Links: Music, ear training

[sonia]

How About I Just Don't Play Laugh out loud funny rants about misapplied dynamic markings.
via amethyst73

Table of Intervals in Music Theory by Espie Estrella. This is for my own reference, how many half-steps in each interval and other info.

Earpeggio is a free ear training app I've been using on the iphone. It's well done, and I think I have gotten better, but I'm having real trouble now that it's adding diminished fifths and sevenths. Aside from repetition, it doesn't tell you anything about how to get better at identifying intervals. I have a good aural memory, so I'm okay with a fixed root note, but when the notes move around I have a hard time.

Interval Ear Training App another free ear training app I downloaded a while ago. It shows a piano keyboard, plays an interval, and has you reproduce it. It can be limited to a small range to start. At first I thought it was too simple, and it doesn't actually teach, but after getting a little better with Earpeggio I'm finding this one more useful.

Toned Ear: Ear Training is browser-based and looks useful. They also offer an app for $4.99.

More ear training apps, article by Michael Hahn. This includes at least one browser-based site, good-ear.com.

MusicTheory.net ear training. This browser-based one lets you keep trying different intervals until you get it right, which is useful for me. Their app is Tenuto, for $3.99.

I wish there were an app that would make it easier/faster for me to learn. I've gotten better with unison/thirds/fifths/octaves, but the finer gradations are still hard. I wonder how musicians learn this stuff. Endless, endless practice? Is it easier to learn as a kid?

ETA: One more music link Total Choir Resources tips for running a choir.

Comments

[amethyst73]

I remember in my singing group in college, there was someone who I think might have been studying voice who demonstrated an exercise she had to do. (This will be interesting trying to describe...)

It was a series of intervals, increasing by half steps. Each interval was sung both up and down from the root. So for the first line, you'd do:

Minor (sung on tonic) / second (sung up one half step from tonic),
minor (sung on tonic) / second (sung down one half step from tonic)

For the next line you'd do:

Major (sung on tonic) / second (sung up two half steps from tonic),
major (sung on tonic) / second (sung down two half steps from tonic)

and so on through an octave in both directions. Repeat ad nauseum.

I'm sure you're aware of plenty of 'tune hints' for various intervals (ex: first two notes of of "My bonnie lies over the ocean" for a major sixth); I'm not sure exactly what you'd search in Google to get a comprehensive list, but there's probably one out there. (There's a whole bunch of examples with tritones/diminished fifths here, which may help with that interval.)

[sonia]

Cool, thanks! For the tri-tone, "nya nya nya NYA nya" works pretty well. I did take a look/listen on the page you mentioned. Hadn't heard that Jethro Tull song for a long time.

Thanks for confirming that diminished fifth and tritone are the same. I wondered.

I have a list of songs for different intervals. But even something as solidly familiar as "twinkle twinkle little star" for a fifth, I can't necessarily tell if it's a diminished fifth instead.

I think some of this stuff involves growing new neurons. It takes me long enough to get better at it! Sometimes I can't tell if I'm singing in unison with someone or a third below.

And interestingly, when I get spatially disoriented from breathing fragrances and can't tell right from left, I get disoriented in music too, and can't distinguish intervals as well as usual.

[sonia]

And I could try that exercise with a piano, thanks. I've done it with the scale (one-two, one-three, ... one-eight), rather than chromatically, in a class I was in.

Brains are weird

[jesse_the_k]

What a helpful collection!

I learned how to read the soprano staff in 3rd grade (yeah for plastic recorders) but never advanced to sight-reading.

My short, intense musical career was all by ear. When I got sick, I couldn't maintain pitch anymore, nor could I do math in my head.

Trying out these I realized that I can't identify an interval until I reproduce it. I hear it, then copy it, then know whether it's a fifth or third (that's all I've got).

Re: Brains are weird

[sonia]

I copy the intervals to try to identify them too. Makes it hard when they go down into the bass clef!

Interesting that your illness affects your sense of pitch as well, like fragrances do for me. Brains, so interesting!

Yay Bella icon!

Via network

[angelofthenorth]

I learnt by drills and practice so that I could pass grade seven piano aural component with full marks. I needed to, because I was nervous playing in front of people and would otherwise have failed:)

I had a set of songs for every interval, except diminished fifth. That one I can tell.

Each chord to me has colour, temperature and resonance. I can't easily play by ear though I'm a demon sight reader. (Or I was. Don't practice enough now)

Re: Via network

[sonia]

Hi! Thanks for dropping in.

Cool how your brain responds to chords! And I bow to your (past) sight reading skills.

As a singer I'm gradually getting better at reading music, but I mostly learn by ear and then supplement with the sheet music.

[cahn]

It's definitely much much easier to learn as a kid, partially because kids just pick up things faster and more easily (it's basically like language learning), and partially because the integrated time of doing music when you start as a kid is much higher, so you've effectively practiced a lot more.

I happen to have perfect pitch (I say "happen to," but that's also something else that early and intensive music training makes a lot more common) so although I can identify intervals if I have to, I never really used that very much at all -- I would just find the absolute pitch instead. (Interestingly, when I was in choir and we sang things up or down from the written pitch, this meant that instead of reverting to finding the interval to find notes, I would actually attempt to transpose it in my head OR try to shift my absolute system. Brains, man.)

[sonia]

Thanks for the info!

I've noticed that when a bunch of us are doing the same folk dance together, our brains are all doing different things to get us there. Music must be similar - lots of different ways to process it.