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

[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.