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Ear Training
Is your musical brain wired backwards?
Have a question or comment about ear training? Click here!
Our brains naturally navigate towards what we assume is the easiest way to accomplish any given task. But what if I told you that what might seem easiest right now might actually crippling your musical efforts in the long term? And that you might actually be damaging your efforts to learn music?
If you struggle to learn music, if you can\'t hear music you\'ve never played or heard in your mind\'s ear, if you can\'t recognize essential harmonies, then you\'re missing the most crucial aspect of learning music: ear training. This is the key to learning to play piano by ear.
Listening comprehension
Ear training is literally the listening comprehension of music. It is without a doubt the single most neglected aspect of music training today. Many teachers fail to systematically train the ear at all, assuming that training the eyes to learn to read music and the fingers to play are sufficient.
Yet since music is sound, ear training ought to be the first and foremost task of any developing musician. This ought to be self-evident. Just as the painter must develop the most acute visual perception and the gourmet chef a refined taste, so must the musician develop acute aural sensitivity.
Opening the ears
Our first essential task as students of music is to open our ears. This implies learning how listen to music we hear as well as listening to ourselves as we play. This latter aspect of ear training is unquestionably one of the most difficult tasks for the developing musician. It can take many years to synthesize one\'s inner conceptions with the sounds we\'re actually producing. In other words, until we\'re very advanced musicians, the sounds we think we\'re making simply aren\'t the ones other people are hearing. (This aspect of playing music obviously has very much to do with technique, which must at all times be married to the ear.) Simply recording ourselves and playing it back will reveal how disparate what we think we\'re playing and what we\'re actually playing can be.
The second aspect of ear training is recognizing what we are hearing, just as we recognize objects we see. It is not necessary for a listener to recognize with scientific precision everything he or she hears. It is, however, necessary for us musicians to thoroughly understand the compositional material of every piece we play, just as actors must understand language. Meaning lies behind and between the notes, and it\'s our job to communicate that meaning. It\'s impossible to communicate musical meaning if we don\'t understand the basic vocabulary.
Playing music without this essential ear training would be like trying to speak a foreign language without understanding the words. You could learn by rote -- it\'s indeed possible to learn how to press the right keys in the right sequence simply by repetition, but if you don\'t understand the actual words -- the notes, intervals and harmonies, you\'re merely exercising your fingers. Your fingers are learning, but not your ears. This muscle memory, as it\'s popularly called, is infamously unreliable. It\'s guaranteed to give you serious performance anxiety, and it\'s a practical 100% guarantee (no money back!) that you\'ll blank out right when you most depend on it.
Tragically, most pianists play like this. They learn entire fugues this way and then have panic attacks when they attempt them in front of others, and memory slips abound. If you\'re in the habit of practicing like this, the time to break this habit is immediately. Every time you practice with a disengaged ear you will be reinforcing the very habit you\'re trying to break. Hence, you will actually be doing harm to your musicianship. The more you work improperly, the harder it will be to create retroactively that ever-critical ear-finger connection.
Hear with your eyes and see with your ears
Your goal is to learn to hear with your eyes and see with your ears. Your fingers must be guided at all times by your inner ear. We shouldn\'t hear because we play, rather we play because we hear. In other words, we don\'t hear a note simply because we happen to have struck the right key, we strike the right key because we hear the right note in our mind\'s ear. This is the essence of getting the mind ahead of the fingers, and this is the ultimate goal of ear training.
The first aspect of this goal is technical: Your inner sound concept must always direct your fingers; that is the aim of technique.
The second aspect deals with pitch and harmony. Your understanding of harmony must be so ingrained that your ear seemingly automatically tells your fingers which notes to play.
If your ear isn\'t guiding your fingers in this manner, you\'re on very dangerous territory indeed. Your musical work isn\'t based on real musicianship; rather, you\'re simulating playing the piano. Recall the language example: It\'s possible to learn to type the right letters of words and sentences in succession, but in the long run it\'s infinitely superior, not to mention vastly more enjoyable, to actually know the language. Then you can say anything with ease.
It\'s the method, stupid!
This is the problem with so many quick and easy piano methods nowadays, and this is why they fail to create authentic musicians in the long run. They cater to the instant gratification mentality, lazy students fall prey to them, show modest progress at the beginning and later invariably give up in frustration.
Even advanced music students face this problem, since ear training is no longer an integral part of all aspects of music education, but is rather relegated to only a few semesters in a separate course that has no relation to music students\' core instrumental work. This reveals a gaping hole in their musical education. And it\'s not the students\' fault, it\'s that of the music educational system. In most cases ear training is never even mentioned until the student enters a conservatory or university program, and then most of class time must be spent on remedial work that should have begun with the very first lesson. How embarrassing that the final exam so often consists of the identical material to the entry exam, only played faster!
The good news...
The good news is that there\'s a solution to this problem, and a very large part of that solution is proper ear training. The bad news is that it takes considerable mental effort, and lazy minds would prefer to just exercise their fingers and hope for the best. The effects of this malpractice rear their heads at all the wrong times: when it really counts. The deficiencies can be embarrassing. I\'ve encountered graduates of well-known conservatories who could, after much diligent practice, perform extremely difficult pieces but who could not distinguish a major third from a minor third by ear. They learned to learn primarily with their fingers rather than their ears.
What\'s wonderful about training the ear properly in this manner is that the work is largely cumulative. In the beginning it will require great effort, like running a mile for the first time. Like athletic training, with regular practice you\'ll develop quickly and will come to enjoy each further step. Yet, also like athletic training, it requires regular practice. The body operates according to a strict use it or lose it principle. Ear training therefore needs to be a part of your daily practice regimen.
How to test your ear
A simple test to see whether you\'re learning primarily with your ears or merely with your fingers is to transpose your music (without the aid of the score, of course). Obviously, extremely technically difficult pieces such as etudes don\'t lend themselves to this sort of ear training, but slower pieces do. Fortunately for us, it\'s the slower pieces that tend to give us memory trouble since we\'re unable to play them on autopilot; that is, our muscles don\'t readily take over.
It\'s also best to use practice pieces rather than performance pieces for transposing, at least at the beginning. Béla Bartók\'s Mikrokosmos is absolutely ideal for this work, especially since it\'s so full of surprises. When working with this material it\'s essential to stay very alert for unexpected notes -- you can\'t simply play notes within a conventional scale or chord.
Another simple but powerful method of ear training is to sing each voice in all pieces you play. This is an especially useful method of testing whether you\'re really hearing everything. In most cases, students hear only the melody and bass. They tend to have only a vague impression of the vital middle voices and hence the piece as a whole. This accounts for much of their high degree of uncertainty, difficulty memorizing and performance anxiety. Sing each and every note without the aid of the piano, making sure you\'re staying absolutely on pitch. The piano is used only to give a starting note and to periodically check your pitch. While tedious at first, this method of basic ear training will ensure that you\'re truly hearing everything and will give you far greater security so that you can concentrate not on playing the right notes but on expressing the music.
If you\'re using music such as Mikrokosmos, which I highly recommend, be absolutely certain you don\'t cheat and merely sight-read new pieces at the piano! All the ear training value, hidden in the many unexpected melodic turns, is lost forever the moment you press the keys to hear the correct pitch. You only have one chance to do it per piece! Remember, this is exactly the habit we\'re seeking to correct -- the goal is to create an accurate inner musical impression rather than rely on external auditory feedback.
This, by the way, is why Beethoven (and Gabriel Fauré, as is less known) could go on composing music in the face of deafness. Thanks to their impeccable ear training and musicianship, they indeed heard every note.
Ear Training Lessons
Play Piano by Ear: The Essentials
Playing Piano by Ear: Thoughts and Tips
Get More Free Online Piano Lessons...
... delivered to your inbox! Sign up now to be notified of new piano lessons, special offers and free sheet music!
(key-notes LLC has a zero-tolerance spam policy, and you can easily unsubscribe at any time.)
Get free piano lessons... delivered to your inbox!
We respect your email privacy
You\'ll receive new lessons each week.
Thank you for choosing key-notes!
What Is Your Ear Training Question?
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Other Visitors\' Questions and Comments
Click below to see contributions from other visitors to this page...
Voice Leading and Inner Voices
Question: I would like to know more about proper voice leading. I can hear each separate voice in a piece and I can hear chord progressions, but this ...
My Ear Training Exercises
Question: In my ear training exercises, I can currently hear every scale interval in my mind\'s ear in every key. I am wondering about the minor intervals....
Missing Notes in Ear Training?
Question: Here\'s one I can\'t explain... in specific ear training where the student is asked to do chord identification (major/minor with inversion) using ...
Memorizing Long Melodies Not rated yet
Question: One problem faced by my students in aural tests is memorizing a long melody. Any tips please? Thanks.
Albert\'s reply: The most important ...
Hearing Chord Progressions Not rated yet
Question: I play the guitar which is a string instrument just like the piano, and I play in a little church band. Before I started going to this church ...
Ear Training for Non-Singers Not rated yet
Question: Actually I am a dance student, but I know my inner ear could use training -- just to be a better listener.
What kind of inner ear training ...
Ear Training with the Radio Not rated yet
Question: For singing I do breathing exercises before bed. I believe in practising breathing and listening together because the listening helps to open ...
Ear Training in Daily Piano Practice Not rated yet
Question: Hello! What are your suggestions for how I could ear train during my daily piano regimen? Currently, I am simply memorizing the c4-c5 C Major ...
Music Ear Not rated yet
Question: How can ear training help singers?
Albert\'s reply: It is essential for all musicians to train their ear, since music is sound after all ...
Click here to write your own.
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Ear Training: Is your musical brain wired backwards?
© 2010 key-notes LLC | Legal | Privacy policy | Contact
All rights reserved worldwide
Free Piano Lessons
We respect your email privacy
Subscribe
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Ear Training
Is your musical brain wired backwards?
Have a question or comment about ear training? Click here!
Our brains naturally navigate towards what we assume is the easiest way to accomplish any given task. But what if I told you that what might seem easiest right now might actually crippling your musical efforts in the long term? And that you might actually be damaging your efforts to learn music?
If you struggle to learn music, if you can\'t hear music you\'ve never played or heard in your mind\'s ear, if you can\'t recognize essential harmonies, then you\'re missing the most crucial aspect of learning music: ear training. This is the key to learning to play piano by ear.
Listening comprehension
Ear training is literally the listening comprehension of music. It is without a doubt the single most neglected aspect of music training today. Many teachers fail to systematically train the ear at all, assuming that training the eyes to learn to read music and the fingers to play are sufficient.
Yet since music is sound, ear training ought to be the first and foremost task of any developing musician. This ought to be self-evident. Just as the painter must develop the most acute visual perception and the gourmet chef a refined taste, so must the musician develop acute aural sensitivity.
Opening the ears
Our first essential task as students of music is to open our ears. This implies learning how listen to music we hear as well as listening to ourselves as we play. This latter aspect of ear training is unquestionably one of the most difficult tasks for the developing musician. It can take many years to synthesize one\'s inner conceptions with the sounds we\'re actually producing. In other words, until we\'re very advanced musicians, the sounds we think we\'re making simply aren\'t the ones other people are hearing. (This aspect of playing music obviously has very much to do with technique, which must at all times be married to the ear.) Simply recording ourselves and playing it back will reveal how disparate what we think we\'re playing and what we\'re actually playing can be.
The second aspect of ear training is recognizing what we are hearing, just as we recognize objects we see. It is not necessary for a listener to recognize with scientific precision everything he or she hears. It is, however, necessary for us musicians to thoroughly understand the compositional material of every piece we play, just as actors must understand language. Meaning lies behind and between the notes, and it\'s our job to communicate that meaning. It\'s impossible to communicate musical meaning if we don\'t understand the basic vocabulary.
Playing music without this essential ear training would be like trying to speak a foreign language without understanding the words. You could learn by rote -- it\'s indeed possible to learn how to press the right keys in the right sequence simply by repetition, but if you don\'t understand the actual words -- the notes, intervals and harmonies, you\'re merely exercising your fingers. Your fingers are learning, but not your ears. This muscle memory, as it\'s popularly called, is infamously unreliable. It\'s guaranteed to give you serious performance anxiety, and it\'s a practical 100% guarantee (no money back!) that you\'ll blank out right when you most depend on it.
Tragically, most pianists play like this. They learn entire fugues this way and then have panic attacks when they attempt them in front of others, and memory slips abound. If you\'re in the habit of practicing like this, the time to break this habit is immediately. Every time you practice with a disengaged ear you will be reinforcing the very habit you\'re trying to break. Hence, you will actually be doing harm to your musicianship. The more you work improperly, the harder it will be to create retroactively that ever-critical ear-finger connection.
Hear with your eyes and see with your ears
Your goal is to learn to hear with your eyes and see with your ears. Your fingers must be guided at all times by your inner ear. We shouldn\'t hear because we play, rather we play because we hear. In other words, we don\'t hear a note simply because we happen to have struck the right key, we strike the right key because we hear the right note in our mind\'s ear. This is the essence of getting the mind ahead of the fingers, and this is the ultimate goal of ear training.
The first aspect of this goal is technical: Your inner sound concept must always direct your fingers; that is the aim of technique.
The second aspect deals with pitch and harmony. Your understanding of harmony must be so ingrained that your ear seemingly automatically tells your fingers which notes to play.
If your ear isn\'t guiding your fingers in this manner, you\'re on very dangerous territory indeed. Your musical work isn\'t based on real musicianship; rather, you\'re simulating playing the piano. Recall the language example: It\'s possible to learn to type the right letters of words and sentences in succession, but in the long run it\'s infinitely superior, not to mention vastly more enjoyable, to actually know the language. Then you can say anything with ease.
It\'s the method, stupid!
This is the problem with so many quick and easy piano methods nowadays, and this is why they fail to create authentic musicians in the long run. They cater to the instant gratification mentality, lazy students fall prey to them, show modest progress at the beginning and later invariably give up in frustration.
Even advanced music students face this problem, since ear training is no longer an integral part of all aspects of music education, but is rather relegated to only a few semesters in a separate course that has no relation to music students\' core instrumental work. This reveals a gaping hole in their musical education. And it\'s not the students\' fault, it\'s that of the music educational system. In most cases ear training is never even mentioned until the student enters a conservatory or university program, and then most of class time must be spent on remedial work that should have begun with the very first lesson. How embarrassing that the final exam so often consists of the identical material to the entry exam, only played faster!
The good news...
The good news is that there\'s a solution to this problem, and a very large part of that solution is proper ear training. The bad news is that it takes considerable mental effort, and lazy minds would prefer to just exercise their fingers and hope for the best. The effects of this malpractice rear their heads at all the wrong times: when it really counts. The deficiencies can be embarrassing. I\'ve encountered graduates of well-known conservatories who could, after much diligent practice, perform extremely difficult pieces but who could not distinguish a major third from a minor third by ear. They learned to learn primarily with their fingers rather than their ears.
What\'s wonderful about training the ear properly in this manner is that the work is largely cumulative. In the beginning it will require great effort, like running a mile for the first time. Like athletic training, with regular practice you\'ll develop quickly and will come to enjoy each further step. Yet, also like athletic training, it requires regular practice. The body operates according to a strict use it or lose it principle. Ear training therefore needs to be a part of your daily practice regimen.
How to test your ear
A simple test to see whether you\'re learning primarily with your ears or merely with your fingers is to transpose your music (without the aid of the score, of course). Obviously, extremely technically difficult pieces such as etudes don\'t lend themselves to this sort of ear training, but slower pieces do. Fortunately for us, it\'s the slower pieces that tend to give us memory trouble since we\'re unable to play them on autopilot; that is, our muscles don\'t readily take over.
It\'s also best to use practice pieces rather than performance pieces for transposing, at least at the beginning. Béla Bartók\'s Mikrokosmos is absolutely ideal for this work, especially since it\'s so full of surprises. When working with this material it\'s essential to stay very alert for unexpected notes -- you can\'t simply play notes within a conventional scale or chord.
Another simple but powerful method of ear training is to sing each voice in all pieces you play. This is an especially useful method of testing whether you\'re really hearing everything. In most cases, students hear only the melody and bass. They tend to have only a vague impression of the vital middle voices and hence the piece as a whole. This accounts for much of their high degree of uncertainty, difficulty memorizing and performance anxiety. Sing each and every note without the aid of the piano, making sure you\'re staying absolutely on pitch. The piano is used only to give a starting note and to periodically check your pitch. While tedious at first, this method of basic ear training will ensure that you\'re truly hearing everything and will give you far greater security so that you can concentrate not on playing the right notes but on expressing the music.
If you\'re using music such as Mikrokosmos, which I highly recommend, be absolutely certain you don\'t cheat and merely sight-read new pieces at the piano! All the ear training value, hidden in the many unexpected melodic turns, is lost forever the moment you press the keys to hear the correct pitch. You only have one chance to do it per piece! Remember, this is exactly the habit we\'re seeking to correct -- the goal is to create an accurate inner musical impression rather than rely on external auditory feedback.
This, by the way, is why Beethoven (and Gabriel Fauré, as is less known) could go on composing music in the face of deafness. Thanks to their impeccable ear training and musicianship, they indeed heard every note.
Ear Training Lessons
Play Piano by Ear: The Essentials
Playing Piano by Ear: Thoughts and Tips
Get More Free Online Piano Lessons...
... delivered to your inbox! Sign up now to be notified of new piano lessons, special offers and free sheet music!
(key-notes LLC has a zero-tolerance spam policy, and you can easily unsubscribe at any time.)
Get free piano lessons... delivered to your inbox!
We respect your email privacy
You\'ll receive new lessons each week.
Thank you for choosing key-notes!
What Is Your Ear Training Question?
Do you have a question about ear training? Your own ear training exercises or experiences? Share your thoughts!
Enter Your Title
Ask Your Question or Share Your Comments [ ? ] Close Help
Entering your question is simple. Just type away!
Your question or comments will appear on this website. You can wrap a word in square brackets to make it appear bold. For example [my question] would show as my question on the Web page containing your question.
TIP: Since most people scan Web pages, include your best thoughts in your first paragraph.
Author Information (optional)
To receive credit as the author, enter your information below.
Your Name
(first or full name)
Your Location
(ex. City, State, Country)
Submit Your Contribution
Check box to agree to these submission guidelines.
(You can preview and edit on the next page)
Other Visitors\' Questions and Comments
Click below to see contributions from other visitors to this page...
Voice Leading and Inner Voices
Question: I would like to know more about proper voice leading. I can hear each separate voice in a piece and I can hear chord progressions, but this ...
My Ear Training Exercises
Question: In my ear training exercises, I can currently hear every scale interval in my mind\'s ear in every key. I am wondering about the minor intervals....
Missing Notes in Ear Training?
Question: Here\'s one I can\'t explain... in specific ear training where the student is asked to do chord identification (major/minor with inversion) using ...
Memorizing Long Melodies Not rated yet
Question: One problem faced by my students in aural tests is memorizing a long melody. Any tips please? Thanks.
Albert\'s reply: The most important ...
Hearing Chord Progressions Not rated yet
Question: I play the guitar which is a string instrument just like the piano, and I play in a little church band. Before I started going to this church ...
Ear Training for Non-Singers Not rated yet
Question: Actually I am a dance student, but I know my inner ear could use training -- just to be a better listener.
What kind of inner ear training ...
Ear Training with the Radio Not rated yet
Question: For singing I do breathing exercises before bed. I believe in practising breathing and listening together because the listening helps to open ...
Ear Training in Daily Piano Practice Not rated yet
Question: Hello! What are your suggestions for how I could ear train during my daily piano regimen? Currently, I am simply memorizing the c4-c5 C Major ...
Music Ear Not rated yet
Question: How can ear training help singers?
Albert\'s reply: It is essential for all musicians to train their ear, since music is sound after all ...
Click here to write your own.
Share this page:
What\'s This?
Enjoy this page? Please pay it forward. Here\'s how...
Would you prefer to share this page with others by linking to it?
Click on the HTML link code below.
Copy and paste it, adding a note of your own, into your blog, a Web page, forums, a blog comment, your Facebook account, or anywhere that someone would find this page valuable.
Ear Training: Is your musical brain wired backwards?
© 2010 key-notes LLC | Legal | Privacy policy | Contact
All rights reserved worldwide
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Subscribe
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