Ear training: interval hearing test

[pinkfloydcramer]

https://tonedear.com/ear-training/intervals

 

I identified all the intervals from min 2nd to octave easily, it got harder when the test started incorporating min 9ths. But I got better- guess that's the whole point of this. Final score 490 out of 500 before I stopped the test, it seemingly would have gone on forever. Probably best to quit at 300-400 as there doesn't seem to be any increase in difficulty at that range (and ear fatigue is not your friend).

 

This doesn't translate to being a better musician as I can beat better musicians than I am, at this sort of thing. A more musician-centric test would be one that incorporated different chord progressions and colors- anyone know of any?

[bfields]

Meludia has some interesting variations, for example playing one or two notes above a chord and asking you to idenfity the scale degree(s).

[ksoper]

When I was pretty new at the organ, maybe 7 or 8 years old my mom played a game with me. She'd play notes at random in different octaves with my back turned. Every right guess earned me a nickel. The game stopped when it started costing her real money.

[pinkfloydcramer]

When I was pretty new at the organ, maybe 7 or 8 years old my mom played a game with me. She'd play notes at random in different octaves with my back turned. Every right guess earned me a nickel. The game stopped when it started costing her real money.

 

Interesting, because that would indicate perfect pitch can be developed, at least once you start with a certain amount of raw talent. I had the idea that people who can ID any note could do that from day 1, without working at it. If I were to do that same game I wouldn't get many nickels.

 

Relative pitch is definitely not a "day 1" deal. When I was that age, trying to pick melodies out with one finger, all I had at 1st was a general sense of whether the next note in the melody was higher or lower in pitch and I would stumble around until I found it. Within a few weeks it got to where I didn't stumble any more, at least for a simple melody. But at that stage I missed some accidentals (for example, the F# in the 7th bar of The Entertainer) and the "blue note" in a song (such as the Pink Panther theme) made my head explode- it was one of the mysteries of the universe. My ear still had lots of developing left to do.

 

I would love to hear from others, how they developed their sense of pitch.

[mate stubb]

I can't remember ever developing pitch sense. AFAIK, I have always had it. My mom was a piano teacher, and I was banging on pots and pans and the family piano as soon as I could sit on the bench.

 

Her philosophy was to test any prospective new student for simple pitch sense, in terms of playing two tones and identifying which is lower or higher. Also, the prospective student would need to have developed adequate hand and finger strength to manipulate the keys.

 

She started me at 4, and it turned out my pitch sense had developed before I even knew the basics of note and interval names. As soon as I knew those, she would test me with listening drills. I think by the time I was 5 she knew that I had "perfect pitch."

 

I put that in quotes because I believe relative to perfect pitch is a continuum. I can name all the notes in an arbitrary cluster that you play for me. However, I had a band teacher once who was able to walk around the marching band in the parking lot, and tune up each instrument individually by having them play a note. I'm only good to about the nearest quarter tone.

 

It's generally a blessing, but often can be a curse too. I can hear a musical phrase and play it back first time, I can also cringe in agony over out of tune guitars.

[mate stubb]

Here's little Moe doing ear training. Even before I started playing myself, the house was always filled with piano music from mom's students taking lessons.

[stillearning]

My story is much like Moe"s. Father was a concert cellist and there was always a piano in the house. Dad started me on lessons a soon as I could sit up at the piano when he saw me playing back TV commercial melodies on the piano. They tell me my first 'tune" was a Winston cigarette commercial jingle!

[uhoh7]

When I was pretty new at the organ, maybe 7 or 8 years old my mom played a game with me. She'd play notes at random in different octaves with my back turned. Every right guess earned me a nickel. The game stopped when it started costing her real money.

 

Interesting, because that would indicate perfect pitch can be developed, at least once you start with a certain amount of raw talent. I had the idea that people who can ID any note could do that from day 1, without working at it. If I were to do that same game I wouldn't get many nickels.

 

Supposedly it's not hard with consistent practice under about age 10. Rick Beato trained his own kid and has a bunch of videos about it. But after a certain age......extremely hard. Beato himself has tried for years and........

 

[video:youtube]

[RandyFF]

I can't remember ever developing pitch sense. AFAIK, I have always had it. My mom was a piano teacher, and I was banging on pots and pans and the family piano as soon as I could sit on the bench.

 

Her philosophy was to test any prospective new student for simple pitch sense, in terms of playing two tones and identifying which is lower or higher. Also, the prospective student would need to have developed adequate hand and finger strength to manipulate the keys.

 

She started me at 4, and it turned out my pitch sense had developed before I even knew the basics of note and interval names. As soon as I knew those, she would test me with listening drills. I think by the time I was 5 she knew that I had "perfect pitch."

 

I put that in quotes because I believe relative to perfect pitch is a continuum. I can name all the notes in an arbitrary cluster that you play for me. However, I had a band teacher once who was able to walk around the marching band in the parking lot, and tune up each instrument individually by having them play a note. I'm only good to about the nearest quarter tone.

 

It's generally a blessing, but often can be a curse too. I can hear a musical phrase and play it back first time, I can also cringe in agony over out of tune guitars.

 

Yeah, I've heard it can be as much a crazy-maker as a blessing. Can you tune a piano with no pitchfork or other instruments? Do you hear the individual notes of a piano being in/out of tune? Old out of tune pianos must drive you nuts!

 

And what about different tuning schemes, equal temperament vs just, etc.? If every person with perfect pitch distinguished in tune and out of tune the same way, you could justifiably say that was the 'correct' way to tune! However, given that all pianos for example are tuned with equal temperament tuning, it may just be what you're used to.

 

I'm sure I'm not the only one with these questions!

[mate stubb]

Random ear/tuning thoughts:

 

I cannot set a piano to say A=440 by ear accurately. When I tune a piano I set the middle 2 octaves to equal temperament using a tuner, then the other octaves and the unisons by ear.

 

My ear is used to equal temperament and the pitch errors are small enough that they don't bother me. A solo violin playing their more accurate scales along with an equal tempered instrument like piano DOES bother me. To string players, Ab does not equal G#...

 

Hammond tonewheel temperament is slightly different than equal due to the whole number ratios of teeth on gears and tonewheels. It doesn't bother me either, I think chiefly because in the higher octaves where the errors would sound worse, the high drawbar tones are attenuated.

 

Out of tune unisons on a piano generally don't bother me either, as long as the perceived center frequency of the note doesn't shift.

 

That being said, when I hear just temperament or other consonant tunings properly used, it's like balm to the ears.

[pinkfloydcramer]

That made me think of a local blind piano player who is probably the one keyboard musician I've rubbed shoulders with who has perfect pitch. He would get fired from every single gig that involved an acoustic piano, because he would hear one string ever so slightly out of tune and stop playing to fix it- it literally drove him crazy. This in spite of repeated warnings (he was as known for his eccentricity as his prodigious talent). It was a treat to play a piano he had tuned, I've never encountered a better tuner. I was told he sold the Steinway he had at home to buy a 90's era DP.

[Joe Muscara]

The true character of perfect pitch was revealed in 2014, thanks to a beautiful experiment carried out at the Ichionkai Music School in Tokyo and reported in the scientific journal Psychology of Music. The Japanese psychologist Ayako Sakakibara recruited twenty-four children between the ages of two and six and put them through a months-long training course designed to teach them to identify, simply by their sound, various chords played on the piano. The chords were all major chords with three notes, such as a C-major chord with middle C and the E and G notes immediately above middle C. The children were given four or five short training sessions per day, each lasting just a few minutes, and each child continued training until he or she could identify all fourteen of the target chords that Sakakibara had selected. Some of the children completed the training in less than a year, while others took as long as a year and a half. Then, once a child had learned to identify the fourteen chords, Sakakibara tested that child to see if he or she could correctly name individual notes. After completing training every one of the children in the study had developed perfect pitch and could identify individual notes played on the piano.

 

This is an astonishing result. While in normal circumstances only one in every ten thousand people develops perfect pitch, every single one of Sakakibara"s students did. The clear implication is that perfect pitch, far from being a gift bestowed upon only a lucky few, is an ability that pretty much anyone can develop with the right exposure and training. The study has completely rewritten our understanding of perfect pitch.

 

Excerpt From: Anders Ericsson & Robert Pool. 'Peak.' Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/peak/id1018653876

[MAJUSCULE]

The true character of perfect pitch was revealed in 2014, thanks to a beautiful experiment carried out at the Ichionkai Music School in Tokyo and reported in the scientific journal Psychology of Music. The Japanese psychologist Ayako Sakakibara recruited twenty-four children between the ages of two and six and put them through a months-long training course designed to teach them to identify, simply by their sound, various chords played on the piano. The chords were all major chords with three notes, such as a C-major chord with middle C and the E and G notes immediately above middle C. The children were given four or five short training sessions per day, each lasting just a few minutes, and each child continued training until he or she could identify all fourteen of the target chords that Sakakibara had selected. Some of the children completed the training in less than a year, while others took as long as a year and a half. Then, once a child had learned to identify the fourteen chords, Sakakibara tested that child to see if he or she could correctly name individual notes. After completing training every one of the children in the study had developed perfect pitch and could identify individual notes played on the piano.

 

This is an astonishing result. While in normal circumstances only one in every ten thousand people develops perfect pitch, every single one of Sakakibara"s students did. The clear implication is that perfect pitch, far from being a gift bestowed upon only a lucky few, is an ability that pretty much anyone can develop with the right exposure and training. The study has completely rewritten our understanding of perfect pitch.

 

Excerpt From: Anders Ericsson & Robert Pool. 'Peak.' Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/peak/id1018653876

 

Well, maybe it's a good thing that Cygnus64 doesn't hang around here much anymore, because he'd be up in arms AND legs at this news.