The Music Student

What even is ear training?

In the context of music, it means training your ears (Actually your brain) to hear notes, melodies, chords, progressions and so on then to recognize them and hopefully be able to replay or replicate them onto your instrument of choice without looking up how.

Once you get better with ear training the whole world of music opens up. Less and less often you have to look up tabs that are usually a little bit off or search the internet for the chord progression or the melody of the song you are trying to learn. After a good amount of practice, you should be able to somewhat confidently figure out how to play song from just listening to them.           

Where you reap the most rewards for this is when playing with others, whether it’s a little jam, a practice session or you’re just mucking around, being able to recognize what others are playing without asking means you can jump in at any point and play along with them. If things change mid jam, you can change along with them. Learning to follow your ear to the sounds you like will boost your confidence on your instrument and you have the added bonus of having a great time doing it.

Where do you start?

When you first start ear training it can seem so far out of reach, when you see others do it perfectly it looks otherworldly, being able to play a song after just listening to it seems like some sort of God given gift from the heavens. It takes lots of practice and training but is a great skill to have if you want to play music in any capacity.

So where do you start if you’ve never tried before? There are a few handy dandy apps that are good for starting out, just look up ‘ear training’ in the app store and I’m sure there are plenty to choose form. I personally used one called “perfect ear” for a start.

They are great and start with real basics like intervals (the spaces between two different notes), chord types (Major, minor, Diminished etc.)  And other things like rhythm training. All great stuff and free for most of the basic parts, but as you progress and get better the further training is behind a paywall that I was too frugal to look behind.  But if you are reducing your screen time, trying to escape internet and phone land for a brief moment and save some pennies another great way is to just play some music. Sit with your instrument and pop on a tune and see what you can figure out.

Melody

A good place to start may be a simple melody. You may even just hear the first note of the melody pause the song and try find that note on the instrument and at the start even this might take a minute, but once you recognize you have the right note you carry on.

Press play again, listen to the next few notes of the melody, if they are higher or lower then play around on your instrument and to try find them. It will likely be an arduous task and not a whole lot of fun at first, it’s a lot of stopping and starting and not a lot of grooving. but the grooving can wait for now.

Here is a cheeky little side quest for learning melodies, intervals between notes can be hard to just flat out recognize especially if they are close to one another so a tip is to get a few sounds you know already off the top of your head and assign them to intervals. For example, you want to remember what a perfect fifth sounds like so you can recognize it if it comes up in a melody. Well, a lot of people will take the first two notes of the Star Wars theme music as a reference for a perfect fifth, if you can hear it now in your head.

duuun duuuuun dun dun dun duuun duuun!

Those first two notes are a perfect fifth and if you hear and recognize that interval elsewhere in other songs you will know what it is and how to play it on your instrument. Another one people use is the sound of a doorbell, which is a major third interval, ding dong.

Chords

A great place to start ear training for chords is to put on a song, a good idea is to pick a relatively popular song you like therefore you generally know what it sounds like in your head already and popular songs often have common or easy (ish) chord progressions.

Say you are learning a song on guitar, have your guitar with you then listen for the bass notes and find them on the guitar, do they sound right? Does it sound like the bass line you hear in your head if the song isn’t playing? Most often the first bass note of the chord is the root note, once you have those then you can try a few different chord shapes on the guitar with that bass note playing the song back to hear if it sounds the same, minor or major or those other fancy one’s.

Chords can be a little trickier at the start as it is a few notes playing at the same time and sometimes chords in songs will have extra added notes or ‘upper extensions’ that give it a different flavor and these may be hard to pick out at first. it often takes a lot of trial and error at the start so keep at it, keep practicing and you will over time get these too.  

Personal experience

Personally, I go through phases where I’m pretty good at practicing some ear training, then phases where I don’t at all. This is in no way intentional, I’m just lazy sometimes and don’t have a ridged set routine to sit down and practice. I think this skill is a little like working out a muscle, obviously the more you use it the stronger it gets but when you don’t train it for some time you’re not as sharp as you used to be. “Perishable skill” is the technical term. I play mostly bass and guitar, bass is a good place to start as its usually one note at a time. The rhythm of the bass and really getting into the groove of a song is what makes you a great player but that’s a whole other rabbit hole to go down another time.

I can pick out a melody after a listen or two and playing around on the guitar. it helps knowing what the chords are or what the key of the song is for melodies, so you have a rough idea of what scales or notes are likely to be used (yes that means knowing a small amount of music theory).

Same thing with chords and chord progressions if it’s a somewhat simple song or the bass is prominent, I can figure it out after a listen or two. I have trouble with upper extensions listening out for extra notes in a chord and sometimes get it through trial and error but will also just move on if I feel like I’m wasting my time and nothing sounds right (maybe cheat and look it up).

Inversions on the guitar can make things a little sticky too, an inversion is what order the notes of the chord are played, for example if the root note of the chord is the bottom note (lowest pitch) where the chord goes Root, 3^rd, 5^th  but a different inversion may look like 5^th, root, 3^rd.

Though they use the same notes there is a slightly different sound and this has thrown me off sometimes when starting out. It also seems that different components of the song make it easier or harder to figure out. For example, when playing guitar if the chords are played on guitar in the song, they have the same timbre (same color or type of sound) so it’s easier to hear when what I’m playing sounds right for the song. Whereas if the chords are played with a violin section, though the notes are the same I find it a little more difficult, hence the need for more practice I guess.

Get out there and do it.

When you do start ear training, picking out melodies and chord progressions for songs, then get better and faster at it, it can help immensely with learning songs and learning what sounds you like when you want to play your own music, it also makes you feel pretty darn cool at first too. It’s something I could practice more, even if it is just sitting down a few times a week putting on a few songs and seeing what I can figure out. I know it will make me a better player and overall musician, so let’s get out there and train these ears.