Wait until the Tinnitus drops in for a visit, but never leaves. 
Any perfect pitch one had, usually gets blown out with the stereocilia.
Any perfect pitch one had, usually gets blown out with the stereocilia.
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I absolutely suck at ear training.
- Thread starter Old_Noob
- Start date
Playing by ear. Some can and some can not. Nothing wrong with you, you just fall into the can not bracket. This does not doom you to be a bad player, you just need to find out how to follow the chord and play notes of the active chord.
That's why there are all those chord charts, fake chord sheer music, etc. out there.
That's why there are all those chord charts, fake chord sheer music, etc. out there.
Man, I’m going to be honest. I have been playing for 35 years with only marginal study of theory in college.
Any time I have found myself in a position where some aspect of learning is causing me stress, or I have intractably hit a wall, I have generally figured out a way to pivot in a different direction that plays to my own strengths. Perhaps it’s time to take a break from the flash cards and just enjoy playing some music?
Singing helps a lot too. It's kind of corny but "Do Re Mi" from The Sound of Music is a wonderful ear training tool. Also we are heading into the time of year when there's lots of great holiday music in the air. It's a fun exercise to sing your favorite holiday song and try to work out the intervals in your brain. And then it's easy to find public-domain sheet music, to check yourself for accuracy. For example "Jingle Bells" has a really interesting interval on the first word: "Dash-ing through the snow." What's going on there? Not just the interval itself, but how does the melody fit in with the harmony, what is it outlining? Which word in that phrase is the melodic tonic or 1? (The answer may surprise you!)
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Don't give up, find what works for you. We're not all the same. What I ultimately learned in skool is there is always a solution. I never thought about it but @walking Bass mentioned watching a tuner. I have used that cheat for singing and also for practicing fretless. That is a good idea in my dumb opinion.
If you can sing the old song, "My Bonnie lies over the ocean", the interval between "my" and Bonnie" is a 6th. There, now you know 6th's besides 4ths and 5ths.
@Old_Noob Everyone sucks at ear training.... until they don't.
Ear training is simply connecting the patterns of what you play to the sounds you hear. The only way that works with a TON of trial and error. IOW, you gotta make a lot of mistakes until you figure it out.
It's really that simple.
And because everyone learns in different ways, formalized ear training programs and routines don't work for everyone.
I learned by playing along with records (yes, I'm that old). We didn't have no fancy schmancy slow downers, looping, or 10 second rewinds. We had to lift the needle and guess where 10 seconds back was.
(I see some of you rolling your eyes!) The point is; repetition and lots of errors are required. Eventually, you see the patterns and connect it to your hearing and it will fall into place. All you need is a high boredom threshold and a little bit of OCD and you'll get there. 
Ear training is simply connecting the patterns of what you play to the sounds you hear. The only way that works with a TON of trial and error. IOW, you gotta make a lot of mistakes until you figure it out.
It's really that simple.
And because everyone learns in different ways, formalized ear training programs and routines don't work for everyone.
I learned by playing along with records (yes, I'm that old). We didn't have no fancy schmancy slow downers, looping, or 10 second rewinds. We had to lift the needle and guess where 10 seconds back was.
(I see some of you rolling your eyes!) The point is; repetition and lots of errors are required. Eventually, you see the patterns and connect it to your hearing and it will fall into place. All you need is a high boredom threshold and a little bit of OCD and you'll get there. 
+1. In my unprofessional opinion singing is essential to ear training. My first year ear training and basic theory course at university was basically an intensive course designed for people with no previous ear training or music theory study. It was quite possibly the most demanding and challenging course I have ever taken (in ten years worth of university/college type courses). At the beginning of the first semester (of the year-long course) our professor explained that this particular course had one of the highest dropout rates at the university and that by the end of the course only half of us would remain. He wasn’t kidding. People dropped out of that class like flies and I have probably never worked so hard in my life. People would come out of their solfège exams in tears! So yeah, OP, ear training is not easy and you shouldn’t be too hard on yourself! Just be hard enough that you keep at it, because it is worthwhile - even if it’s only a matter of developing the basics.
Very very few people suck at it, more they suck at practising it! Ear training is a long arduous and frustrating road where the results are seldom, if ever, instant. They just start to crop up one day then you think you’ve got a hold of it and the next day realise you don’t.
The reality tends to be that most ear training programmes, websites and classes tend to be selling you a few lemons. One of the primary issues is that ear training falls into two categories: Active and passive.
The passive element of ear training is what is sold because it’s inherently easier for someone to sell you that, and for you to do it. So any website where you click a bottom and hear a chord and gives your the option to identify it clearly falls into passive engagement. As if, you have to do absolutely nothing but listen and click a button. Or listen to a recording and that’s it. Good progress can be made by doing this but it tends to fail to translate to actual music. That being, the amount of people who can nail the chord questions on these programmes can’t pick out a major or a minor chord in a pop song. Or they can identify intervals until the cows come home but play a song and they can’t identify them. What’s worse is if you ask a lot of students or musicians who have learned this way wether that can replicate or produce those sounds without any reference the numbers become even smaller.
This leads me to active ear training and what that is. Active ear training is when you are actively engaged in it producing what your are training yourself to hear. A process like transcribing falls into active ear training because you are trying to replicate what you are heading. This requires a lot of singing, and that prerequisite alone is where I’m confident a great many people haven’t put the time into that. It’s easy to click some buttons and watch your score go up, but asking someone to sing a minor third up from a starting note, then a major 6 followed by a minor 2nd and down a major 7th. Suddenly the ears start to crumble because that’s so far removed from hearing two intervals in succession.
Or ask someone to sing the root movement of a ii V I progression and it’s not happening. Ask them to sing guide tones to that progression and good luck with that. But people with truly great ears spend time doing this. All of these actions really kick your ears into shape and hearing the movement within music in real musical time. Which is ultimately the goal of ear training.
Let’s rewind it back to the start. Sing! Start ultra simple play a starting note on your instrument and sing that tone. Since you’ve identified that 4ths and 5ths you are able to recognise start by singing a 5th. I’d strongly recommend using numbers so 1 for root and 5 for fifth, or better yet solfege symbols. The reason being is that they tend to help establish the function and relationship between the tones much easier and ingrain them more than la etc does. Example being a 1 - 5 sounds different if you are playing a C on the bass but if you sing that same C - G but F, E, D, A etc are the bass note the sound gets a lot harder to hear. It’s the same notes and interval but the relationship of the intervals has changed in relation to the root.
Anyway, let’s strip it back to a simple 1 to 5. Play that 1 and sing it then really hear the 5th in your minds ear before vocalising it. If that process takes 10 minutes then it takes 10 minutes. Don’t rush it. But try to remove as much guess work as you can as early as possible. Make an attempt at singing that 5th. Then check with your instrument. Adjust your voice to the instrument and sing it again. Once you got the 5 hold it and play the 1. Feel how the 5 is reinforcing the 1. This helps a lot with the pitch.
Repeat this process over and over. And eventually start to drop the reference tones as you gain more confidence in what you are doing. Obviously check in from time to time to make sure you haven’t drifted from the pitch but you’ll begin to not only recognise the sound but be able to produce the sound which is key to being able to realise the sounds you hear in your head when coming up with ideas etc.
This is the absolute tip of the iceberg but there is absolutely nothing that is going to kick your ears into gear more than actually sitting and singing through this stuff, and making it a consistent habit of doing so. It’s not about being a great singer or anything so don’t get too hung up about that side of it.
Sorry for the length of this, and it is a bit of very quick run down of the exercise, but any great ear training course will have a lot of singing going on. YouTube throws a bunch of college kids singing full band of solo transcriptions in solfege because that’s what goes on in these classes.
The reality tends to be that most ear training programmes, websites and classes tend to be selling you a few lemons. One of the primary issues is that ear training falls into two categories: Active and passive.
The passive element of ear training is what is sold because it’s inherently easier for someone to sell you that, and for you to do it. So any website where you click a bottom and hear a chord and gives your the option to identify it clearly falls into passive engagement. As if, you have to do absolutely nothing but listen and click a button. Or listen to a recording and that’s it. Good progress can be made by doing this but it tends to fail to translate to actual music. That being, the amount of people who can nail the chord questions on these programmes can’t pick out a major or a minor chord in a pop song. Or they can identify intervals until the cows come home but play a song and they can’t identify them. What’s worse is if you ask a lot of students or musicians who have learned this way wether that can replicate or produce those sounds without any reference the numbers become even smaller.
This leads me to active ear training and what that is. Active ear training is when you are actively engaged in it producing what your are training yourself to hear. A process like transcribing falls into active ear training because you are trying to replicate what you are heading. This requires a lot of singing, and that prerequisite alone is where I’m confident a great many people haven’t put the time into that. It’s easy to click some buttons and watch your score go up, but asking someone to sing a minor third up from a starting note, then a major 6 followed by a minor 2nd and down a major 7th. Suddenly the ears start to crumble because that’s so far removed from hearing two intervals in succession.
Or ask someone to sing the root movement of a ii V I progression and it’s not happening. Ask them to sing guide tones to that progression and good luck with that. But people with truly great ears spend time doing this. All of these actions really kick your ears into shape and hearing the movement within music in real musical time. Which is ultimately the goal of ear training.
Let’s rewind it back to the start. Sing! Start ultra simple play a starting note on your instrument and sing that tone. Since you’ve identified that 4ths and 5ths you are able to recognise start by singing a 5th. I’d strongly recommend using numbers so 1 for root and 5 for fifth, or better yet solfege symbols. The reason being is that they tend to help establish the function and relationship between the tones much easier and ingrain them more than la etc does. Example being a 1 - 5 sounds different if you are playing a C on the bass but if you sing that same C - G but F, E, D, A etc are the bass note the sound gets a lot harder to hear. It’s the same notes and interval but the relationship of the intervals has changed in relation to the root.
Anyway, let’s strip it back to a simple 1 to 5. Play that 1 and sing it then really hear the 5th in your minds ear before vocalising it. If that process takes 10 minutes then it takes 10 minutes. Don’t rush it. But try to remove as much guess work as you can as early as possible. Make an attempt at singing that 5th. Then check with your instrument. Adjust your voice to the instrument and sing it again. Once you got the 5 hold it and play the 1. Feel how the 5 is reinforcing the 1. This helps a lot with the pitch.
Repeat this process over and over. And eventually start to drop the reference tones as you gain more confidence in what you are doing. Obviously check in from time to time to make sure you haven’t drifted from the pitch but you’ll begin to not only recognise the sound but be able to produce the sound which is key to being able to realise the sounds you hear in your head when coming up with ideas etc.
This is the absolute tip of the iceberg but there is absolutely nothing that is going to kick your ears into gear more than actually sitting and singing through this stuff, and making it a consistent habit of doing so. It’s not about being a great singer or anything so don’t get too hung up about that side of it.
Sorry for the length of this, and it is a bit of very quick run down of the exercise, but any great ear training course will have a lot of singing going on. YouTube throws a bunch of college kids singing full band of solo transcriptions in solfege because that’s what goes on in these classes.
Absolutely wrong. It's a 5 and a b7.
Relatively correct...but not a good idea to train your brain to reference what is actually a 5-b7 in order to know what a 1-b3 is. You don't need to know what intervals sound like in a vacuum. You need to know them within the context of a composition. So use something that is actually 1-b3 as your cheat.
If you need a heavy metal riff, use the first two notes of "Smoke on the Water" instead.
Personally, I find it impossible to hear the first two notes of "Whole Lotta Love" as anything other than a 5 and a b7. It's so etched into my brain that it's on its way to a resolution (i.e seeking the 1), as opposed to starting out with a statement of key (i.e. starting on the 1 then moving away from it).
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THANK YOU! I try to explain to people that "Here Comes The Bride" isn't a perfect 4th, and they look at me like I'm crazy. But I know you get it.
THANK YOU! I try to explain to people that "Here Comes The Bride" isn't a perfect 4th, and they look at me like I'm crazy. But I know you get it.
I have said the same thing about the same song, on this very forum, no less than two months ago. "Here Comes the Bride" as a 1-4? WTH? Er...NO.
I never even heard of any cheats like that until the Internet.
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Back in the day I used to relate interval recognition to “ universal” melodies and/or phrases.
For example, one of the ones I had trouble with was the sixth degree of the major scale.
I used the NBC network three tone signature as a way of identifying the sixth.
The first two notes of Here comes the bride exemplifies a perfect fourth
The opening bass line for “my girl” in reverse out lines the perfect fifth"...etc. etc..
Whatever works man...
For example, one of the ones I had trouble with was the sixth degree of the major scale.
I used the NBC network three tone signature as a way of identifying the sixth.
The first two notes of Here comes the bride exemplifies a perfect fourth
The opening bass line for “my girl” in reverse out lines the perfect fifth"...etc. etc..
Whatever works man...
I'm in the same boat.
I have been playing guitar since 1968 and bass since 1976 and I still can't play "Mary had a little lamb" or "Happy birthday" by ear.
I learned scales and arpeggios and specific riffs to songs and blessed with a good sense of rhythm, I've got away with being a bass player. I've played in numerous bands and I've even been told I'm good.
At one point about ten years ago I was (reluctantly) playing guitar in a a band because a good friend was determined to learn bass so I let her play bass and had to learn specific lead guitar parts. I told a talented viola playing friend how agonizing it was to watch Youtube videos over and over again taking lessons on how to play some lead guitar part.
"Why don't you just listen to them and then play them?" she innocently asked. She can do that.
She looked blank and astounded when i stated that I simply cannot do that.
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The late great Neil Peart, drummer for Rush, once said in an interview that he wasn't talented, just persistent.
Playing in my first band in 1969 the guys were working on a vocal part and attempted to assign me a harmony part. When they heard me warble out a note that I thought was correct they just mumbled "forget it" and that was the end of my harmony singing.
I guess I should have got the hint when I tried to sing along with popular songs on the radio and could never find the pitch, but I was too young to realize that I just couldn't do it.
My ear is pretty good. For a decent basic rock song (say, something like a Foo Fighters, Led Zeppelin or U2 track), I can usually figure out what I need to do by the end of the first listen, play it passably by the end of the second, and be pretty confident by the end of a third. But then I'm a terrible reader. Show me dots on lines and it takes me about half an hour to translate a page into finger positions on the fretboard.
Conversely, my father was tone deaf. He couldn't whistle in tune with the radio to save his life. However he was trained to read at a young age. If you grabbed a page of sheet music that he'd never seen before, put it down in front of him, he could pick up a saxophone or clarinet and play it first time, just like that [clicks fingers].
I work translating policy and legislation into business rules for IT projects, and play bass in bars on the odd Friday and Saturday night for fun. My dad was a professional musician his whole life. He played in military bands, and he formed his own big band in his spare time and got to back Shirley Bassey and Tony Bennett when they toured New Zealand. Now, I don't know which path you want to take, but I tell my story to say that not having a great ear is not necessarily an impediment to a rewarding musical career.
Conversely, my father was tone deaf. He couldn't whistle in tune with the radio to save his life. However he was trained to read at a young age. If you grabbed a page of sheet music that he'd never seen before, put it down in front of him, he could pick up a saxophone or clarinet and play it first time, just like that [clicks fingers].
I work translating policy and legislation into business rules for IT projects, and play bass in bars on the odd Friday and Saturday night for fun. My dad was a professional musician his whole life. He played in military bands, and he formed his own big band in his spare time and got to back Shirley Bassey and Tony Bennett when they toured New Zealand. Now, I don't know which path you want to take, but I tell my story to say that not having a great ear is not necessarily an impediment to a rewarding musical career.
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