Ear Training

Did you know that your abilities as a musician are directly related to your abilities as a listener? Musicians interact with one another by listening and playing notes and chords that sound good with each other. Now, imagine if you could play notes or chords on your instrument as you are hearing them in your head - without hesitation. It's possible if you develop your "ear."

Your ear is the most powerful tool you have to advance your musical ability. Have you ever heard great melodies or songs in your head and been frustrated when you tried to get the same sound on your instrument? Your ear is your translator, allowing you to play these mystery melodies and chords out loud. If you're unable to hear the difference between correct and incorrect notes, even good mechanical or technical abilities will take you just so far. Playing an instrument is much more than patterns of scales and arpeggios or reading music on a page. A well-developed ear ties everything together.

So how do you develop your ear? In the same way you learn how to play your instrument: - practice. While it's important - and fun - to focus on learning your new instrument and making music, training your ear is essential. It's not only valuable to develop a critical ear, but also to understand what you are hearing: Are they playing a major or minor chord? What is the vocal harmony line? Not everyone can hear the same things, but in the same way you learn to become more proficient on your instrument, you can learn to hear almost anything.

Start by learning to recognize basic things about your favorite recordings, things that you might never have noticed before. Songs are rich with someone else's ideas, viewpoints, and styles, all of which are bound to show up in your playing. Pitches, rhythmic patterns, harmonies, and major or minor tonality are just a few of the things to look for. Ask yourself questions: When do the chords change? Is the melody going up or down? How many bars are in the bridge? With this analytical approach to listening, you'll develop an entirely new point of view. You'll be surprised at what you notice about songs that you've heard hundreds of times.

This new point of view will soon apply to your own playing, making you more critical of yourself, and more satisfied when you get it right. You should be able to tell the difference between correct notes and incorrect notes, major and minor chords and melodies. You'll notice that certain chords sound great together, some sound okay, and some sound awful. These realizations are terrific foundations for understanding the concepts of harmonies and basic music theory. Intervals between notes should also become more apparent, major third versus minor third, fifth versus augmented fifth, and so on. Training your ear will help you to hear chords as groups of individual notes working together harmonically to support a melody.

Learning to hear correct notes also allows you to explore other harmonic possibilities. You'll start to figure out all of the notes of particular scales that work well with certain chords, and what chords or melodies can be substituted. Learning to improvise in this way creates an experimental "laboratory" for training your ear and increasing your skill as a player.

The most advanced stages of ear development involve recognizing the actual names of the pitches you hear, being able to play things back after hearing them only once, or playing exactly what you hear in your head without effort. Some musicians' ears are so advanced that they can call out the name of any pitch as it's played. This is knows as "perfect pitch." It's debatable whether or not perfect pitch can be learned. Traditionalists will argue that you're either born with it or you're not. "Relative pitch," however, can be learned by anyone.

Relative pitch is the ability to recognize pitches in reference to others. In other words, if you play a "C" and sing it back to yourself, you now have a reference point. You can then listen to a recording and name certain pitches based on how far away they are from your reference. With well-developed relative pitch, the ear, the brain, the hands and the instrument will work as one, allowing you to express ideas without limits.

Any experienced musician will tell you that the ear matters, and not to underestimate its power. With a developed ear, you'll enjoy far more musical revelations - more instances of saying aloud, "I've got it!" Regardless of how far you feel your ear has developed, there's always room for improvement. Training your ear isn't always simple, but it will make learning your instrument easier, and increase the pleasure you get from your music.

Good luck, and keep listening!