how fast should I move on with ear training

[fr0me0]

I'm doing the ear training exercises on good-ear.com right now and I'm in a little bit of a rut. For the last couple weeks i've been getting between between 85-95% of the intervals right. I'm doing more intervals under beginner. It hasn't been improving I always seem to get at least a couple wrong. Should I wait til I get them all 100% right on a consistant basis before moving on? or should I try moving on now? I'm doing it with a fixed root right now and am a little dissapointed I don't see any improvment over the past couple weeks. I can't even imagine how bad it'd get if it was a random root.

[Jon Simonoff]

Are they consistently the same intervals wrong? If you are having trouble with just a few intervals, find a way to correct them and work on what you're having trouble with. I use song melodies that have the interval in them to help me. Like, the song Brazil starts with a minor third down for example.

I would wait till you are almost always 100% before moving on. It only gets tougher so if you don't have a foundation you will have trouble always.

[tzadik]

Hmm.... You might take a week or two ff and come back to it. For me, sometimes I just need it to sink in. Then all of a sudden, I'll try again and it'd right there.

Something I have forund super helpful:

Get a hymnal. Go to ebay or half.com and get a cheap one. I have one called Hymnal 1982, I think, that's decent. The music is meant to be sung by not only choirs but by non-singer church folk, so there is a great variety of difficulty to choose from. Just use "la" or "ooo" or some syllable, and sit down with a piano (or whatever) and your hymnal and practice trying to sing the melodies. Go one or two notes at a time at first - guess, sing, then play it to check yourself, then sing again correctly, and move on.

Don't worry, it'll come. Keep at it. Try new stuff. Come back to the old stuff.

[fr0me0]

I actually took a week or 2 off and it kind of seemed to make it worse. I don't find a paticular interval is giving me trouble I find when it gives me a bunch of major 2nds and thirds then kicks it up to a 6th, (or the same thing only when it gives me several 5ths and 6ths then kicks it down to a second) I get into some trouble.

I'll try the hymnal that sounds like a good idea.

[paulraphael]

It's tough ... your ears progress at their own rate. it's not like cramming for a test.

I'd suggest trying a different approach for a bit. If the training you're doing just has you listening and identifying intervals, then try ear training the old fashioned way: by singing.

You can use a keyboard or your bass ... anything that's in tune. Play a note, concentrate on it, and then in your mind hear the interval that you're going to sing. Then sing it. Finally, check yourself by playing the interval on the instrument. It takes a lot of concentration, but it really works. This is how people have been doing it for hundreds of years, more or less.