# Working on the ear



## Praeludium (Oct 9, 2011)

I have a pretty bad ear.

It's not _that_ bad actually, but it's still very far from what I wish I had (reading fluently polyphonic tonal writing and hearing it - as long as it isn't super complex and chromatic, being able to write down a classical string quartet without any mistake, etc. these are quite common skills), and I have to work on it, as an instrumentalist and particularly as a composer.

Apart from :
reading scores while listening to the music, 
singing some intervals, 
sight-singing a part of a choral while playing the bass, 
sight-singing whatever I find lol, 
writing and then verifying (harmony, counterpoint, composition, etc.)

what should I do ? I should maybe just do that but in a greater quantity (I do that when I think of it, at different moments during the day)? How and how much do you work on your ear ?

I started music roughly at 15 and classical music at 16. I'm only beginning, at 18, to work seriously on the ear, since during the two previous years I only cared for the instrumental practice. My harmony teacher told me it'd come with the time - I know it works this way, but I'd like to make the process the fastest possible and to push my ear/inner-ear the furthest possible. Moreover I'll have some entrance exams next year (to study guitar, not composition yet) which will certainly include solfège tests, and I'm afraid not to be good enough.

Thanks


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

You are right to say your ear is not where you want it to be, but probably incorrect to say that you have a bad ear. I sympathize, my mind will still try to modify tritone intervals played in the "mind's ear" to sound like a 4th or a 5th, depending on up and down. I have to think hard when using tone rows with sure intervals or using such harmonies, not to lazily hit a fourth. I have some functional absolute pitch, so I'm always discouraged when I go along with my harmonically independent contrapuntal voices and I "hear" them differently because my mind screwed up and did a fourth somewhere instead of a tritone. Minor sixths and major sixths in certain contexts can be confused as well, going up its always easy, but going down in pitch, its harder. 

I hope someone who knows their business can respond here and help us both. I want to learn how to compose harmonies away from the piano!


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