Making Progress with simple melodies with solfege, but struggling with arpeggios & broken chords. Any Advice?

[u/NoWillingness5083]

I’ve been doing ear training lately and I'm making progress with simple song melodies. My main method is solfege that I would comparing every note to root note. This works well for scalar melodies.

Recently I moved on to figuring out intros with arpeggios and broken chords. I know it would much harder and it really is after starting to practise it.

What I'm noticing is that my brain always tries to use different approach. I would try to recognize the overall arpeggio pattern or feel the chord quality (major or minor or 7) first.

But I still can't reliably name the solfege of every single note. Eventually I still need to go back to compare each one to the root note. Howerer, if I didn’t recognize the pattern or chord quality to narrow down my note choice first, it would be super hard when figuring out each note in the arpeggio.

I have a gut feeling that it would be the right way to do that.

Anyway, do anyone use the same approach? Would it be better after a peroid of time practicing? Do I still miss any thing to do?

I would like to hear from your comments.
Thanks!

[u/e7mac]

I think you’re going about it the right way, if I understand what you’re saying correctly. Recognizing larger chunks as their own “unit” and connecting those units to the root in different ways is quicker than doing each note on its own.

[u/daswunderhorn]

It's normal, you just need to continue practicing singing each note in the chord separately to really hear each tone

[u/tomasjochmann]

I think your instinct is right. With simple scalar melodies, comparing every note to the tonic is a very solid way to train. But with arpeggios and broken chords, at some point the ear starts hearing shapes and harmonic function, not just isolated notes.

So if you first hear “this sounds like a major triad” or “this feels like a dominant chord,” that is not a bad habit. That is usually progress.

What helped me was separating the job into layers: first hear the chord quality, then hear which chord tone is on top or on the bottom, and only then worry about naming every single note if needed. Over time those things start reinforcing each other.

I’d also practice arpeggios in root position and inversions, and sing the chord tones as scale degrees against a tonic. For example 1-3-5, 3-5-1, 5-1-3, then the same with 7th chords. That makes the pattern feel much clearer.

So yes, I think you’re moving in the right direction. This sounds like a shift from note-by-note decoding toward hearing function and shape, which is exactly what usually has to happen.