It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Subscribe to our Patreon, and get image uploads with no ads on the site!
Base theme by DesignModo & ported to Powered by Vanilla by Chris Ireland, modified by the "theFB" team.
Comments
Danny1969 said:
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: 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.
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.
Cheers.
Supportact said: [my style is] probably more an accumulation of limitations and bad habits than a 'style'.
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 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.
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.
Supportact said: [my style is] probably more an accumulation of limitations and bad habits than a 'style'.
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.
Supportact said: [my style is] probably more an accumulation of limitations and bad habits than a 'style'.