll, yes, but all you're saying there is that you're better at the process than the person in my example. :) All I was trying to say there is that when you first try to pick out a simple melody it seems difficult, but that you improve quite quickly the more you do.
I'm not saying there's no point to knowing about intervals - quite the reverse. It seems fundamentally important to me to have a good grasp of them - it's the method of embedding the knowledge that interests me. Using computers has always seemed something of an unnecessary extra element to me when I can practice and learn about them using the real world instruments that I actually want to play. But if people find them useful, that's all that matters. 8)
Cheers,
Chris
I plan to work on my ear training again very soon and I recently bought a book called "essential ear training for the contemporary musician", it's an MI book published by Hal Leanard. I haven't actually worked with it yet, only browsed through but it looks like it's going to be a good one. It comes with two CD's and has exercises for ear training and sight singing.
I used to create my own exercises to work from but it's sometimes just so hard getting motivated enough to actually carry on with it. You can spend a lot of money on stuff like this but I personally think the bottom line is just one decent book and some self discipline to make sure you stick with the program is all that is required.
Lee
I recently got the book Lee is talking about. It's very nice. The exercises ramp up in difficulty. I certainly am learning how to recoginize intervals. Its another step to apply it back to songwriting and musicianship, but I'm hopeful all the various things I do will come back together at some point.
