Ear Training

[cheesemonkey]

I know this has probably been posted a dozen time but i can't find any good ones though so here it goes


I just read the PRactice Practice Practice well at least the first part of the thread and it said learn to transcribe early... well i really need to work on this but I'm pretty bad at it despite three years of saxophone i can tell when something is flat or sharp and work my way up to match it but besides that its pretty bad... So im wondering if there are any good sites to practice ear training and learning notes?

 

[polsab78]

I use this for my ear training practice. You might find it useful too:

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[alex027]

Another good one is good-ear.com. I found it in a post last week and started using it. It works great. The nice thing is you don't have to download anything to use it.

 

[Ten Four One]

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Thanks, looks interesting.

I found that The Tuning CD was great help - a freeware version exists, the Intonation Helper. The Intonation Helper isn't as good, but it's about 80% of the way there and it's free. Both are a great overtone series that helps you hear when you're out of pitch. I've found that singing over it along with a guitar for reference *really* helps my sense of pitch.

http://www.dwerden.com/intonation-helper.cfm

 

[bigthemat]

musictheory.net has some too. they saved my hide in my theory classes

 

[Deacon_Blues]

The mentioned sites are probably good. I never tried those though.

I struggled with ear training quite a bit when I was in my late teens/early twenties. I played guitar back then so I had to learn to identify whole cords, not only the bassline. That has proven to be very useful to me. What I did to become better was to learn to recognize chord progressions by ear and trying to transcribe songs using my guitar. I started with very simple two and three chord songs. Gradually, I started to learn how the I (e.g. G), IV (C) and V (D) chords sounded in relation to the each other, and I become able to transcribe (simply write down the chords to) these simple songs without using my guitar if I knew the key.

Next step was to learn to identify the minor diatonic chords ii, iii and iv too (in the key of G major as in the example above, they would be Am, Bm and Em), and how they sound in relation to each other and the major chords I, IV and V. That was considerably harder and took longer time but gradually I learned that too pretty well.

That was however only the basics. I've learned a lot more than that, but there still are a lot of progressions that gives me headache. Just check out the Steely Dan repertoire or even some Stevie Wonder songs (especially the "Fulfillingness' First Finale" album) and you know what I mean... Both utilize very strange chord progressions from time to time. Very interesting music nevertheless...

 

[Ten Four One]

The mentioned sites are probably good. I never tried those though.

I struggled with ear training quite a bit when I was in my late teens/early twenties. I played guitar back then so I had to learn to identify whole cords, not only the bassline. That has proven to be very useful to me. What I did to become better was to learn to recognize chord progressions by ear and trying to transcribe songs using my guitar. I started with very simple two and three chord songs. Gradually, I started to learn how the I (e.g. G), IV (C) and V (D) chords sounded in relation to the each other, and I become able to transcribe (simply write down the chords to) these simple songs without using my guitar if I knew the key.

Next step was to learn to identify the minor diatonic chords ii, iii and iv too (in the key of G major as in the example above, they would be Am, Bm and Em), and how they sound in relation to each other and the major chords I, IV and V. That was considerably harder and took longer time but gradually I learned that too pretty well.

That was however only the basics. I've learned a lot more than that, but there still are a lot of progressions that gives me headache. Just check out the Steely Dan repertoire or even some Stevie Wonder songs (especially the "Fulfillingness' First Finale" album) and you know what I mean... Both utilize very strange chord progressions from time to time. Very interesting music nevertheless...

I also struggled with ear training for a while. The tuning discs I mentioned earlier helped a lot. Learning to recognize chord progressions is a lot more annoying than learning to pick out, especially more dense chords.

One tricky exercise is to play chords and inversions, or better have someone else play chords and inversions, and pick out the middle note in the triad. You may want to start with the outer notes.