Harmonic Ear Training

[sareston]

Hi Janek,

could you suggest some eartraining exercises to be done with or without the bass to help us develop our harmonic eartraing and our sensitivity to the the different harmonic colours provided by each type of chord?

I mean, to improvise and to play well any style, we need to get our ears together in order to be able to create musically within the harmonic framework of a song. I'm pretty sure this has to do with listening to the inner voices of the harmony and being able to recall the sound of the chords in your mind, so could you give us a hand on that? What kind of work should we do to get it to a high level?

Thanks for your generosity to share your knowledge and cheers from Brazil,

Sá Reston

[janekbass]

ear training for me has been about listening to things over and over again to embed them in my mind. I then find I have associations for certain intervals with songs for instance.

I might hear certain pitch and recognize it as the first melody note to a song, and therefor help my relative pitch recognition, or it may be some like hearing an interval and associating that with a certain interval of a melody I've played over and over again.

One of the best ways of training the ear is to be conscious of intervals and sounds when you're home practicing. Just simple stuff like scales and arpeggios. Take a major scale in C for instance and run it up and down just changing the 4th degree of the scale for a while. Ascend one way, and descend another.... just varying the sound between ionian and lydian to start a basic ear training of those two basic sounds. Working on different chord voicings can also be a great help too. Knowing what different melody notes on the top of a chord sound like against there root is no only a great ear training exercise, but it's a good composition tool as well. And it will also help you come up with many options for chords and melodies when you're improvising.

As with all the things I write about in here they need to be worked on slowly, and have plenty of care and time spent on them so they become a part of your natural language and ability to make music. Expanding your muscle memory for the ear has just the same concepts applied to it as for physical playing on the instrument.

Easy,

Janek

[sareston]

Thank you very much Janek!

I'll certainly work on hearing/singing those intervals over the chord sounds... Do you suggest doing it with the whole chromatic scale or just the "correct" scale notes over the chords? I mean, you recommend practicing to get the sound of the outside notes in our heads also?

Thanks a lot,

Sá Reston

[janekbass]

I would practice all sounds over any possibility of chords or root notes to get your ear accustomed to as much as possible.

Easy,

Janek