Musicians: How do you develop your 'ear'?

Cafe Society
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Hi,
I’m 31 years old and have been playing guitar for two years, mostly self-taught via instruction videos, tab from the internet, and watching and talking to other guitarists.

While I’m a competent enough player - assuming I’ve got the tab or sheet music memorized or in front of me - I’ve discovered that my ear is atrocious.

This fact was brought home to me by my partner who, while not keen on guitar-playing, can use 3 simple major chords - A D and E - that I taught her in an idle 5 minutes to instantly play any tune she wants. When those 3 chords aren’t enough for a tune, she can work out the other chords very quickly, most often a F#m or Bm.

See, she can hear exactly what she wants, in her head. She knows in advance whether she wants a minor or a major chord, whereas I haven’t a clue until after it’s been played, when I can hear whether it sounds right or wrong.
The way I work out an unfamiliar tune is to pick a suitable start chord and then work out the rest of them almost entirely from trial and error, using my memory of what chords tend to go with others in songs that I already know.

It seems that while I rely on my visual memory, she is using what I imagine musicians call her ‘ear’. To my frustration, she can’t explain how she achieves her miracle in any detail. It seems she’s just a natural musician.
Is there anything I can do to improve my own ear?

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Check out this link to see if it might be helpful.

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I’ve been playing the guitar for two years now, too (I’m 23) and I’m in exactly the same position as you, Reuben. Nevertheless, I do feel that my ear had improved considerably since I started playing. Some people have a natural ‘ear’ for music, while others (such as us) have to do it the hard way.

Zeldar, that’s an interesting link. Could be very useful, when used regularly.

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What I have learned about my own “ear” is that even though I have a good melody ear and can reproduce almost any tune I hear on the guitar (or piano) by trial and error, I have a bad harmony ear and have to work at chords until I hear the “flavors” involved. That link has helped a little but not nearly enough.

Another odd thing I’ve found happening is that if I really like some riff or sequence (an example would be something like Boz Scaggs’s Lowdown) and go to the trouble of locating the sheet music or TAB for it, it will usually be a chord progression I already know and play a lot of. I couldn’t have told you that before finding the music, nor would I have been able to produce the chords without that help. But it has happened too many times for me to ignore.

I guess I just expect things to be more complicated than they really are. Some of that may come from looking at sheet music for things I don’t already know and seeing how complicated some things can get.

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Has your girlfriend been singing all her life? It is likely that she has been doing some other sort of musical activity that helped to refine her musical perception. She may have also been exposed to music on a regular basis from an early age.

I do not believe in such a thing as an “ear.” A large quantity of artistic skill is obtained through reinforcement via repeated exposure. You may wish to take up singing in order to internalize your sense of tone and melody to a greater degree. Whistling is another great way, although other people around you might argue the point.

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Hi Zeldar, nice link! I’m using the chord trainer there - apparently I can’t even tell major from minor all of the time. :frowning:

This is getting very depressing; I had no idea I was quite so musically deficient. My partner says she had no especially musical childhood - played the recorder at school, sang a very little, the usual thing.

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Reuben, I thought of something else you might want to check on. Go here and look at the .pdf files on Ear Training 16kb and
Interval Chart 18kb. These are Adobe Acrobat .pdf files you’ll need to print off if they appeal to you. But the contents may be useful.

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I have been playing bass since I was 13. I had no ability to recognize melodies until I was about 17. I was fortunate to be able to play at least twice a week with my church band. After becoming more and more comfortable taking risks, I found that I knew more than I thought. Trust yourself! It will pay off.
My advice would be to jam regularly with some people. This helps a great deal. Don’t be afraid to take a shot at that next chord even if you’re not quite sure it will be right. You will learn a lot by making mistakes, then correcting them. Have fun, and good luck!

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Just a few thoughts …

Zeldar’s website is useful, if challenging! I like the “Play Again” function.

When you learn a new tune, or chord progression, or part of a tune, immediately take it into a new key. The trial-and-error process you mentioned is a part of ear training. You already know what sounds right and what doesn’t; that’s half the battle. The other half is gaining proficiency on your instrument so that you can play stuff right the first time.

One way of learning intervals is to analyze chords. Make yourself familiar with the internal intervals. A major triad in root position contains within it a major third (1-3), a minor third (3-5) and a perfect fifth (1-5). You should be able to recognize all 2-note intervals in the abstract, but it’s also helpful to note that (for example) a minor 6th is the outside interval of a 1st-inversion major triad: E-C is the skeleton of the chord E-G-C, which is clearly major. The chords will help you with the intervals, and vice-versa.

Spend lots of time on getting all the intervals down by rote. An exercise might be to find tunes that start with, or contain, each interval. Examples (all in the key of C for convenience):

Major Third: “Oh, When” of “Oh, when the saints go marching in” - C-E

Perfect Fourth: “Here Comes” of “Here Comes the Bride” - C-F

Tritone: “Ma-ri–” of “Maria (I just found a girl named Maria)” - C-F#

Major Sixth: “My Bon—” of “My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean” - C-A

Octave: “Somewhere” of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” - C-C[sup]8[/sup]

Compile a list of tunes that contain all the intervals, and for a while, associate the interval with a tune. Every time you’re trying to decide what’s a fourth, think “Here comes the bride”. Does it match?

Here’s an exercise with your instrument: play a single note, then assign yourself an interval to SING (not just think; actually sing it) that is the correct distance from the note you played. Use flashcards or some other randomizing system. Then, after you’ve sung your guess, play the correct note on your instrument and see if you were right.

Have fun! This is a lifetime’s work.

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Slight correction: my examples of tunes with intervals are NOT all “in the key of C”. They all start on the note C. Big difference. Just in case anyone was confused.

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Another idea (sorry; I could go on and on; I love ear training):

Spend a day with each interval in turn. On Major Third day, find every single major third that’s playable on your instrument. Hum major thirds to yourself all day. At random times, play a random note, and sing a major third up from it. (Then verify on your instrument.)

Don’t forget about decending intervals too!

Another one: pick apart tunes you know, and identify all the intervals. Melodies are nothing but intervals strung together.

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You shouldn’t feel lousy about not being able to hear everything on that chord trainer, especially if you’re new to ear training. I think a lot of problems that people might have with that sort of thing is that the context of the chords can goof them up–minor won’t always sound “sad,” if that’s the sort of thing you’re listening for. For example, if you hear something like a C major chord, and subconsciously latch onto it as a key center, then a D minor, E minor, or A minor chord will sound like part of that key, and the darkness that you’re listening for might not be as immediately perceptible as if you were able to compare a C major chord and a C minor chord in succession. I don’t know if anybody else has this problem, or if that’s truly the problem that I’ve at times encountered, but it seems to explain why I can sometimes love the sound of a minor chord and other times find it a bit bland.

If this sounds like a problem you might be having, make a conscious effort to break away from any tonal center that you have in your mind and listen only to the quality or color of the chord that you’re currently trying to identify. Also, if you get stuck, arpeggiating the chord and listening to the relationships between the notes of the chord can help, especially if you’ve worked out arpeggiating chords on your instrument prior to working on the computer exercise.

Yeah, that’s the other thing. Listen very closely for chord qualities on the guitar (and I’m sure piano would help too, if you can get your hands on one). Maybe spend a day going through all of your major chords, and arpeggiating them, and then comparing a C major to a C minor, C dominant, whatever, until you have a pretty good feeling for what a major chord sounds like, regardless of what’s around it. Go through all the chord qualities until you have a pretty good idea of the color of each one and the ability to isolate it from the rest of a progression.

Another thing that has helped me a buttload is learning jazz theory. It introduces you to a lot more chord types than what you’re probably playing, and there are a lot more complex chord progressions. After you’ve learned the changes to a few jazz tunes, write your own set of changes and see what kinds of interesting colors you can employ in your progressions (altered dominants, diminished substitutions, augmented chords, crazy stuff like that). I’m a trombonist, but I’ve been working a lot with jazz at the keyboard this last year, and this summer especially, and I’ve noticed a huge improvement in my ear, hearing chords I know I wouldn’t have heard a year ago. When I tried that ear training program, I was able to think things like, “That sounds like the ii in a ii-V-I, must be minor seventh,” or “Sounds like an altered dominant, it’s probably a fully diminished chord,” or “That’s a distinctive sound from a tune I wrote, has to be an augmented chord.” When you learn the function of each type of chord, you’re better able to recognize them.

The other stuff that people are saying about melodic ear training is good, too; I’d definitely get working on that before this harmonic stuff because it’s a more accessible way to open up your ears and I think lays the groundwork for the more complex ear training later on.

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Hmm… I’ve been playing trumpet for several years. I can usually pick out notes… but sometimes I actually have to hear them.

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The simple answer is to play your instrument… ALOT, and practice, practice, practice. What you’ve listed that you are already doing is perfectly correct: get tab from the Internet, play along with your favorite CD’s, talk to other musicians. That’s how all the great musicians got to be that way. No one taught Coltrane how to be “Coltrane,” or Stevie Ray Vaughn to be “Stevie Ray Vaughn.” They just practiced alot, played whenever, and with whomever, they could.

Probably the best thing you can do is to play with people and share tips and tricks, it really does help you improve quickly. Unfortunately, you are probably like alot of us on this board, where playing an instrument has become a hobby which we have to fit around work and family, so finding time to play with a band can be pretty hard. But try if you can.

Here are some tips that I used to help figure out my ear. As far as single note intervals, the tip from masonite is what you’re always taught in jazz class: Identify what you don’t know based upon songs that you do. It’s very helpful. And if you’ve been playing guitar for two years already, you’re probably better at it than you think. For example, de-tune the A-string on your guitar pretty far. Then strike your E-string and based upon the sound of the E-string, strike your A-string and try to get it back in tune based upon what you “know” the A-string is supposed to sound like. That interval is the perfect fourth in masonite’s post. So, you’ve already started to develop your “ear”.

As far as getting familiar with chords and how they sound… I’ve played saxophone for years in all sorts of bands, so because of it I was very focused on single-note soloing, and was more “reactive” to the chords played by the rhythm section as opposed to figuring out the chords, per say. So, when I stated dabbling with guitar, I had a hell of a time with actually playing chord structure. One thing that I found useful was playing along with some jazz standards. Go pick up two books: 1. one of those Mel Bay books with every guitar chord fingering known to man in it, and 2. pick up a book called “The Real Book.” The Real Book is basically about 500 pages of jazz standards with the head, chords, and melody line written out. There are lots of different types out there, for example.
So, pick some songs out of this book that you know and find some CD’s with those songs (or find MP3s online) and start to play along. The jazz standards are great for the simple reason that they can be very hard, and there are lots of different recordings of them out there. Use the Real Book to see what chords are being played, use the Mel Bay book to figure out how to play the chord, and then play what you hear with the CD. I guarantee you, you’ll get frustrated and pissed off the first couple of times, but keep trying. It’s not easy work. Playing through some of the songs in the book will expose you to chords you won’t normally see in more mainstream music, you also get to see how the melody and the chords interact. And when you find a chord progression that you like, stop the CD and figure out what it is you like about it: remove and add notes to the chords and study how the “feel” of the chord changes; when playing a progression and the “feel” goes from a more “open” sound (a more major type chord) to a more “tense” sound (a more dissonant minor chord), figure out what notes changed in the chord to make the feeling change; then try it in a different key and see what it sounds like; after all that and you know what makes the chord progression work, mess around with it and try to create something new that you’ve just made up that you like better than the original. Now you have a set of chords that you know all about that you can use in different ways, styles, etc. What you’ve just done there is what every good musician that has ever played has done: find something you like, figure it out, and then make it your own. You’ll be surprised how fast you can improve your understanding of chords this way. The first couple times you do this will be quite hard, but every time you do another one it will get easier and easier because you have more knowledge and licks in your arsenal to call upon.

Unfortunately, there is no magic bullet. Just play your instrument alot, and enjoy it. Good luck.

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Zeldar, cool link to the Jamey Aebersold booklet. I remember getting copies of that in jazz band as a kid. I actually ordered the free hardcopy, just to have a copy again!

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A note on Real Books:

from this site

The Sher books (“The New Real Book” and its sequels) are IMO the gold standard of real books. Get v.1, 2, and 3 and you’ve got all the tunes you’ll ever need, just about. But I find the notorious photocopied “The Real Book”, (volumes 1-3, but especially v.1) although shockingly inaccurate at times, to be indispensible – and they’re not hard to find, though still certainly illegal.

To see what the illegal one looks like, search here for the album “Real Book” by Steve Swallow. Swallow was supposedly so irritated at the number of his tunes included in volume one of “The Real Book” that he stole their distinctive cover design for one of his album covers. Being totally illegitimate, of course, they* couldn’t do a thing about it!

*the shadowy “They” that run everything from behind the scenes

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What, nobody mentioned Stairmaster. A recognized authority on developing your 'ear.

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Just wanted to say a big ‘Thanks!’ to all the above replies. You’ve given me lots of stuff to do, and even more importantly, some optimism about my chances of improving!

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Lol, did you mean Earmaster? Here is a link to a bunch. I think I liked Auralia the best but I can’t remember. I liked EarMaster too.

http://www.harmony-central.com/Software/Windows/ear_training.html

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BTW to add to ** masonite**'s post here are a few:

http://vclass.mtsac.edu:940/alupica/intervals.htm

It’s best to play the interval and come up with one on your own but if you get stuck, these will help. Also it’s a good idea to say the interval over the two notes. For instance, I use the sound of a that classic two note medieval horn call for an ascending perfect fifth . I learned it by saying “perfect Fifth!”