Home :: Ear Training

Ear training builds necessary listening skills for musicians

Ear training is essential to every musician. Building listening skills to know immediately what we're hearing is the main goal of ear training. Exercises in scale recognition, intervallic relationships, rhythm, chord voicings, chord progressions, phrase perception, and other musical concepts build our listening skills to musicianship level.

Imagine an artist trying to paint a picture of her backyard. She proceeds to paint the green grass yellow and the tree bark burgundy. That's not too accurate a depiction, is it? And just as vision governs a painter's world, a musician's world is governed by hearing. And in that regard ear training is the most important training for musicians. The greater our listening skills, the easier it'll be to achieve complete musicianship.

If you want to hear like the 'Big Dawgs' you'll want to add some great ear training books to your library

One book that best explains the importance of ear training and exactly how to go about building listening skills is Hearing and Writing Music: Professional Training For Today's Musician" (2nd Edition). Although chock full of musical education, it has the best readability of any book I've ever seen! (Read that last sentence again)

This aesthetically beautiful and extraordinary book by Ron Gorow is a complete Step-By-Step Ear Training Course that will teach you:

• Transcribing techniques to help you improvise, orchestrate, compose
• How to maximize your creativity and productivity
• How to develop your craft by consolidating techniques
• How to read music with your ears
• How you can write music without using an instrument
• How to write spontaneously, as your ear guides your hand
• How to communicate accurately through music notation

Add a three-book series by Elvo S. D'amante for a fantastic ear training library. But be warned, this series is not for the lazy or easily intimidated!

Ear Training: Volume 1 Scale Forms Through Six Basic Tetrachords (Book & 2 CDs)  This first volume of 3 involves the study of scale forms and modes. It represents the ideal starting point for the musician interested in pre-paring and developing a fine ear. 72 pages.

Ear Training: Twelve Basic Interval Sounds to Master, Volume 2 (Book & 5 CDs)  This 2nd volume of 2 involves the study of melodic & harmonic intervals, compound inter-vals, chromatic intervals, interval inversion and more.   Over 360 minutes of lessons, studies & drills. 108 pages.

Ear Training: Capturing The Basic Chord Qualities, Volume 3 (Book & 4 CDs)  This 3rd volume of 3 involves the study of the dominant 7th, major 7th, minor 7th, half- diminished 7th, diminished 7th, minor/major 7th chords, and more. Over 290 minutes of lessons, studies & drills. 81 pgs.

Music Professionals Use And Recommend Superscope For Music Transcription & Ear Training

One tool used by many music professionals in their day-to-day lives for music transcription and ear training is the PSD220 Performing Arts CD Player. It's portability allows the musician to practice on listening skills anywhere. The unit's voice reduction system effectively reduces the lead vocals on many CDs for better hearing of the instrumental track while transcribing the melody and chords of a song.

Unit can change tempo without affecting key or change key without affecting tempo. For band practice sessions or listening skills practice you're able to replay a segment of a track continuously and use the 3-band EQ (bass, midrange & treble) to tweek the music track for better part extraction. Superscope CD Players are the tools used by the pro's for ear training and music transcription.

© 2005 - 2007  How-To-Play-Music.Com. All Rights Reserved