The Ear Training Exercise That REALLY Matters! Why Don't They TEACH It?!

[LeviClay]

Blown away by how many of you are finding this video! That’s super cool!

Share it with your friends, and don’t be afraid to ask questions! I’m always here ❤️

[Rvictorbravo]

45 yrs ago I was a music major. My professor had us do this very thing. By the end the course we had transcribe Bach chorales, parts of Mozart sonatas, and some 12 tone rows that he would play. We also had to sight sing in front of everyone. I’m grateful for that training even today

[jrthiker]

Great video. I'm a professional musician (conductor/pianist) and have utmost respect for transcribers. As a conductor, I need to hear the vertical sounds in my head when looking at a score, and my piano training helped immensely. 2 of my early piano teachers were also composers and made me do advanced level ear training and sight reading even as a 10 year old. An essential part of piano lessons included melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic ear training, complex jazz chords and having to transcribe 4 part chorales. Each lesson ended with sightreading a Mozart piano duet or a Bach prelude or fugue, no stopping allowed, if I goofed up I had to fake it and keep moving. And they made it fun. As a freshman at university I was able to test out of the entire first year theory class. All that early training laid a foundation for my conducting for which I'm eternally grateful. Only later did I realize how lucky I was, since most of my colleagues never got a fraction of that training, even in music school.

[DreamPurpleFloyd]

Great video. I started training my ears last year. At first I only did intervals/ triads/ scales recognition and while I was making progress, I was feeling like I couldn't get the 'color' of each interval, that I wasn't able to really internalize it. After I while I decided to try singing by 'anticipating', like Levi explains in the video above (ie: playing a note on the keyboard/ guitar and trying to sing a fifth above). Within weeks I could feel a real improvement. I could finally get the color of each interval!

Fast forward one year and now I am able to sing intervals, arpeggios and scales and I'm able to identify them quickly when I hear them. Of course it's not always perfect as I'm still a beginner, but I can garantee you this works. Hell, when I skip singing a few days (because I have a sore throat for example) I can almost immediatly feel like my recognition ability dropping a little bit.

[andyharpist]

I have been looking for someone to say this for a lifetime.
THIS is the skill we are all looking to acquire...not to learn that something is a "c minor 11 sus 4"..but to play what we WANT rather than know what we last played.

[alvodin]

Ive been using ear training apps for 1.5 years at least 30 min per day and it helped, very slightly. What did help as you say: Hear melodies in your mind and figure out what intervals they are. Start with basic melodies from pop music. Humm along and know it, don't just guess on the piano. Really use your brain to know what is happening. I went from not playing by ear to being able to play most intermediate melodies at least, almost instantly. Still learning every day. It's so much more fun than just reading sheet music. Sorry classically trained musicians. Yes, ear training has life changing and made me appreciate music to a whole other level!

[dudefolife]

This is quite litterally the most eye opening video I’ve found on ear training and leveling up as a musician. I am so grateful for this video im gonna practice singing different scales over different chords to truly internalize and audiate

[pickinstone]

Ear training and rhythm are my favorite healthy rabbit holes. They key is to get over yourself and sing everything you know. That goes beyond hear a C and sing the 5th. That goes into singing bass movement of tunes you are learning, singing the melody while playing the bass movement, singing the 3rds of the harmonic movement. Helps you hear how harmony functions in a key center. Being able to hold onto a key center in your inner ear, because most music--even jazz (don't me started on Giant Steps, you have to hear how it all returns back to B major)--is key centric. Sight singing. I learned most of my ear training by studying with Bruce Arnold and continuing to hone my ears with his digitized library--because he got the premise from the master of musicianship studies CHARLIE BANACOS. Ear training isn't a parlor trick; it's a life long endeavor that should be practiced in conjunction with whatever you are currently working on. Practicing tritone subs? Sing the movements. Sing the lines. Practicing some Meshuggah song in an odd meter? Sing it! If you can hear it, you can own it. If you can sing it, you can song it--turn it into music.

[bluestrat]

Great lesson, Levi! What has worked for me is to internalize everything. Be able to hear and produce the intervals in your head. When "anticipating" your choice of notes, recognize where you will be in relation to the current implied chord and key center, and also the target chord, even if the key center is changing mid phrase. To improvise freely, that reaction time has to be developed to be almost instantaneous. The challenge in the music is the mental part, and playing the instrument is just translating that into mechanical motion to produce the intended sound, regardless of what the instrument is. Back in the 80's, I spent a lot of time transcribing away from any instrument using just a cassette player, headphones, & paper, while waiting for a bus or train ride, and that helped a lot.

[satchrules]

Top shelf teacher! You explain and put it into context the best!

[Zettaizr]

Levi, you've single handedly changed my perspective on ear training by stressing audition. This is a skill I am very weak on as I'm already seeing improvements by practicing the exercise you've introduced. I can't thank you more! Subbed!

[boomieboo]

Great lesson. Thanks! I'm a Star Wars fan so I tied many of the intervals to SW theme songs. For instance the Maj 6 is in the ending song for Empire Strikes Back. The perfect 5th is the main SW theme song, etc. It's important for students to come up with their own song associations to identify intervals.

[NativeEnglishHacks]

This is the music equivalent of what I talk about a lot for pronunciation in languages (American English specifically on my channel). All skills have both a production and recognition side, which is why you can understand a language and not be able to speak it or be able to more or less speak a language but have difficulty understanding normal speed speech. This equally and more importantly applies to the fundamental root element of a skill (music/language/art/etc), which in the case of both music and language happens to be individual sounds. You're definitely onto something here, sir. Keep it up.

[mobeus]

Also u should not just recognize a root to its intervals but a 3rd a 5th a 6th a 7th to a 5th or a root. So u give them a root note to memorize then u play other notes WITHOUT going back to play the root. Because I think in my opinion the biggest part to this is trying to not memorize the tones and play a game and be more mindful of the actual notes that are happening so when I play you any note and say what is the major third I know it seems hard for someone without Perfect Pitch but I don't have perfect pitch either and I taught myself these things just over time playing. It will dramatically help w what ur talking about. This will help u imagine notes better. Love this man ur doing a great job....PAY ATTENTION PLAYERS!

[MaggaraMarine]

I think one way of learning the characteristic notes of different scales is to use the tonic triad as a reference point. There are only two tonic triads - major and minor. All of the other notes in the scale are always a step away from one of the notes in the tonic triad (1 3 5).

7 is below the 1.

6 is above the 5.

4 is above the 3.

2 is above the 1.

A good exercise is to sing the tonic triad, then sing a "tension" (i.e. a note outside of the triad), and then resolve it to the closest note in the tonic triad.

You can try this with different modes.

1 7 1 - 5 6 5 - 3 4 3 - 1 2 1 would be major.

1 b7 1 - 5 6 5 - 3 4 3 - 1 2 1 would be Mixolydian.

1 b7 1 - 5 6 5 - b3 4 b3 - 1 2 1 would be Dorian.

1 b7 1 - 5 b6 5 - b3 4 b3 - 1 2 1 would be Aeolian.

1 7 1 - 5 b6 5 - b3 - 4 - b3 - 1 2 1 would be harmonic minor.

You get the idea. (Maybe singing the full triad first would be the best idea, so sing 1 3 5 8 5 3 1 if the tonic triad is major, and 1 b3 5 8 5 b3 1 if the tonic triad is minor. Then sing the "tensions".)

I think using the tonic triad as a reference point makes it easier to learn to feel your position within the scale.

[pickngrin]

25 year professional musican just starting a Bachelor of music :) These are great points! I am definitely going to adjust my ear training practice regime! Thanks a bunch my guy xox

[gimmebeat]

Basically to integrate everything he's said in an exercise one should just sing written music. This exercise is called sung solfeggio. If you can sing written music then you can hear the music in your head. There's lots of pedagogical solfeggio books that have been used for centuries.

[sansubr]

Thank you Levi. I live in the southern part of Bharat (India) and I'm fortunate my parents put me into Carnatic music education when I was a child and so I can sing the major scale and most modes of the major scale. But after I started playing the guitar many years later, this skill was somehow pushed into the background, and I never really used this skill to visualize/hear other notes in the key. Thank you for making this video - because now I can dig that skill up and I can imagine doing a lot more! Getting the harmony in my head to the scales I know on the fretboard is the next challenge lol. But thank you once again for making this video! I also wanted to thank you for the excellent practice books for guitar - I use them everyday and they're incredibly helpful.

[tommytam]

This is a very valueable lesson which people wouldnt realize until they learn music. Thank you for this video.

[stringsalive]

I had two phenomenal jazz piano teachers as an undergrad. One had an incredible ear, the other had perfect pitch. The one with perfect pitch would be the first to tell you that the other had a better ear.

Similarly, my jazz guitar teacher (my primary instrument) did not have perfect pitch, but had a fantastic ear and recall - could transcribe live gigs.