This app was mentioned in 77 comments, with an average of 2.34 upvotes
I'll just add my recommendation. Functional Ear trainer. There's a similar (maybe identical) app for ios, both are free.
It's based on Alain Benbassat's program called "Functional Ear Trainer" (link).
Basically, it plays a I-IV-V-I progression to establish a key. Then it plays a note in the key, and you have to guess which note it is. Establishing the key was "key" (lol) for me as a beginner. Just doing interval training was frustrating and not going anywhere, but since I've started this method I've improved dramatically.
Interval training is the key here. You should be able to figure out how distant the notes are, ascending or descending. The best way, as it has worked for me at least, is take a song and try playing on your instrument of choice. Take easier parts of the song for starting out. In many cases you can't directly figure out the flow of the song and that's where instrumental versions of the song can help you. Following clean instrumental tones is very much helpful. In addition pay keen attention while listening to the tune.
Of course there are other mainstream methods and softwares, mobile apps which play an interval and you go about and guess it until you really learn. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kaizen9.fet.android&hl=en
But I will strongly emphasize on avoiding such tools and really try and play songs and melodies, you can record yourself and hear for feedback or play to your friends even.
Don't give up, but start out with just scale degrees 1, 3 and 5. Practice for 10 minutes and take a break, then 10 more and so on. Don't practice for 40-60 minutes in a row.
If you own an Android device, I would recommend you to try this app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kaizen9.fet.android Do the exercises and don't move on until you get more than 90%
Here's another way I found it to be super effective:
When I'm on the bus I'll frequently have headphones on and work on ear-training. As a little experiment, I decided to work on my ear-training with a timer for three minutes, then do a basic breath concentration meditation for three minutes, and then go back to the exercise for three minutes.
I would have expected my score to go up somewhat, but not as dramatically and consistently as it always did. Now I always incorporate little mini-meditations throughout my practice routine.
If any of you are musicians, I'd love it if you would try this and let me know if you found similar results. I teach guitar and will be making a video about this soon and I think it would really help others if it was more than just my own experience. (Functional Ear Trainer is the app I use and emphatically recommend. Here it is for android, and Here it is for apple).
Functional ear training. Instead of learning to recognize an interval out of context, learn to recognize where individual notes fall relative to the key. You could start singing your favourite tunes in movable do solfege, or use a training app such as Functional Ear Trainer for Android.
To me it's so much easier that way, and I can actually see progress when training that. Never saw any progress with just drilling intervals despite singing and playing quite a lot.
And also it's more useful when playing by ear: Relying on intervals is hard because then you need to get everything correct or your entire piece gets shifted and you won't realize where you made the mistake and why it sounds so wrong. If you think of function instead, then once you figure out the key of a piece, you can start finding each part separately, so if you make an error (or some parts are hard and you want to skip them), you can just continue from the next phrase and get back on track.
On a more anecdotal note: Seriously. Interval training sucks. Functional ear training is the key to understanding what you hear.
After trying a bunch of ear training apps I've had some noticeable progress using this one. Best part is I can do it on the bus twenty minutes a day and not eat in to my guitar practice time. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kaizen9.fet.android
So what you're going to do next depends wholly on your goals. I learnt my scales simply by playing actual music for years and then just got used to actual decent fingerings for each scale. Similarly I learnt key signatures simply by osmosis, flashcards would perhaps have been more efficient.
Learning the minor scales would be a good next step. You can also play scales one hand at a time 4 octaves up and down with a metronome, starting much slower than you think you need. You can also do rhythm variations. You can generate a random note/scale with this, which I think is better than just following a pattern such as the circle of fifths. That way you need to think more and that's a desirable kind of challenge. Playing scales with both hands at the same time is a more advanced skill and most practical when formal music education or exams require it and if you do decide to master them, you can put your single hand skills in good use later.
If you don't do ear training, I recommend you to start as well as you probably now gather that most music only uses a a subset of the 12 notes for the most part. One app I like is this. I found its desktop predecessor very helpful in learning to play melodies by ear, if you're into that, so I've recommended this app to my friends previously. This is the sort of 5-10 minutes a day for months kind of project. I recommend setting button labels into Movable Do La minor and singing the notes out loud.
Also /u/DRL47 is entirely right and I want to piggy back on him. You can start noticing how music changes keys and scales it uses and try to understand it and when you notice a thing you don't recognize, do research or ask us.
Bom, no meu caso fui tocando todas as notas e casas até entender quando uma nota é grave ou aguda.
Um app que meus professores recomendaram e gostei demais é o Function Ear. Nele, você adivinha qual a nota que foi tocada depois de ouvir a mais grave e a mais aguda.
Personally I think the app Functional Ear Trainer is really good. It’s not free, but it’s not ridiculously expensive either. I’ve found it really great. More functionality on Android than iOS, but still a great tool.
iOS: https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/functional-ear-trainer/id1088761926
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kaizen9.fet.android&hl=en_US
Also, try singing the notes you play. For example, on your bass play the root, then the fifth. Mute the strings and sing it back. Then repeat. Then you could try the fifth above the root. Then start doing the same with root and 2nd ascending. Then the same descending. Then root, 2nd and 3rd, ascending and descending, etc, etc. Do this in the major key as it’ll probably be more natural.
I teach improvisation as a four step process:
A good improviser has a more direct between the creativity of their brain and their instrument. If you learn how to do each of those four steps, and only move on to the next one when you've mastered the one you're on, you'll be actively developing this link rather than just muscle memory.
This process will also help develop your ear by itself, but for the fastest progress you should be doing functional ear training exercises in every free minute. There are plenty of websites and apps you can try out and see which one you like best. It's something you don't need an instrument to do - I tell all of my students to use one of the app versions on the school bus every day.
I haven't seen this tool before. Thank you, It's exactly what I've been looking for. I can practice at work now.
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I was using function ear trainer on Android before and It's pretty good. Just was looking for something in the browser.
I can post the googled links, but best you search "Functional ear trainer" in the app store....best way to install it on your device.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kaizen9.fet.android&hl=en
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/functional-ear-trainer/id1088761926?mt=8
I see. May I suggest a different method. Instead of listening to the intervals between two consecutive notes, try to identify the scale degree of a note, i.e. the "position" of a note within the scale. For example, if you have the song "Mary had a little lamb" in the key of C major with the notes
E D C D E E E
you would hear these notes as the scale degrees
3 2 1 2 3 3 3
because E is the third note, D is the second note and C is the first note in the C major scale.
I recommend the free Android app Functional Ear Trainer which teaches you to recognize scale degrees. I should mention that this particular ear training takes months, so if you get stuck with it, don't give up.
A great free app to develop your Ear is Functional Ear Trainer
Just use it every day for 10min and you'll quickly see that you get better and better.
Edit: pro tip - hum or sing the notes for better learning
Hey there! Regarding the ear training, I'd like to recommend something that has been helping me improve in strides.
Instead of getting an ear trainer person I'd get an ear trainer app but one that focuses on the intervals within a musical context. Most apps usually present the intervals isolated from a musical context, which just ain't helpful in the beginning stages, as you have to understand and internalize the sounds of the intervals a context.
I can recommend one of these two:
Just play around with these ear training apps for something like 10 minutes a day and not too much more, and focus the rest of your efforts on studying the instrument itself.
The objective is to build the tools to free your creative side. These tools are your technique, your ear and your harmonic understanding, but don't waste time overemphasizing the ear training.
If after this you want more ear training there won't be better training than learning the chords to songs that you like (and songs you don't like) and analyzing them to see how they fit (or how they diverge from) your current understanding of harmony.
try this app I can give you more resources but they are my personal creations and idk how to protect them or even if i should
I really encourage you to do it yourself, not just with the guitar (though that is very important itself) The more you do it the more you will "hear" when something is "wrong" and instinctively know why it's wrong and therefore how to fix it. I really do encourage the use of an app like functional ear trainer when starting out and when you can't get your guitar out, because like you said it can be hard to catch your mistakes if you don't know what you're looking for :) The point isn't to turn you into a singer or anything, just to internalize a musical structure before messing with it. This is actually pretty important in increasing your confidence in your musical decisions, because it increases the accuracy of the tones you "hear" in your head. I've found that when I can't play something, it's usually just because I can't "hear" it in enough detail in my head, which means I either don't know the song well enough, or I don't have enough ear training. Both are fixable :)
Reject tradition and re-learn theory based on intervals. Train yourself to identify intervals by ear and then practice them on guitar.
I like https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kaizen9.fet.android&hl=en_US&gl=US Pretty customizable
Love it.
Heads up I wanted to read your blog posts but they aren't showing
Another cool feature would be "functional training" where the app plays a simple chord progression to establish a key, e.g. ii-V-I, followed by a single note in the key which the user has to identify. This app here1 got me so excited about getting to a bare minimum level of competence that I posted about it somewhere and got accused of shilling for it.
Thanks for making this site!
You want to practice at a point where things are challenging but not too difficult. So if you're slowing it down so much that it's easy, it will be detrimental. But slowing it down so that it's feasible rather than impossible is fine.
You should also think about your intonation. This might already be very good, but guitar and piano players often have a poorer sense of intonation because the instrument handles the intonation for us. Singing helps with that, and with your general ability to imagine music before you play it.
Finally, I hate most ear training apps, but I got a lot out of this one, which focuses on training you to recognize the distinctive character of each note in the context of the key you're playing in:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kaizen9.fet.android&hl=en_GB&gl=US
In addition to the things already mentioned:
This app was very useful for me: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kaizen9.fet.android&hl=en_GB They recently changed the interface so it's not quite as good IMO, but you can make custom levels to suit your needs, changing how often the cadence is played and what kind of cadence it is.
And after I'd spent long enough with that app, I had learnt enough to try sight-singing, which is also good practice since it forces you to vividly imagine the notes as though you're hearing them.
Personally I think the app Functional Ear Trainer is really good. It’s not free, but it’s not ridiculously expensive either. I’ve found it really great. More functionality on Android than iOS, but still a great tool.
iOS: https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/functional-ear-trainer/id1088761926
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kaizen9.fet.android&hl=en_US
Also, try singing the notes you play. For example, on your bass play the root, then the fifth. Mute the strings and sing it back. Then repeat. Then you could try the fifth above the root. Then start doing the same with root and 2nd ascending. Then the same descending. Then root, 2nd and 3rd, ascending and descending, etc, etc. Do this in the major key as it’ll probably be more natural.
Music theory can be complicated at the advanced level. But you will not likely use it in your playing.
I think what you are after is ear training more than music theory.
Anyway, do both, learn basic music theory from online resources, but make sure that you train your ear to hear it.
Start with Functional Ear Trainer for your phone. You should be able to sing all the intervals and be able to recognize them. Don't use song references (like classic Star Trek theme for octave) to learn them. Learn their sound without any crutch. Intervals are the building blocks, so if they are not your second nature, learning theory will be very "dry", and you will have a hard time applying it.
As for learning guitar, I think my biggest mistake when I started out, was thinking that I need to find the best course to learn. There are many approaches and every approach has its advantages. The best that you can do is to pick one course and stick to it till the end. Dedicate 30 minutes a day to finish that course. Then pick next course. Justin Guitar courses are basic but they are good enough if you are starting out. No single course is going to give you the full knowledge and freedom. You need to put down the time.
As for chords on guitar, learning how to build them is good. But the way you finger them is usually restricted. What I mean by that, is that for example jazz music played on a clean channel has certain core fingerings that you need to know.
If you are playing rock with distortion, you are restricted by distortion and you can't play full 6 string voicings, because it will distort too much. That's why power chords played with muted high strings and 3-4 string voicings played with your thumb over to mute low strings is what you will use most of the time.
Thanks. So it's not fundamental ear trainer but functional ear training, and now I know why I couldn't find it. However, I have an android phone(and a PC). Is this a similar thing? https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kaizen9.fet.android&hl=en Or any alternatives?
Well, if you're driving you can work on ear training hands-free by listening and singing (JustinGuitar lesson to get started), and if you're not you can use smartphone apps like functional ear trainer. If you're doing this for *half* your commute you're going to end up with great ears, improving your enjoyment of music as well as your ability to play guitar! :)
This app does it pretty well:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kaizen9.fet.android
It takes a lot of practice for most people (e.g. me). I had to consciously make an effort as well. For example, for hearing what the Major 6 note of the key sounds like, I could imagine it relative to the Tonic, but then it helped a lot when I started imagining it resolving to the Perfect 5, then Tonic. etc.etc. It's like coming up with mnemonic devices for words when you're learning a new language.
I've once asked a piano player what chord progression he hears, and to my surprise he heard it in reference to a major key, whereas I heard the chords in reference to a minor key.
He is an excellent by ear player, and him hearing the chords in a major key did not affect him.
However, if you want to work on recognizing chords in a minor key I recommend using the free app Functional Ear Trainer .
I recommend Functional Ear Trainer if you got an Android-based smartphone. Or the iPhone version
An ear trainer, similar to this app, but working with voice.
It should play you a cadence so that your ear can establish a key, then play one note. You need to recognize the note and name it, either by saying the number (the scale degree), or by using "movable do" solfege note names. After you guess the note correctly it should play an ascending or descending run to the closest key center (so that you memorize them and associate them with the scale degrees).
I couldn't find any sight reading games on it, and the experience seems to be more tailored to the desktop considering the UI/UX
They do have a mobile application by kaizen9apps here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kaizen9.fet.android
But again, this is ear training, and what I was looking for was sight reading games. I'll definitely check it out on my computer though when I get home
The OP should have linked to the app directly, because there could be similarly named apps. The name of the app, as it appears, is very generic
Here's a link to the Android version : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kaizen9.fet.android
It works really well, the design is brilliantly simple, and after using it for a few train rides back home I found it's already made a big difference in my ear training (basically went from "how the hell can people do this?" to "huh, I can recognise all the notes of the major scale almost instantly" and now I'm working on the melodic dictations until it becomes a bit more automatic)
There is an ear training app that I'm using that asks you to pick out individual notes on the C major
scale.https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kaizen9.fet.android
I'm pretty good at it but it'd hard to tell the difference between e and f.
Here's something I wrote on another thread for anyone who might be interested in solfege or any tonic/key based ear-training.
Here are some PDFs from my website GoochGuitar.com with those triads. Once you learn the three shapes on each adjacent three string set, they simply repeat in a different order so they get easier and easier. The PDFs also have the major scale around each of those inversion shapes. When you have each of those little building blocks (triads) and the major scale around them memorized and can sing those notes, you will be a much more powerful musician.
I make singing (or call it "pitch-matching" if they're afraid of singing) a part of all my student's regular practice. Nothing is more important as a musician than your ear, and if you want to improve your ear, you have to sing to anchor those sounds.
Definitely!
I'm pretty passionate about this because at music school I had a pretty weak ear compared to the others and it held me back immensely (obviously) even though I was good at scales, theory, and reading.
I remember my first really good guitar teacher telling me about when he was in school he was complaining to a friend about a piece he was working on. He just couldn't get it even though he'd been working on it forever. His friend asked how the passage went, and he was embarrassed because he realized he couldn't sing it. If he didn't know it well enough to sing it, he didn't really have a place to complain yet.
At school they would constantly tell us to "sing everything!" and "if you can't sing it, you can't play it." I felt like I didn't have a systematic way to work on "singing everything" though.
Then a few years after school I bought Bruce Arnold's Fanatic's Guide to Ear-Training and Sight-Singing and it changed my life. Or rather, me doing the basic exercises every day for years changed my life. Nothing I've done in music has been better for me than working on tonic based ear-training, and I think it's crazy that it's not taught more from the beginning.
So here's my advice:
Here are some PDFs from my website GoochGuitar.com with those triads. Once you learn the three shapes on each adjacent three string set, they simply repeat in a different order so they get easier and easier. The PDFs also have the major scale around each of those inversion shapes. When you have each of those little building blocks (triads) and the major scale around them memorized and can sing those notes, you will be a much more powerful musician.
I make singing (or call it "pitch-matching" if they're afraid of singing) a part of all my student's regular practice. Nothing is more important as a musician than your ear, and if you want to improve your ear, you have to sing to anchor those sounds.
Best of luck!
I've spent a lot of time with several different ear-training programs (and still do), and I definitely noticed a much greater leap in my ear when I switched to tonic or key based ear-training (I just think of it as solfege).
I recommend checking out some beginner solfege videos on youtube. The first three videos in this youtube ear training playlist may help you. In addition I recommend using the app Functional Ear Trainer a little bit everyday. Thank God that ended up taking over my stupid Candy Crush addiction.
And finally, try working on singing the major scale everyday. (And then the natural and harmonic minor scale). Initially with your instrument, but then try to wean yourself off it. I think the Sing in Tune program by Saher Galt is totally worth the $35, but that's only if you use it everyday. I recommend it to all my guitar students.
Working on this form of ear training changed my musicianship for the better more than anything else I've done by far. I do a handful of different ear training exercises, and then I do about the same total in minutes transcribing.
Best of Luck!
Learn to recognize scale degrees. I found the free app Functional Ear Trainer useful (Android, iOS).
Once you feel comfortable with the app, try the melodic dictation exercises here:
Question for you: do you already have some sense for scale degrees, and only find them hard to recognize for melodic dictations? I'm asking because you mentioned that you are doing good in harmonic dictations (in harmonic dictations do you have to write down chord progressions?).
I'll tell you a little about how I approached it, including things I think went poorly and well. Hopefully it will be helpful as general advise on learning any skill (I spend a lot of time learning new skills, you could say it's a hobby). As a child (early teens) I wanted to learn an instrument (mostly as friends were) so I went for the piano. I took 1 hour weekly classes for about 4 months, but more than that I spent a lot of time practising, or rather what I'd call practising for about another 2 months (6 in total).
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What I was really doing was learning the mechanics of playing a range of songs and putting those into my muscle memory. I developed a repertoire and could play most of the songs in triple time. The problem was that I didn't have the inclination to study theory or practise scales: "too boring". This is effectively why I stopped, my ability to read music was relatively weak and my understanding of music wasn't great either. I learned a mechanical skill.
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So what did I do wrong? I learned play the things that would sound the most impressive as quickly as possible. It would impress my parents, friends and non-piano players everywhere. The problem was that I became good at one thing (learning to mechanically play a piece of music) and spent my time practising that one thing. So lesson 1: practising things you are already good at is a waste of time; unfortunately a lot of youtube videos "teaching you piano" are focused on this type of thing: how to play song X! The easy way!
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Fast forward 10 years and I'm in college. A room mate leaves and can't be bother to transport his cheap keyboard with him. I play a few things I played before and find it enjoyable so I pick up a cheap book on playing the piano (which it turns out was not very good). I spend a little more time on basics but got a point in the book covering some theory that I don't really progress past it. This represented about another 6 months. So what went wrong this time? The main problem here was that I didn't spend the time to critically analyze the resource I was using. So lesson 2: Really decide if you are using the correct resources to learn.
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Fast forward 10 more years. I decide I want to give the piano another try. I buy a digital piano (one that basically only makes piano sounds and no auto accompaniment and the like) with the intention of learning to play the piano. I spend several months learning music theory without really playing anything: https://www.musictheory.net/ . I made sure I understood what underpinned a lot of the music I hear. I also started ear training, in particular what is known as "functional ear training" where you learn to identify the musical function of a note in the context of a scale (rather than learning to hear an interval); there is an app you can get to do this now: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kaizen9.fet.android . Ear training is very handy in jazz and improvisation in general.
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I developed an intellectual understanding of how scales and chords were constructed then I started practising scales and chords (diatonics). I'd play a certain tonality (e.g Major) in each key and then play all the diatonics on that scale in all inversions. If you go this route, I'd recommend a way to randomly select the key/tonality or you will always practise your "favourite" aka the one you find easiest.
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Once I was fairly comfortable doing this I started trying to play music. I bought a book of lead sheets: https://www.amazon.com/Just-Standards-Real-Book-Books/dp/073903944X . Initially I would play only the melody to get used to it, then I'd play the chords only as triads, then 7ths, then eventually adding the full extended chords they indicated. (It took about 6 months to be reasonably competent at playing most of the lead sheets by sight on 7ths chords).
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At this point I had enough musical vocabulary to really start improvising. I'd either play a chord sequence from the circle of fifths, or a jazz standard and improvise a melody over it. The background I'd worked on (at this point 1.5 years spread over 20 years) was enough to make this fairly natural for me. At this point, for the first time, I felt like I could "actually" play the piano.
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At this point I started watching a few videos online. I quite like the tutorial videos on: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClw8Huc_XZcz46GJh5Z0wuA/ (a lot of the new videos are very strange). He focuses a lot on improvisational basics like 12 bar blues which I found very helpful. I also quite liked some of the tutorials from: https://www.youtube.com/user/pianoologist more focused on how to approach a piano; how to sit, how to press the keys etc. Between those two I think I gained a better framework around how to sit at and play a piano, and approaches to improvisation and chord creation/extension. Be aware that video watching is no substitute for practise, and practising should be challenging; if it always sounds great you are probably working on skills you already have: push yourself.
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Fast forward 5 years to today. For the last 3 years I've been interested more in music production and synthesizers, but I have my digital piano in my living room and often sit down to improvise (jazz or otherwise) or play something from my "fake book". I also try and jam on occasion with work colleagues or friends (jamming is great for building improvisational and ear training skills).
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What I hope you get from this story is that you can learn to play at any age. A teacher can be very helpful at any stage in your music playing career if they are good at what they do. They can identify the things you are weakest at and push you to work on them. You can learn by self study but to do this you need to be honest with yourself. You need to be honest about what you do well and what you do badly and work on the things you do badly. There are a huge number of resources out there for you but be a little critical when looking at each one to ensure you get good information. Also try and avoid getting caught up in the desire to sound good from day 1.
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So anyway, I realise I've just written an essay here so I'll stop; I hope someone gets something out of this post. Good luck!
So, I really loved this book: "Sight Sing any Melody Instantly": https://www.amazon.com/Sight-Sing-Melody-Instantly-Mark-Phillips/dp/1575605147
And this "Functional Ear Trainer" android app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kaizen9.fet.android&hl=en
And this "Vocal Pitch Monitor": https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tadaoyamaoka.vocalpitchmonitor
They teach you to hear the notes in context.
After six months of playing with these things from a standing start (I'm not very musical) I can sort-of-sight-sing. (If it's at all difficult, I need to puzzle it out, it needs to be very simple for me to sing something I've never heard before directly off the score without reading it through first a couple of times) and I can transcribe anything that I can whistle without much trouble.
( I should say that I used Mark's method to learn how to sing in major, and then after that I decided that I'd prefer la-based minor to his suggestion of learning a different method for the minor key, since I particularly wanted to be able to sing modal stuff fluently. So I'm not sure how good the second half of his book is, since I didn't do it! )
I also loved Mark's book on rhythm, (https://www.amazon.com/Sight-Read-Rhythm-Instantly-Mark-Phillips/dp/1575605155/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_pdt_img_top?ie=UTF8) and used his methods from that to get the hang of:
this Rhythm Trainer app:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ru.demax.rhythmerr
I also recommend this excellent free book (Eyes and Ears): http://www.lightandmatter.com/sight/sight.html which is a lovely collection of real melodies in increasing order of difficulty for practising on.
It all takes a lot of practice, I reckon several hundred hours all added up over the last six months, but it's not actually very difficult, it's great fun, and you feel like you're improving and learning every session. I just couldn't put it all down!
> Also does anybody have the ability to tune their ear.
Yes, absolutely. It just takes the right practice. And spoiler alert: YOU HAVE TO SING.
Not sing like Bruno Mars, not sing infront of people, not even sing with any voice technique knowledge.
Nope, just simply singing or humming what you hear to yourself (when alone if you feel more comfortable). Singing helps your brain tie the pitches you hear in your head with your ears and your fingers.
This online ear trainining game might be just what you're looking for.
An exercise you can try is to play a note on your guitar and attempt to sing the same note. Then try 2 notes, then 3.
A variation on this is to listen to a short melody from the opening of a slow track like this one and get the first note, then ask yourself "is the next note going up or down from here?", then when you find the 2nd note, do the same with the 3rd until you piece it together.
Learn the intervals, once you can recognise their quality you've got a skill which filters into everything else.
I think next is *Learning Relative pitch, this technique involves referencing melodies of songs you already know to help you understand/hear intervals.
Ear Training Apps can help with this, Like Function Ear Trainer or Chord Prog (recommend both) but keep in mind this is only the beginning - and if you're listening to intervals on piano its a whole different ball game listening them on guitar! You really want to recognise distorted chords and chunky riffs.
Practice finding the root notes of a progression, again sing them, then find them. Typically 1 out of 4 might give you a problem, so with a little theory you can make an educated guess and test that or keep going until you've played all 12 notes to find the mystery one. I used to run my finger up the neck one fret at a time until I found it.
Learn major and minor triads. Play them first, then sing them, then play them again.
When you start try to hear chords - understand that getting close with your guesses is a result. Thinking the chord is Bmaj7 when it is B6/9 is still close enough. And you'll get closer with practice.
Learn the roman numeral system (actual not that tricky) and learn popular progressions to learn to anticipate common chord changes/resolutions (like the super popular I,V,vi, IV)
Get yourself an Ear Training Course - its hard to do this alone, there's plenty of choice but get one specifically for guitarists
And I just want to re-iterate, you cannot do this without singing/humming what you hear. But nobody needs to hear you if you're self conscious or hate your voice.
There is a post from r/SuperMassiveSquid which charts her ear training progression here
Remember how long it took you to play an F barre? Well, Ear Training is like that.
At the beginning it seems impossible
When you first try, its really hard
For weeks you think you're not progressing at all
After a while you notice some small improvements but you're frustrated cos they're not big improvements
You keep practicing but you almost write it off as something you just won't be able to do
When you're least expecting it, and when you have almost accepted your fate of being useless at this, it clicks.
If you stop practicing it because you think "Ah I've cracked it now, so I can tick that off and move onto the next thing", your skill fades
Good luck man, and let us know how you get on.
/u/chewiemelodies has already answered himself. I'd like to add this video where you can listen to him analyzing the chords in terms of their Nashville numbers.
What Chewie does is also known as Roman numeral analysis. Each chord has a relationship to the tonic chord, and that is expressed by a Roman numeral, e.g. if you are in the key of C major , then we have:
The lowercase Roman numeral indicates a minor chord. Now, when Chewie listens to a chord, he recognizes it as a number, let's say iii
, and knowing that the key is C major he can tranlate this number to the third chord Em.
If you are interested in this kind of ear training, I recommend the free Android app Functional Ear Trainer which teaches you to recognize scale degrees, i.e. the relationship of a note to the tonic, see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonic_(music).
I've actually started ear training two years ago because of how much Chewie inspired me, and I can recognize the numbers now too. However, I need a few seconds, whereas Chewie only needs a split second which never seizes to amaze me.
He also knows his scales and chords inside out, because for each scale you need to quickly translate the number you hear into an actual chord. For example, if you are in the key of E major, and you hear the numbers I vi IV V
you need to quickly translate these into the chords E C#m A B
.
Other aspects of his playing that I admire are his choice of chord voicings, arpeggios, his rhythmic style and his interpretation of mellow pieces. I remember one of his streams where he nailed the arpeggios on his first try due to his classical training.
So, it's really the result of a lot of practice.
If you don't mind apps Functional Ear Trainer is pretty neat.
I think the biggest tragedy is to love music but struggling to connect with it.
Teach her how to connect with music, at least with pop songs.
How to find out songs metrum. How to count in into song (obviously most pop music is dance music, so one phrase is 8 beats 99% of the time), so she knows where's the 1st beat. Make her realize that most music flows in "sentences"/phrases (8 beats), so it's a good way to find out the downbeat.
How to find out song's key by ear.
Teach her major scale on some instrument (on guitar, teach it linearly on one string) and (major/minor) chords connected to each degree: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOIscQAWL5M
Do singing exercises together: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eT2NoTYwNA
You can teach her beginner chords from JustinGuitar: https://www.justinguitar.com/modules/chords-for-beginners
Then go to: https://www.hooktheory.com/theorytab/common-chord-progressions
Take 3 to 5 most popular chord progressions. Tell her the progression. Listen to one song from the list together. Then ask her to find out metrum, listen to phrases, find out downbeat. Then practice finding out key of the song (trial and error). On guitar she seek for the key on a B string, using C major scale from the first fret.
Then figure out chords of the progression.
Obviously start with I → V → IV → V: https://www.hooktheory.com/theorytab/common-chord-progressions/7
Then make her listen and copy rhythms from the song. She can either strum muted strings on guitar, or maybe you can drum on some box? :)
Then connect everything together (so she can strum rhythms that she copied with chords that she figured out) :)
At first do all of this together, while having fun, help her if she struggles. Then encourage her to find out metrums/keys/chords by herself. Give hints.
Also teach her movable do: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FpJFrsSt70
Practice with "Functional Ear Trainer" app for 5 mins per day: iPhone / Android
Make her connect. Make it fun.
If you want to get really good at playing exercises then practice playing exercises. If you want to become a good musician then practice in a musical way.
Not CAGED specifically but Functional Ear Trainer and ChordProg are 2 apps that get mentioned a lot
Oh and then there's also ear training website from the dude who made ChordProg.
If you're trying to align CAGED with your interval knowledge, that's really more to do with the order of intervals as they appear in the shape. And probably needs you to go deeper on intervals than just an app
As others have mentioned you need to learn to recognize scale degrees, i.e. the position of a note within the scale. For instance, if your teacher plays the notes D, F# and A in the key of D major, then you would hear the notes as scale degrees 1, 3 and 5. In other words, you hear the notes in relation to the tonic.
​
Here are some free resources to get you started:
I will say though that this takes time, and you won't be able to learn this within a single week until your next exam. I nevertheless want to encourage you to learn it since it is such a valuable skill for a musician.
As in ear training? I recommend Functional Ear Trainer.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kaizen9.fet.android
Here's some things I think you should start with and kind of a roadmap.
Apps are good like ChordProg and Function Ear Trainer.. (but get one with guitar sounds - as that's what you're learning to focus on)
Learning the intervals is essential, start with this.
Learn kids song melodies like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star in terms of intervals and use other songs you are really familiar with.
Justin guitar has some basic ear training
Other stuff on Ear Training around on YouTube
Begin to transcribe, start with just a few licks or opening melodies. Like Gravity by John Mayer.
This Ear Training Course Bootcamp for Guitarists covers alot from the ground up.
There are bunch of other things you can do as mentioned in previous r/Guitar posts on Ear Training, all of these come under the umbrella of "Ear Training" and the effects are cumulative.
Definitely learn to recognize scale degrees. I can recommend the following apps and websites:
Functional Ear Trainer. This free Android app teaches you to recognize scale degrees. It works by first listening to a I IV V
cadence, then listening to a note for which you have to determine the scale degree. After having identified the scale degree, the note is resolved to the tonic, i.e. notes 2,3,4 are resolved down, notes 5,6,7 are resolved up). After a while you will start to automatically hear the resolutions, e.g. if scale degree 5 is played back you automatically hear in your mind the resolution 5,6,7,8.
MiReDo is a free Android app by /u/ChordFunc. You hear a little melody line and have to play it back, see also the reddit thread
ChordProg Trainer is another app by /u/ChordFunc. You listen to a chord progression and have to identify the Roman numerals, see also this reddit thread. There is also an IOS version.
HookTheory has a daily melodic and harmonic dictation exercise.
Teoria has a an exercise on harmonic progressions.
Here are a few approaches:
Practice recognizing scale degree 6. For example, when I hear scale degree 6 I resolve it up to the tonic (6 -> 7 -> 1), and I learned to associate this resolution with scale degree 6. That's how the Functional Ear Trainer teaches it.
Learn a few songs with the vi chord, e.g. I always think of the (I vi IV V) chord progression from Heart and Soul. There is also the variation (I vi ii V) that will teach you to differ between the ii and vi chord.
Learn that chord progression by heart and to sing the chords (either roots only or arpeggiated chords) on command. This will help you further internalize the sound of each chord function.
I have had a breakthrough year personally in developing this skill. It's obviously far from perfect but every day i spend figuring out a song or two that tickled me from the preceding day I feel it getting stronger and stronger. I played the piano for 15 years through my teens without ever developing the skill to critically hear what I'm doing. I was performing, and enjoyed the technical challenge of the piano, but never really got interested in the how or why any of it worked.
About a year ago I started to get more interested in composition, or at least understanding and analysing songs so that I knew what they were. I was always astounded at a friend or two who could pick out "this song is just <these chords>" and they could never really explain to me how they were hearing it, exactly. They "just knew". Well I've figured it out, at least for myself!
I started using an ear training app called Functional Ear Trainer, and it's been the first (in like, 25 years) thing to actually make the lightbulb go off in my head. You will start off very simply, with exercises you essentially can't get wrong. First, you advance through a single octave of a major key, identifying if a note played for you (after a cadence to set your ear) is the 1st, 2nd or 3rd scale degree. Easy, right? Almost impossible to still be guessing after 20-50 attempts (there are only 3 options after all), and your mind will more obviously be able to hear exactly which tone it is.
Then you graduate to scale degrees 1-4, then 5-8, then a combined full octave. At this point, once the dots had really begun to connect, I was ecstatic. For the first time in my life I would actually hear that a random note was the 6th. Oh, that was a 4th, I can hear it completing the resolution downwards to the 1 now.. Mind blowing really after so long being completely clueless.
Anyways the exercises continue to expand as your ear develops. Random octaves of a particular major key, then random major keys as well. I can now pick out, with ~90% accuracy, any scale degree in any octave of any major scale. On to minor keys, or chromatic tones in the context of a major key. And ultimately the app finishes off with the same full progression of melodic dictation - name these small 4 to 8 notes melodies instead of single tones.
I already had a fairly decent understanding of the theory side of things. I knew about the usual chord progressions, fancier things like substitutions and modulations and such, but I could never identify them properly because I couldn't hear them. Now I can and it's a whole new world out there.
To summarize my POV:
Learn your theory, so you can easily play in a key, identify chords and get comfortable anywhere on the keyboard. Part of this will just come with time and practice.
Devote time to your ear. Easily the biggest thing you can do to help you identify what other pieces are doing. Even when I can't quickly place something, eventually there's a part of the melody or somewhere I stumble on with relative pitch that lets me piece it together.
The two concepts work together and rely on each other. When something stands out, you need to first be able to figure out what it is ("hmm, this is out of place") and then figure out the context of why it's there/working ("ah, it's borrowing from the minor").
Sorry for the long post, if you can't tell this still gets me a little bit excited. There's nothing like revealing the magic behind a song you've known for years, putting on an old album and just figuring out every song as they play through. Usually, if we're talking a rock/pop song (so nothing too complicated obviously) I've got the whole thing figured out before it's played through a single time; which can include some fun stuff like "oh, the verse is in the relative minor, but it seems to be using the raised 7th in the melody too".
Good luck!
Functional Ear Training is my favorite.
Absolutely! Start by learning about solfege or functional ear training. There's an app for Android or iPhone called functional ear trainer that's very useful for learning about it.
Also, I recommend working on solfege one note at a time. Play a I, IV, V progression and just try to sing "do" or "one". When you can consistently do it every time, then start trying to sing "sol" or "five" until you can do that consistently as well. Then go on to "mi" or "three", and then just go on with the rest of the major scale, one note at a time.
Another couple of products that really helped me are A Fanatic's Guide to Ear Training and Sight Singing and Voice Lessons To Go V.2- Do Re Mi ear/pitch training
Best of luck!
Not quite wordle-like, but check out Functional Ear Trainer https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kaizen9.fet.android
So in my opinion interval training is less useful than it seems like. Most musician's ear doesn't follow music interval to interval, we follow it functionally (which means relative to a key center).
But I have a two part process that has literally worked for everyone who has committed to it who I know. It costs zero money.
Before I explain it, though, here's the thing about ear training: you can't cram it. You will get the best results by doing it for 5-10 minutes a day, every day. Your growth will not be linear - you may go weeks without noticing any progress and then the next day it'll feel like someone took the wax out of your ears, things that were literally impossible yesterday are obvious today. But then you'll be stuck on some new thing.
The first step is simple. Transcribe. Start with simple melodies that you know in your head - Christmas carols, nursery rhymes, movie themes. There will be lots of hunting and pecking involved. If you get stuck, try to sing the next note you want to hear and then match your vocal pitch. But also: EXPECT THIS TO BE SLOW. Short sessions are absolutely key, here, or else you'll get frustrated.
The second step is a free app called the functional ear trainer. This is different from interval recognition, although they seem similar at first. The app has a nice gamified introduction to ease you into it. The same rules apply: short sessions, every day. Here's the link for android andiPhone. I see that there are in-app purchases but I've never used them. There's also a desktop app and some interesting reading on the subject at miles.be.
(I'm not associated with that app in any way - I recommend it because I feel like it changed my musical life. It is the same exercise you'll get at tonedear.com under the "scale degree recognition" label, but I like the way the FET introduces you to the it and works up the complexity.)
Don't decide that these two things aren't working for you until you've done them 5x a week for a month. Remember what I said: growth is not linear. It happens in leaps and plateaus. 10 minutes
Whatever melody you choose, you have to sing it.
Nothing works if you don't sing it/hum it first. Its like creating muscle memory for your throat (instead of your fingers). Once you have manifested the note using your first instrument (your voice) then find that first note that you are singing on the fretboard.
From here its asking the question "is the next note in the melody higher or lower than the previous one?".
Don't randomly hunt and peck, use the above logic and additionally note that most melodies don't move around too much i.e. their notes tend to be close together.
There a bunch of apps like Functional Ear Trainer, ChordProg and courses on Udemy
that might also help you through
Check out my older post about learning how to play by ear and another post about it :)
I also described what struggles I had and still have.
Anyway, ditch mnemonic songs for intervals, learn "movable do", get "Functional Ear Trainer" app: iPhone / Android and practice with it 5 mins per day.
Check out my post about my struggles with ear training :)
I also described how I'm practicing in other post.
Avoid "mnemonic songs" and practice with "Functional Ear Trainer" app for 5 mins per day: iPhone / Android
In another reddit post I learned to hear chord progressions:
lots of ear training.
and transcribe
Okay. Rule 1: you have to sing what you play, play what you sing. (or hum or whistle)
Learn the intervals and their quality
Learn relative pitch
Sing arpeggios
Start with finding melodies you already know (stuff in your head already) like Happy Birthday etc, hum them, then find each note. Relate each note you play to the note in the scale and the distance from the root.
Move on to listening to melodies at the front of songs songs (e.g. intro to Gravity by John Mayer) hum each note, find it on your fret board. Relate each note you play to the note in the scale and the distance form the root.
Listen to the quality of chords and assign an emotion to adjective to it
Use apps like Function Ear Trainer and Chord Prog to practice recognising intervals and common moves in chord progressions
These apps use piano sounds which is great to get you started but eventually you want to train your ear to zone in on guitar sounds, cos you can't drop tune/capo/fuzz box a piano.
Ear Training Bootcamp, dude.
There's a few other apps like:
and ChordProg which also help lots. But they just have piano sounds, and you want to learn to recognise guitar parts.
All ear training starts with you singing, humming or whistling the notes you hear, so you can play what you hear/hear what you play.
I really, really enjoy Alain Benbassat's method. It works by associating the pitches of the major/minor scale (and chromatics) with specific a specific character or feeling, based on how it resolves to do. There is a free app on iOS and Android called Functional Ear Trainer, as well as the original PC application. Some of the other methods didn't really click for me, but this drastically improved my ability in a few weeks.
Get yourself to Ear Training Bootcamp looks like the curriculum covers what you've described.
Apps are also good like ChordProg and Function Ear Trainer.. (but get one with guitar sounds - as that's what you're learning to focus on)
Learn kids song melodies like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star in terms of intervals and use other songs you are really familiar with.
Justin guitar has some basic ear training
I was about to say it's possible to learn to read music from Leavitt, because I did, but it's only half true. I used to play drums/percussion in school orchestras/bands, so I could already read rhythms from standard notation, just not the pitches/keys. Leavitt does actually tell you everything you need to know to start reading from scratch, it's just very terse, and may not provide a sufficient explanation for some people to understand it (the DVD for Vol 1 helps, though). I'm about two pages away from finishing Vol 1 and can't wait to get stuck into Vol 2. I have learned so much from the Leavitt book.
Functional Ear Trainer (iOS, Android) is probably the best ear trainer app for mobiles that I've seen. It teaches you to recognise notes in the context of a key, rather than the common approach of recognising arbitrary intervals. There's also a desktop version, but I prefer the mobile one.
I prefer Functional Ear Trainer on Android. There is also a PC program that this app is based off of.
I'm getting great results with the Functional Ear Trainer android app. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kaizen9.fet.android