# How do you train your ears?



## kwokboy (Sep 10, 2012)

Hey guys
just out of curiosity
how do you train your ears?
and how good you are?

definitely not asking for advice
simply a thread that people share their own experience

personally I just use music player to loop the song 
then try to play it back on piano/guitar
plus I sing some diatonic scales occasionally

now I can get the melody & bass line almost 100% correct
but not so sure for inner voices


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## pcnog11 (Nov 14, 2016)

I do not have musical ears, but hi fi ears. Listening to small things, change of tone colour, chord progression, placing depths of instruments within a sound stage et. in a piece make me enjoy listening very much!


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## kwokboy (Sep 10, 2012)

pcnog11 said:


> I do not have musical ears, but hi fi ears. Listening to small things, change of tone colour, chord progression, placing depths of instruments within a sound stage et. in a piece make me enjoy listening very much!


alright
but what did your teacher teach you about ear training ?


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## pcnog11 (Nov 14, 2016)

You mean my music teacher? He/she did not teach about ear training.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

I whip 'em with air sculpture!


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## Bettina (Sep 29, 2016)

Sight-singing, using solfege syllables. Back when I was a music student, I had many teachers (private instructors and college professors) who placed great emphasis on this skill. 

In my own current work as a music teacher, I incorporate sight-singing activities into the curriculum that I use with my students. Sight-singing trains the ears to identify intervals, which helps with melodic and harmonic dictation.


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

Bettina said:


> Sight-singing, .....In my own current work as a music teacher, I incorporate sight-singing activities into the curriculum that I use with my students. Sight-singing trains the ears to identify intervals, which helps with melodic and harmonic dictation.


yes, sight-singing, most definitely.


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## jailhouse (Sep 2, 2016)

At this point im acutely sensitive to poor intonation and can usually pick out and play any melody that isnt hyperfast on piano or guitar within the first couple of attempts.

Figuring out the harmony is a whole different level. It would take me much more time.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Bettina said:


> Sight-singing, using solfege syllables. Back when I was a music student, I had many teachers (private instructors and college professors) who placed great emphasis on this skill.
> 
> In my own current work as a music teacher, I incorporate sight-singing activities into the curriculum that I use with my students. Sight-singing trains the ears to identify intervals, which helps with melodic and harmonic dictation.


That has always seemed to me like something of a miraculous skill. I have no problem singing intervals, or recognizing them when I hear them. But instantly recognizing them on the page? I can't work out how the heck people do that!


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## Bettina (Sep 29, 2016)

brianvds said:


> That has always seemed to me like something of a miraculous skill. I have no problem singing intervals, or recognizing them when I hear them. But instantly recognizing them on the page? I can't work out how the heck people do that!


There are some tricks that can help make it easier. Here's one suggestion: try to keep the sound of the tonic pitch in your head the whole time. You basically have to "hear" that tonic in your "mind's ear," like an ongoing drone. It's a good frame of reference for the other intervals. Of course, if the song changes keys, then you have to switch to "hearing" the new tonic.

Another trick is to associate each interval with a familiar song. For example, a perfect fifth occurs at the beginning of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star." So when you see a perfect fifth on the page, think of the words "twinkle, twinkle."


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Bettina said:


> There are some tricks that can help make it easier. Here's one suggestion: try to keep the sound of the tonic pitch in your head the whole time. You basically have to "hear" that tonic in your "mind's ear," like an ongoing drone. It's a good frame of reference for the other intervals. Of course, if the song changes keys, then you have to switch to "hearing" the new tonic.
> 
> Another trick is to associate each interval with a familiar song. For example, a perfect fifth occurs at the beginning of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star." So when you see a perfect fifth on the page, think of the words "twinkle, twinkle."


As I noted, singing or recognizing intervals is not the problem, but simply recognizing them on the page when I see them. If you ask me to sing, say, a minor 6th, I can do so without a problem. But show me one on the page and I won't recognize it as a minor 6th, at least not without first painstakingly visualizing a keyboard and working out which interval I am dealing with. I cannot imagine how people learn to do it at a glance.


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## kwokboy (Sep 10, 2012)

Bettina said:


> There are some tricks that can help make it easier. Here's one suggestion: try to keep the sound of the tonic pitch in your head the whole time. You basically have to "hear" that tonic in your "mind's ear," like an ongoing drone. It's a good frame of reference for the other intervals. Of course, if the song changes keys, then you have to switch to "hearing" the new tonic.
> 
> Another trick is to associate each interval with a familiar song. For example, a perfect fifth occurs at the beginning of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star." So when you see a perfect fifth on the page, think of the words "twinkle, twinkle."


oh man that's essentially what my teacher told me years ago
but I still have no idea how can this be possible to keep the pitch in one's mind 

anyway
can you play back a short & fresh melody correctly after hearing it 1 or twice?
or do you need a bit trial & error?


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## Bettina (Sep 29, 2016)

kwokboy said:


> oh man that's essentially what my teacher told me years ago
> but I still have no idea how can this be possible to keep the pitch in one's mind
> 
> anyway
> ...


You can practice it while listening to music...just hum the tonic throughout the whole piece (changing pitch if the piece modulates). Of course, I don't recommend doing this at a concert!! :lol:

Yeah, I can usually play back and notate a melody after hearing it once. If the melody is highly chromatic or atonal, though, I might have some trouble.


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## jailhouse (Sep 2, 2016)

Lol i can play you back anything but notating it would take me an embarrassingly long time. I wish i had stuck with formal training


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

In my youth, I discovered I had perfect pitch , which helped me a great deal as I studied music in college and graduate school . I didn't really need solfeggi syllables because of this . So in solfege class, I sometimes just sang the wrong note names ,getting confused because my natural ability to hear pitch interfered with remembering the Do, Re , Mi etc . ! 
If you are serious about playing horn or trumpet, you have to learn how to transpose , as many horn and trumpet parts are written for brass instruments pitched in C,D, E, e fat etc , and my ability to mentally transfer the pitch of the written C to any one of the notes of the chromatic scale made this easier .
Many horn and trumpet students have considerable difficulty with transposition , and many parts for horn and trumpet for music by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven etc come with transposed parts .
Most horn players use a double horn pitched in F, with a separate B flat tubing . Trumpet players general use b flat trumpets, with some exceptions . 
By the time valves for brass instruments became the norm in the 19th century , composers generally wrote for horns pitched in f and transposition was no longer necessary, although the conservative Brahms continued to write for horns pitched in different keys , because he was rained in the classical system of writing fro brass of the 18th century .


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Uh, with a whip and a chair?


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