Ear Training

wizbit81

viz said:

But for people who struggle with a certain interval, it’s a good reference. I’ve been learning music since I was 6 and intervals are as second nature as colours are, but I still know that a major 6th from dominant to 3rd is “my bonnie lies over the ocean”. 

I don’t call on that information any more of course but it’s there and it was helpful when I started. 

Nah man I don't think you're getting it. Forget identifying intervals out of context, it's the function you have to recognise. Different skills that give different results. Related sure, but not the same. I gave a bunch of reasons in my post you've just ignored. I know that you really know your stuff in terms of theory and I wouldn't try to argue with you on that, but with this one I feel you missed the point.

 Danny1969 said:

Yeah totally agree with @viz ;

When I play by ear I'm not referencing song intervals anymore, I know the intervals but it was a useful tool to get going. 

When you work as a mechanic you need to be able to spot the size of a nut and bolt instantly, otherwise you would be forever trying different sockets and spanners on it before you got the right one. When I was a teenager it was little finger width 10mm, ring finger 12mm, middle finger 13mm, thumb 17mm etc. When I work on cars now I don't think about fingers anymore, I've learnt these sizes and just know them instantly .... which is much the same thing really. 

This end result is exactly what I'm talking about, but live in the moment while hearing music. I don't think you're getting it either, I'm not saying you know the intervals between the notes or can hear the intervals between the notes you're playing, I mean for any given note you play in realtime you can hear its relationship to the chord and know what FUNCTIONAL interval you are playing.viz said:

Yeah, I think I’d file it under “walk before you can run”. Also I’ve read a lot of Banacos and he stresses that we should use whatever works for us at our unique stage of development / journey

Disagree, again in my post I was giving reasons as to why doing this actively blocks and gets in the way of functional hearing. Can't recall but pretty sure Banacos specifically taught ear training like this and DID say to avoid the other way, I know some of his students say so. He was a great guy, I took lessons from him for a few years by sending tapes back and forth to America. I'd love to see more of his lessons if you know of a repository as frankly, he was a genius teacher.

To anyone reading:

I made a very quick vid demo of what I mean that I've just uploaded to Youtube as an unlisted vid to show you:



Hopefully that basic demo (I was a bit slow and crap there as that's the first time I've done that in months) shows you what I'm talking about....that you can identify any number of notes in a row, it could be a million, as long as you've got the tonic for context. In this case I'd played a C on my piano first so had that locked in my head. Next step up is doing two notes at the same time, then three etc. Wayne Krantz studied with Banacos and could do like 10 notes, i.e. listen to 10 notes played over a single tonic and tell you what they all were intervallicaly. You see this is not the same as identifying the difference between two notes using songs as reference points? Hopefully you can see how much more useful and real this sh1t is for composition and improvisation.

Cranky

I think that if you’re in real time on a stage trying to suss out a key or melody or progression, you’ve probably already put in your time ear training to the Jaws theme, My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean, In my Life, or whatever.

Something I also find myself doing is humming Do-Re-Mi, and I can fairly effectively tell if a particular interval has been flattened or sharpened compared to that.  Not sure how the experts feel about that approach. 

The most difficult thing for me in these ear training drills is when they invert it, i.e. when tonic is the higher pitched of the two.  I don’t know how I’m supposed to discern when that’s the case.  Like, is F the minor third of D or is D the major sixth of F?  Splitting hairs in the grand scheme of things, but all the difference in an ear training test.

viz

Wizbit I think we’re talking about different things. Your video is a note recognition test within a key, not interval naming. It’s great that you can do that, that’s critically important, but it’s a slightly different topic. I don’t believe that recognising an interval, within any key context, or even devoid of context, is a barrier to being able to do that. Both are basic fundamentals of music recognition, and obviously also of reproduction. I’m not belittling what you’re talking about. It’s just not what I’ve been talking about. There are lots of ways of understanding music, those are two of them. 

Cheers. 

Cranky said:

Something I also find myself doing is humming Do-Re-Mi, and I can fairly effectively tell if a particular interval has been flattened or sharpened compared to that.  

Yup nothing wrong with counting up. Billions of people have done it that way!

wizbit81

Cranky said:

I think that if you’re in real time on a stage trying to suss out a key or melody or progression, you’ve probably already put in your time ear training to the Jaws theme, My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean, In my Life, or whatever.

Something I also find myself doing is humming Do-Re-Mi, and I can fairly effectively tell if a particular interval has been flattened or sharpened compared to that.  Not sure how the experts feel about that approach. 

The most difficult thing for me in these ear training drills is when they invert it, i.e. when tonic is the higher pitched of the two.  I don’t know how I’m supposed to discern when that’s the case.  Like, is F the minor third of D or is D the major sixth of F?  Splitting hairs in the grand scheme of things, but all the difference in an ear training test.

That last paragraph.....that's once again the point of what I'm talking about. If you are doing it the way I am, from the tonic in a key, you're identifying the functional value of the second note, there is no inverting it because if you do that you are relating the melody note as the tonic against the root of the chord, which is plain wrong. Contextual ear training doesn't have that issue.
i.e. if the second note is the tonic and you hear a D then an F then the D is the maj6th, couldn't be anything else, doesn't matter which octave it's in it will always be the 6th. Yeah btw, I did of course do the intervals by song thing, over 20 years ago, and it to this day interferes with the proper ear training stuff, which I why I wrote in this thread. It took MANY years to shift to identifying intervals against a tonic like you would see blue or green, but that's because I didn't know how it should be done. I had to break down what I'd done and start again from scratch, getting really angry because I was shit at doing it the proper way. There is no comparison to it done properly though, none at all.

viz said:

Wizbit I think we’re talking about different things. Your video is a note recognition test within a key, not interval naming. It’s great that you can do that, that’s critically important, but it’s a slightly different topic. I don’t believe that recognising an interval, within any key context, or even devoid of context, is a barrier to being able to do that. Both are basic fundamentals of music recognition, and obviously also of reproduction. I’m not belittling what you’re talking about. It’s just not what I’ve been talking about. There are lots of ways of understanding music, those are two of them. 

Cheers. 

Cranky said:

Something I also find myself doing is humming Do-Re-Mi, and I can fairly effectively tell if a particular interval has been flattened or sharpened compared to that.  

Yup nothing wrong with counting up. Billions of people have done it that way!

Viz I know it's different, I said that. I'm saying using songs to pick out intervals is not a good idea because it interferes with the stuff I'm doing in the video and other more advanced stuff. You guys are all effectively saying an interval is a distance between 2 random notes that you are learning by fixed song references. I'm saying don't do that it's counter productive. I said why in my earlier post with several examples. It's also not a note recognition test btw, at all, in the slightest, it's a functional interval recognition test. I'm not thinking 'that's a G' or 'that's a B' what I'm doing is hearing the quality, the function of that note, i.e. that's the 5th of this key, that's the Maj7th of this key, then converting to note names to answer the questions. In order to do this you have to hear an interval in context and know the sound of that, dyed in the wool, which I assume you do given your background. It's why you don't need a C reference tone every time, it's the way you hear it, not as two random notes, but with one as the tonic and the other the note you want to identify. It IS intervals, the difference is I'm saying do it in context and learn the quality of the intervals, how they feel to you on a deep internalised level, not which song the first two notes remind you of which is surface level knowledge. It's depth of understanding and useability, and using songs is a method that needs to get stripped out and rebuilt from scratch to do the other stuff, which is why I'm saying don't do it. I'm also not alone, I've read plenty of opinions from serious players and teachers saying the same. I'm talking best in their field rather than Dan from the pub covers band at the Nag's Head on Friday nights. 
Anyway, I knew it would be unpopular and I knew a tonne of guys wouldn't get it or would argue with me so I'll leave it there. I've made my point, chimed in trying to save people what could end up being years of misconception or bad habits. GL all whatever you choose to do, ear training can be a really fun area and has some tremendous benefits if you keep at it! It's actually a huge huge area, and intervals are the basic blocks that builds the rest up. 

Cranky

wizbit81 said:

Cranky said:

I think that if you’re in real time on a stage trying to suss out a key or melody or progression, you’ve probably already put in your time ear training to the Jaws theme, My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean, In my Life, or whatever.

Something I also find myself doing is humming Do-Re-Mi, and I can fairly effectively tell if a particular interval has been flattened or sharpened compared to that.  Not sure how the experts feel about that approach. 

The most difficult thing for me in these ear training drills is when they invert it, i.e. when tonic is the higher pitched of the two.  I don’t know how I’m supposed to discern when that’s the case.  Like, is F the minor third of D or is D the major sixth of F?  Splitting hairs in the grand scheme of things, but all the difference in an ear training test.

That last paragraph.....that's once again the point of what I'm talking about. If you are doing it the way I am, from the tonic in a key, you're identifying the functional value of the second note, there is no inverting it because if you do that you are relating the melody note as the tonic against the root of the chord, which is plain wrong. Contextual ear training doesn't have that issue.
i.e. if the second note is the tonic and you hear a D then an F then the D is the maj6th, couldn't be anything else, doesn't matter which octave it's in it will always be the 6th. Yeah btw, I did of course do the intervals by song thing, over 20 years ago, and it to this day interferes with the proper ear training stuff, which I why I wrote in this thread. It took MANY years to shift to identifying intervals against a tonic like you would see blue or green, but that's because I didn't know how it should be done. I had to break down what I'd done and start again from scratch, getting really angry because I was shit at doing it the proper way. There is no comparison to it done properly though, none at all.

Doesn’t that depend on what the melody is?

viz

By note recognition, I meant the functional name of the note not the pitch name of the note.

What you’re doing is really necessary obviously. It’s absolutely findamental, it’s how I learned too. Learning the quality and function of a major 3rd (or a tonic to mediant) for example, well I don’t think you can fully understand or appreciate music without it. The musicality of the notes is the most important thing about notes! (Unless you’re playing atonal music),

I’m just saying that the song method can be useful as well, as a reference, for beginners. Btw in most cases it’s assumed that the lower note is the tonic; the intervals aren’t normally out of context. Nobody hears a major 3rd and says that’s a diminished 4th, I’m hearing the tonic as a semitone above the lower note. Or at least 6 year olds don’t. 

Anyway, I just think that the most important thing is to try out lots of methods - fhere’s no single right method. There are some wrong methods but I don’t believe having some mental flashcards for important intervals is one of them. 

Cranky

viz said:

Cranky said:

Something I also find myself doing is humming Do-Re-Mi, and I can fairly effectively tell if a particular interval has been flattened or sharpened compared to that.  

Yup nothing wrong with counting up. Billions of people have done it that way!

So . . . I want to know how to count down, though, too.

Like, a pop song verse follows a simple I-V-vi-IV progression, but the tonic actually has the highest pitch.  A V one octave down doesn’t jump out at me like a V that goes up.  I don’t know where to start.

viz

I did a picture a few posts back for descending intervals