Ear Training Help

[groovetuber]

Over the years that I have been playing guitar I have developed a pretty good ear, but I know it could be much better. I am going to be going to college fo rmusic pretty soon and I'd like to prep as much as I can for it. What book would you guys recommend for Ear Training? I would prefer to get a book that comes with an interactive CD, I think I would learn much better that way. Thanks for the help.

[bassist]

at my school, we use Listen and Sing by David Damschroder, which i think is a great great great great book and method. if you actually spend time with it, you WILL improve... a lot.
it is a 2 year long course at my schoool to get through that book/method.
dan

[Jakeweiser]

You will more then likely have Classical approach to ear training classes, and jazz approaches.

In the Classical approach, they like to focus on solfege, not something I ever learned properly. They do sight singing of melodies, the Ottman book is pretty standard. They do dictation, both melodic and harmonic.

In Jazz, depending on your school, be prepared to auraly identify..

All modes of Major
All modes of Melodic Minor
Diminished
Whole Tone
Augmented
Harmonic Minor and it's 5th mode probably

All Triad forms
All 7th chord forms up to their 13th, including altered dominants
Dictation of both lines and harmony with given the first note or first chord root.

Recognize a melodic phrases mode (this melody is based on Dorian etc)

Major, Minor Pentatonic and Blues Scales.

[Phat Boi]

You need to specify if you are using moveable do or fixed do. If you are using moveable do I can be of some help to you. For now Goodear.com is pretty tight. Aurellius or something like that I forget the spelling is the most common software cats use for ear training. Good luck.

[groovetuber]

Could you please explain to me what moveable and fixable do is? Thanks!

[Phat Boi]

fixed do is when you say ok do is c no matter what re is d and so on. it never changes. movable do is when do is the 1 of the key (major or minor). In Bb major it would be Bb. In C minor it would be C.

[Phil Kelly]

as is my practice every time the subject of ear training arises here, I recommend the following on line interactive site to work with:

http://www.musictheory.net/

:yeahthat: :yeahthat: :yeahthat: :yeahthat:

:clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap:

[HaVIC5]

www.good-ear.com

If you can master everything on this site, then you have quite a gift! Great site, loads of stuff to practice.

[Tarquin1986]

I was talking to a pianist friend of mine a while back and the subject of ear training came up. He told me his piano teacher told him that he has quite a good ear. I sang my friend a minor third and asked him to identify it. He couldn't tell me what it was! It seems there are a lot of teachers in my area who will tell someone they're doing great when they should be telling them that they have a huge amount of work ahead of them.:soapbox

[Phil Kelly]

I was talking to a pianist friend of mine a while back and the subject of ear training came up. He told me his piano teacher told him that he has quite a good ear. I sang my friend a minor third and asked him to identify it. He couldn't tell me what it was! It seems there are a lot of teachers in my area who will tell someone they're doing great when they should be telling them that they have a huge amount of work ahead of them.:soapbox



That's exactly why someone desiring to improve their solfege and ear training ability should spend a good deal of their own time visiting and working with both the online sites mentioned earlier ..

screw the lazy teacher! do it yourself !!!

[bassist]

I was talking to a pianist friend of mine a while back and the subject of ear training came up. He told me his piano teacher told him that he has quite a good ear. I sang my friend a minor third and asked him to identify it. He couldn't tell me what it was! It seems there are a lot of teachers in my area who will tell someone they're doing great when they should be telling them that they have a huge amount of work ahead of them.:soapbox

in all fairness... (although you are probably correct in your assessment of the situation), a great ear can mean many things.
for example, you get people who hear fine intonation really well (i.e. they can hear if you are even ever-so-slightly flat or sharp on a note), but who aren't as good identifying intervals or identifying harmonic progressions. i think that each of htose three is an independent set of skills (fine intonation, intervallic hearing, harmonic hearing)... and they all certainly are related and whatnot... but there are people who are really good with some of those and not others.

not saying that youa re wrong... just thoguht i'd throw that out there.
dan

[bassist]

sorry for the double post... but i wanted to tack onto myself the ultimate example of that, which is the folks with perfect pitch who can't sing ANYTHING more than approximately in tune.
their intonation is terrible, although you can play them ANYTHING and they will identify what you played right off the bat.
a different set of skills almost entirely.
dan

[rjazzr]

hi groovetuber

i subscribe to this site

www.jazzpianoonline.com

and it has this exercise that teaches you to hear each of the individual notes. it really works. i recommend it.

r