Teaching how to play by ear

[Eric Iverson]

Most of us I think learned to pick out licks and chords off records out of sheer necessity. At least when I was a kid, sheet music for rock tunes was so bad that often it was downright counterproductive, often not even in the same KEY as the original! And wierd chord diagrams that no guitarist I ever saw ever actually plays! (That IS relevant, isn't it??)

 

My sis the flautist and I always heard our dad picking out melodies by ear, so it never occurred to us that we couldn't do it!

 

Learning to sing the intervals and name them by ear in music theory class helped a lot, too!

 

My question is, how do you go about teaching beginners to train their ears? I'd like to start making some money on the side as a teacher, so any input is greatly appreciated!

[Eric VB]

Um, start with easy examples and work your way towards the more complex?

 

Maybe once iTabs is open for business the waiting time for "official" written music won't be so intolerable. If publishers get on the ball on this they might regain some of the market they lost from sheet music sales. And yes, they'll have to have more accurate transcriptions if they want to sell them in any appreciable volume.

 

Sure, the "trainers" (CD slower-downers) don't make ear training a cake walk, but I assume they make it easier than the old cassette and vinyl techniques. Don't forget to at least mention these, if not demo one in your class.

 

Part of ear training is learning to play, too. How can you tell something is a 7th chord if you've never heard/played one before? Don't forget to assign stuff to play, too.

[Eric VB]

Oh, some sort of notation knowledge might be useful, too. Although it's not hard to remember your first 3 chord song, trying to remember something complex when you've got 100s of other songs crowding your grey matter is, well, another matter altogether.

 

Transcription is a useful tool.

[D_dup3]

Well, reading's not the same as playing by ear, is it?

However, the basic point is always the same when learning something: start with what's simplest before you try the tricky stuff.

 

I'd suggest starting by recognizing a single pitch at a time rather than trying to catch songs in flight.

This can be done by working with any other instrumentalist; have them play a note & you then sing the note before even bothering trying to find it on your instrument.

Singing is a really good way to internalize what you play or work on, something that most people don't even consider but it really does help. (BTW, I personally don't even worry about naming the note as "C" or "D" or whatever; you just really need to be able to hear it.)

 

Next would be hearing the "distance" between intervals. Start with the components of basic chords: 3rds & 5ths & again, concentrate on just one pitch at a time.

Is the interval a major or minor 3rd.

Is it a perfect firth or an altered note (b5 or #5) ?

next work your way through other intervals, always working on just one pitch at a time.

Chord recognition is the hardest thing because they are so much more dense & you really can't latch onto them until you have a grasp of recognizing their component parts, i.e., the intervals inside them.

 

Other things to consider: work with "clean" sounds. Distortion or other effects, especially pitch variable things like phasers or chorus units make pitches harder to hear.

It's even easier to recognize things on the same instrument because of the overtone quality of various instruments but if you work with a pianist, etc., that's not really gonnas hold you back.

 

There are various computer programs that do this same sort of thing but their structure may not always be as directed as what I suggest & I suspect people may have a tendency to cheat when dealing with an machine that isn't watching you but they may be very useful, especially if you can't have someone working at your schedule.

[EmptinesOf Youth]

picked this off the keyboard forum, might help

http://www.musictheory.net/index.html

[Eric Iverson]

Thanks for your input!

 

I'll never forget the time that I was trying to teach a part to some choir members, who clearly weren't tone deaf - which is not the same as "trained ear" by any means..

 

I played the note for them and said, "sing this note" and they looked at me like I was a Martian - as in "what possible reason could there be for such an insane request?"

 

Luckily, most people can sing a simple melody if you ask them to!

 

Sometimes I sing along with something before I try to play it - do you guys do that, too?

[Dr. Ellwood]

QUOTE BY D: "Next would be hearing the "distance" between intervals. Start with the components of basic chords: 3rds & 5ths & again, concentrate on just one pitch at a time.

Is the interval a major or minor 4rd.

Is it a perfect firth or an altered note (b5 or #5) ?

next work your way through other intervals, always working on just one pitch at a time.

Chord recognition is the hardest thing because they are so much more dense & you really can't latch onto them until you have a grasp of recognizing their component parts, i.e., the intervals inside them.".....

 

Yes yes and Yes... D, in this one sentance nailed it as far as I'm concerned. the intervals INSIDE of the chords is where the rubber meets the road in theory and in real understanding of the interaction between chords and and their component parts. This is where your scale training starts to make sence to the student, when they start to see how the individual notes within the scale relate the distance to the next LOGICAL (distance) to the next interval. So it's scale work for single string/fret postion training--then to chord position -- then INSIDE the chord to understand the intervals ...seeing all these relationships is what opens up the student to visualization of the entire fret board, I practice visulation of scales all the time, an before I actually rehearse the scales.

[Tedster]

I think that for your "average" student, ear-training is necessary to discourage them from the "spoon feeding" syndrome.

 

SPOON-FEEDING SYNDROME:

 

Student: I want to learn this song. Could you show it to me?

 

Teacher: (Listens to the song, learns it, shows it to student)

 

The student has done, for the most part, nothing to encourage their own development. All they've learned is to let the teacher show them something.

 

What I do in my "casual guitar adult-ed" classes (mostly for older folks who just want to learn to strum a few of their favorites)...is to turn my back on the class, and play a chord. The class is in a semicircle, and I'll just go around the class having them match whichever chord I'm playing. If they hit a wrong chord, I don't tell them it's wrong, I ask them if it is indeed the right chord, and repeat the procedure til they DO hit the right chord. Even if they hit the right chord, I'll ask them if they're sure.

 

Of course, me, being a smartass, repeat the procedure by having them do it to me.

[Eric VB]

Originally posted by d:

Well, reading's not the same as playing by ear, is it?

I see and recognize the smilie.

 

Let me just be clear that I didn't necessarily say to teach standard music notation. (Not that that isn't a worthwhile goal by itself.)

 

Really, I was thinking just simple chord symbols. Anything beyond that -- like tab for a specific chord voicing or enough standard notation just to denote rhythms -- would be gravy.

 

||: Am|G|F|% :||

 

For that time period between learning a song for the first time by ear and having it permanently embedded in your brain, being able to refer to the notes you made while trying to figure out a song is invaluable.

[Eric VB]

In ear training, why does it help to sing a pitch before trying to play that pitch on your guitar?

 

This is more of a rhetoric question to get you to think about it, but feel free to answer.

[Darcy H]

I'm certainly no expert in being able to play by ear, but something that really helped me along was trying to put some very simple melodies that everyone knows to the fretboard...like trying to work out "Happy Birthday" or "Silent Night", just single notes, or even for soloing over the Kink's "You Really Got Me Now" and try to work out the melody of the vocals. Granted I'm typcially in the wrong key but it really helps to work out the relationship between the notes. Anyhoo, that was the biggest help for me.

[D_dup3]

Tedster's point about self-reliance (awfully close to self-realization !) is something that drives me up the wall. All I have to do is ignore it but I get apoplectic when I keep seeing these queries about "Where can I find the tab for XXX ?" & it's some bone-simple tune that you know the person's heard a kazillion times.

It took me quite some time to develop whatever skill I have & I recognize the need for help but, as for all of us, it came from reading, researching & practicing on my own along with the help & guidance that others gave.

No one starts with great skill but you never get anywhere if you have to carry your own "translator". Furthermore, why does anyone then ever need you.?!

 

Hfx is right, too, when stressing the factor of simplicity; one always need "start at the start".

Hearing intervals or the component parts of chords is how one learns to recognize the bigger aural picture. One must trace a single note line before knowing what the shape of a chord phrase is, let alone what some multi-note chord's character is.

 

As far as singing...it's is the best way to do several things as far as music.

Firstly, it helps one develop an internalized sense of pitch. This helps not just in singing per se (a skill that nobody's born with, anymore than they're born with the ability to play a man-made instrument) but also it gives one a way to "carry a tune" when you don't have an instument with you. Trying to remember something accurately is much more easily done when you don't have to try to relate it to an outside abstraction (the fretboard, the keyboard or what-have-you) but can have it ingrained in your mind.

One may have to find the pitch on an instrument & then practice singing that pitch but it's easier to go the other way 'round.

 

Secondly, at some point one will want to sing something & you might as well get started early, both to develop the skill & to maintain it.

Some people are called "tone deaf" & they may actually not be able to sing well...but it's really because, for whatever reason, they never developed that skill. Maybe they were intimidated somehow or just were disinterested but the fact is that nobody's born with an inability to sing, they develop (or fail to develop ) that lack of ability.

Ever meet anyone who was a great player but "couldn't sing their way out of a wet paper bag"? Well, that's obviously not because they lacked musical skill but because they viewed things solely in terms of their fingers or maybe their instrument but for some reason never took the step of practicing their vocal ability.

[Eric Iverson]

Originally posted by RicBassGuy:

In ear training, why does it help to sing a pitch before trying to play that pitch on your guitar?

 

This is more of a rhetoric question to get you to think about it, but feel free to answer.

The reason is that for almost all of us, our voice is our "first instrument". We learned to sing little songs as little kids before we took up guitar, sax, flute, kazoo..

 

And sometimes the instrument gets in the way.. with the guitar in hand, we tend to play what we know, which is not necessarily what the artist on the record did! Case in point: a guitarist learns the minor pentatonic scale (the so-called "blues scale") and plays it in places it doesn't really fit, when careful listening to what is actually being played would tell you it's a Dorian minor or harmonic minor... stuff like that!

 

Singing sometimes helps you get to the heart of the matter better. Oh, and tapping out the rhythm, or counting it vocally, is sometimes better than strumming it, for the same reason!

[Gruupi]

Yes ear training was once a necessity. The sheet music for rock music was inaccurate at best. I still use tab or what is available to help out, but its still mostly ear.

 

Some of the obvious things like recognizing major, minor, 7th is a big part of it. One of the hard things though is that since overdub technology came along, its really hard to pick up whats really being played since there is so little single take stuff on record now days. Things get lost in the mix.

 

I marvel at people who can figure out stuff like Little Wing. Hendrix's playing was so unorthodox its a wonder people could interpret his fingering (if they did). I wish it was easier to learn by ear, it is some thing that you get good at when you practice it alot. I haven't learned many songs lately since I am not in a band. Most of the music I have learned over the last several years has been from reading or from making up my own songs. But ear chops don't ever really go away, it kind of stays with you. You hear tones similar to the way people see color I guess.

[EmptinesOf Youth]

yea i have a lot of trouble with this, even tuning by ear, but i think im getting better. I dont really play others stuff a ton, so maybe thats it...