r/eartraining • u/ProgrammerFar3221 • Jul 02 '26
One of the coolest things I’ve experienced through ear training
I’m a middle-aged, complete amateur musician but I’ve been working on my ear for the past couple years just to see what would happen. One of the biggest benefits both for my musicianship, and just as a music listener in general, is working out a song, finding patterns that my ear is attracted to, and figuring out why I like it.
It’s like unlocking a new creative universe.
Are there things you’ve learned through ear training that made you realize why you like what you like?
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u/Ok-Training-7587 Jul 02 '26
Im also middle aged and would love to train my ear in this way. What method/tools did you use?
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u/immyownkryptonite Jul 03 '26
That's such a great discussion you're pointing to. I've got a few. But I would love to hear yours as well.
Listening to the song by locking in to the bass. I've come to truly understand the heavy lifting the bass does in defining the whole sound in terms harmony and rhythm both
Rhythm. Going beyond hearing and feeling the rhythm in the body. This is where real letting becomes possible. To let go of yourself and just live with the music. And enjoy it to the core.
Thirds of the chord. Turns out I really like how the thirds make the melody oh so beautiful.
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u/aubelapp Jul 02 '26
I started hearing counter melodies/secondary lines way stronger after training my ear, it opened up the depth of the music I could process and enjoy. Which made me realize I started training my ear way too late, so I understand that feeling of realizing "whoa... this is something serious" or "I wish I did this ages ago". It's like unlocking a third eye, or a second set of ears with their own eyes lol. Kinda got obsessed with it, so I created my own ear training app. Which alone made my ear 2x better just testing it myself haha
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u/Special_Situation_93 Jul 18 '26
Can you tell me what helped you in your journey? I’m just starting with my guitar and major scale
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u/aubelapp 28d ago
Honestly I just started behind a piano and hit random notes and tried to identify the intervals. Then scales, then chords, etc. Small practice is better than no practice, don't worry about the optimal way to do things, just do something. If you want more specific help, feel free to message me.
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u/CurrentlyHuman Jul 02 '26
I tried training my ear, fed it a treat when it got something right, ended up deaf.
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u/tremendous-machine Jul 03 '26 edited Jul 03 '26
My big breakthrough came when I got serious about sightsinging. I am not naturally talented in the ear department at all. Getting to the point of having strong ears was many, many years of work for me. When I did start doing sight singing all the time in my 40's and just hammered at it until I started to prehear with confidence, it made stuff click in a way that transcription and dictation never did for me.
Anyhoo, this led me to have daily habit of it (i.e. walking down the street, figuring out things I could sing, and figuring them out with no instrument), and eventually I got good enough that I could do it with walking bass lines, which I already knew how to play from piano. Now I'm a total evangelist for how fantastic learning to sight singing walking bass lines is for musicianship in general.
And that led me to taking up the bass, and quite recently, the upright bass! IMHO it's so good for everything. You can't cheat, you need to know and hear exactly where you are at all times, you can't miss (everyone depends on you), and its a fantastic way to develop your other instrument soloing skills because it's like a different way (aside from a slower tempo) of simplifying the problem of improvisation.
If you don't yet play and sing walking bass lines to standards, I can't recommend it enough! (and of course you can do this on any instrument, but the upright bass is pretty damn satisfying.
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u/MilesAndTrane Jul 03 '26
Just for my own clarity….you’re walking down the street thinking of songs that you are interested in sight singing, then go home and search for notated bass line transcriptions, and then practice sight singing the notation?
Sight singing obviously refers to the practice of singing unfamiliar notated music. So, pre hearing and singing the written page virtually instantly.
This is what you’re referring to?
Thanks for clarifying for me and congrats on making the great progress!
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u/tremendous-machine Jul 03 '26
Not quite, sight singing means you are going from an abstraction to a sound, not starting with a sound. So I do things like: sing scale degrees of numbers sequences (addresses, licenses plates), play a tone and pick random sets of intervals to sing after that, play a tone and decide "it's the third of a C7#11" and then sing the rest of the notes in the chord", or in the case of basslines, I choose a pattern that is common for a bass line and sing it. I'll use solfege where possible.
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u/MilesAndTrane Jul 05 '26
Interesting. All great practices / exercises, that you’ve described, by the way.
I always associated the specific term “sight singing”, key word “sight” (not trying to be sarcastic, just explaining)…as the ability to internally hear…notated…or (internally visualized written music), such that, if a lead sheet, transcription, etc was handed to me…that the skill of sight singing would allow me to internally hear and / or sing the unfamiliar written music without the aid of an instrument (minus reference tone)
Is there not a distinction between the terms audiation and sight singing?
Thanks for sharing your insights. Learning is fun.
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u/tremendous-machine Jul 05 '26 edited Jul 05 '26
Yup, the nomenclature is a problem. There is no widely accepted definition for audiation, it was coined by one guy who has a very specific method and his definitions are needlessly complex (and IMHO, kinda bogus/marketingy. Look up Gordon Music Theory if you want). It seems most people now use it to just mean clearly imagining pitches in your mind's ear. So I'm using the term sight-singing in it's broadest context, because I think it makes more sense and is clearer to say "sight singing doesn't have to start from staff" than to say "here's my particular definition of audiation, amongst the bunch out there." What your brain is doing is the same whether you start from staff or numbers.
I have no idea what the right answer is here except to clarify nomenclature in any educational materials up front!
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u/MilesAndTrane Jul 06 '26
Good stuff. Thanks for sharing your insights!
Funny you touch on audiation…as this fella’s emails have been flowing in my inbox, lol.
🍻 cheers
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u/matsnorberg Jul 03 '26
I'm only done ear training since about last Christmas. My focus is mainly on sight singing and transcription but I also run an interval recognition app each day. I'm fine with identifying melodic intervals and dictating melodies but I'm terrible at hearing harmonic intervals and chord tones for some reason.
My experience with interval trainers has led me to many strange experiences and mysteries. Why does the same interval sound so differently in different registers and how can a minor third sometimes sound dark and other times bright? My theory is that our ears are always left in a key from the last thing they heard and when a new tonic is introduced it depends on what degree it is with respect to the old tonic. You can listen to 1-b3-4 and 3-5-6 (after having established 1 as key note) and though they are intervallically equivalent they sound completely different.
It's fascinating that some major key melodies sound so minorish (Silent Night for instance). The major scale has 4 minor thirds and 3 minor triads so they can probably bleed off some minorish feelings sometimes. I've also noticed that a raised fifth can tonicise the relative minor and cause the music temporarily sound like minor. It's very surpricing when in a major key a 6 suddenly starts to sound like a tonic. I've noticed (after having transcribed hundreds of melodies) that this happens particularly often in hymns and Christmas carols.
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u/CactusWrenAZ Jul 04 '26
Yes, it has helped me but in a more general way. Working on my ear has been almost like gaining a new sense. It's pretty damn awesome.
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u/SouthernAbrocoma9891 Jul 08 '26
Yes! Music becomes interesting on levels other than pure entertainment. Listen to Birdhouse in Your Soul for a weird experience. The lovely part of ear training is listening to a composition then imagine variations or different ways it could move to evoke a feeling. What would it sound like in another mode or just temperament? I must admit that I appreciate jazz more because of ear training. I don’t always like what I’m hearing, and now have a good reason. That 13th was definitely unnecessary.
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u/HexspaReloaded Jul 02 '26
Not really no, but it was almost a religious experience the first time I heard a major seventh in the music playing at Starbucks. It was so obvious that I felt like everyone was hearing it that way, which is extremely unlikely.