Research & DevelopmentResearch & Development
I started this site as a way to track my progress on ear training studies. On April 7, 2008 I began studying various courses in an effort to teach myself perfect pitch. Back in the early 90s I bought the Perfect Pitch Training Course by David Lucas Burge. While I found it very interesting I was not willing to put in the time and effort that it takes. Another hurdle I faced back then was that I didn’t even know what notes made up an A Major Chord or an Eb Minor Chord. This time around I decided “what the hell”. I’ll try to learn everything about this stuff and see if it improves my guitar playing.
It definitely has improved my playing and my listening. Prior to this training it was difficult for me to figure things out by ear. I always relied on tablature or sheet music. Nowadays, I think it’s fun to hear something on the radio and then go home and try to play it on guitar.
I primarily studied perfect pitch for about 12 months and now I’m listening to the Burge Relative Pitch Training Course. This course is intimidating. I think there are about 40 or 50 CDs that come with it and it’s very obvious that David Lucas Burge is the only “real” master of ear training. All other courses fall short. Anyone who tells you that it’s easy to learn all of this material in 6 weeks is crazy. In fact, it’s so much material that I would guess most people would give up. I think that’s why many people think that ear training is a waste of money. They buy a course for $300 and then they realize that it takes practice. I would say that ear training is along the lines of learning to play guitar. I don’t think about it anymore, but in the beginning I had to learn how to hold the guitar, how not to drop the pick, how to press my fingers down on the frets, how to coordinate the rhythm of both hands, etc. This is what ear training is like. You have to learn chord and interval spellings, how to recognize things by ear, the differences between chords when you hear them, etc. It’s a huge undertaking and I guessed it would be. Otherwise, everyone would go around saying, “check me out, I have perfect pitch”.
I was going to put 1 year of training into ear training and then quit. But, now I’m beginning year 2 and I’m still doing it. All in all I think it’s fun. Plus, I really want to see if it’s possible to train myself perfect and relative pitch.
Cheers!
Troy
Hi Troy, I’m interested in your ear training. Have you become successful?
Hi Rob,
Thanks for your interest. I have become successful in many areas of ear training. One area I’ve noticed is that my accuracy in tuning a guitar is almost perfect every time when I compare it a digital quartz tuner. I’ve also started singing as a result and I’ve never been a singer. I have a lot of fun learning songs by ear now, my piano skills have greatly improved along with my ability to recognize chords types by ear. Have you tried any ear training courses?
Nice. I’m doing prolobe now daily and I’m trying the trial from eartraininghq.
I have been practicing learning intervals using the concept of trigger tunes. For example, a major third reminds me of the first two notes of “When the Saints Go Marching In”, and a major second reminds me of the first two notes of “Happy Birthday to You”.
If you have a trigger tune for each interval then you can use it mentally to recognize intervals. Here is a source where you can read more on this subject:
http://www.earmaster.com/intervalsongs/
Once you can recognize a few intervals you might find the site Learn2Hear.com fun. There are four tests you can take….intervals, triads, tetrads and scales. If you go to the site and set up your own log in you can view the high score results and see that the user “troylawre” is on the list for each one. That’s proof right there that ear training works. When I first began I was at the bottom of the list and now I’m close to the top ten in each category with my interval score being the highest of all the categories I’ve attempted. Now, keep in mind that I don’t do this every day and I’m an artist by trade and a musician in my spare time. I bet if you spent more time and focused on these subjects you could become very proficient at all of these tests. The more you recognize by ear the better you will be at composing, creating and improvising in music. Here’s the site:
http://www.learn2hear.com/
Wow, that’s cool. I know about that learning intervals by trigger tunes. I have the offline version from http://www.trainear.com. Thanks for sharing those sites above. I will include learning intervals in my daily training now.
It is my dream to be a great pianist. Not just good but great. There’s no point in dreaming mediocre right? Haha. Also, I want to be a great singer so ear training will benefit me greatly.
Ear training should help you with singing. I never really sang much because I thought I had a bad voice. And, after a couple of years of ear training I just started singing one day in the car and around the house. My wife was very reluctant to give any credit to ear training because she thought it was pretty silly for me to be so obsessed with it, but one day she said, “you know, since you’ve been doing that ear training I’ve noticed something. Your singing is on pitch now”.
I was greatly encouraged when I heard that because that meant that the ear training was working. It actually helped unveil a voice that I never knew I had. I now enjoy singing more than ever because it sounds better and I’ve even gotten over my shyness in singing at church. I used to hate that part of the service because I was too scared to sing and now I love it. When you are self conscious about your voice it makes you want to crawl under a rock when you are expected to sing in public, but when you know that your voice is on pitch it’s easy to sing in public. I’m not a performer, but I can see how ear training can help performers with their confidence to sing in public.
The other odd thing that I’ve noticed since the beginning of my ear training is that I can mock things. Just about any sound I’ve found I tend to mock it. I think when you do this you are working out your ears since you hear a sound, your mind interprets it, and you recreate it through your voice. I guess if you do this enough you will get quite skilled at mocking or imitating sounds, songs, noises, etc., and without a doubt it will make you a better, more proficient musician.
I’m so glad you have taken an interest in ear training. I think it’s sort of a lost art, and often misunderstood. But, if you take the time to understand it you will benefit greatly as a musician, an artist, and a connoisseur of sounds.
Nice. I think with enough training, we can train both our voice and our ears to work with each other. Sing correctly what our ears can hear. But, of course, we can only sing what we can hear.
I’m generally an artist too. When I’m a kid, I can draw and paint. I can still do it up to this point, I think. What I like about music is that it can convey emotion. In this world we are living in, my desire is to spread happiness and inspiration thru music. And my plan in order to do that is to be a great composer, great pianist and a great singer. Hahah. Let’s see what will happen in the next few years. =)
Let me know how you do with Ear Training HQ (http://www.eartraininghq.com/) and Pro Lobe (http://www.prolobe.com/). Ear Training HQ sounds interesting. I tried Pro Lobe a while back, but didn’t get very far. I found it frustrating and I think I only made it to level 3?