Subject: How Important Is Ear Training?
You are getting this e-mail because you subscribed to it on www.learn-to-play-rock-guitar.com. If you don't want to receive these e-mails any longer, go to the bottom of this message and click on "unsubscribe." Hey there Friend, So I started taking the Berklee College of Music "Developing Your Musicianship" course on Coursera.org last week (hopefully some of you were also able to take advantage of this free class). One of the main objectives for the class is to take students through some basic ear training.This involves learning intervals (the difference between two notes) by listening to the notes in succession and identifying the interval. These exercises are fairly simple so far, but I'm finding them extremely helpful in making my music-listening richer. It's still early in the class, so I don't yet know what these early exercises will lead to with regards to ear training, but I'm definitely getting my money's-worth out of them (:grin:). There are a lot more aspects to ear training (and listening) than just learning intervals. I think that even before formal ear training (also known as Aural Training), we need to first step up our listening abilities. The world has gotten so busy that people (generally speaking) have become "deaf" to the incredible mix of sounds in our lives. Leaving music aside for a second, there is often so much going on that our ears filter out everything except the sound that is drawing our attention at that particular moment in time. Sure, we are highly sensitive to some specific sounds that will trump all others (think the voice of a loved one or the sound of a newborn crying to new parents), but overall, we're drowned in sounds all day long. I think we become numb to sounds and lose the ability to focus our hearing. The problem is we don't tend to rely on our ears as the primary sense. We use our eyes for that. So our hearing has "dumbed down" over many millennia of under-utilization. We aren't under constant threat of being attacked or eaten, so we don't need the heightened ability to hear things coming. Unlike other animals, who still have to worry about such dangers, we're pretty safe and have adapted accordingly. There is so much noise in the world that people have come to be secure in it. What do I mean? People today can't seem to be able to be in silence - they get uncomfortable without some form of sound surrounding them. The TV or radio has to be on, or they've got to be on the phone chatting with someone. Even in the car - seeing someone on a cellphone at 7 AM still surprises me. Who the heck are they talking to? I don't want to be talking to anyone at that time of day! Maybe this is a bigger sociological issue I'm pointing out - people don't like to be alone, so they avoid time in silence, but the point remains that we tend to have a lot of noise in our lives. So music (like many sounds in general) has become part of the background or scenery. For non-musicians, it's filler to remove silence. As we work on our musicianship, we have to re-train our ears to hear things we would otherwise ignore. I want to draw your attention to some of the more subtle things we as guitar players (and musicians) can pay attention to. Starting with the obvious, when you listen to music, one way to start teaching your ears to hear better is to listen for specific instruments. Try to isolate one guitar in the performance. Identify the riff or chords that the guitarist is playing. Even when a band only has one guitar player, there are usually multiple tracks on a recording with different guitar parts. As you become better at isolating instruments, you'll start hearing things you didn't pick up on as a casual listener. There will be small parts mixed in a lower volumes you wouldn't necessarily notice, but the cool thing is, if the engineer left that tiny part out, it would affect the entire song. It's amazing how subtle parts can really add to the whole experience - it's kind of like when you add a couple grains of salt to a chocolate-covered caramel candy. Alone the candy is good, but add a bit of salt, and "Wow!" After you've tuned your ears up to easily pick out individual instruments, now you can start listening for performance related nuances. What is the strum pattern they use on the acoustic guitar. Is the attack (how hard a player initiates sound from the instrument - plucking or strumming a guitar string, hitting a drum head, pressing a key on a keyboard) fast or slow, light or hard? Are there effects like reverb, chorus or delay on the instrument? The more you become attuned to the sounds, you can begin to understand how and why mix engineers make adjustments to specific frequencies of an instrument's recording. Sometimes the tonal qualities of an instrument need to be brightened, or perhaps they sound too bright and need to be warmed up by enhancing some lower frequency in the recording. These manipulations actually become significant expressions of creativity because of how they can affect the entire emotion and movement of a song. At the end of the day, our ears are our bread and butter as musicians. The better we can hear the sounds being produced by our playing, the easier it becomes for us to improve our playing. It all starts with some heightened awareness of things going on in a song. Add to that some attention to hearing the intervals and how they interact with each other. Mix in a little practice and you'll open up a sonic world for yourself most of the population doesn't hear! That ability takes time to learn and internalize, so if any of you have figured out how to create more time in your day, I'm all ears! (:yuck, yuck:) Peace~ Dave Dave "Eddie" Vance is a rock guitar enthusiast and gear nut. He has been playing guitar for over 30 years and enjoys tormenting the neighbors every chance he gets. When he's not slaving for the man, you can find him rocking out with his B.C. Rich Bich guitar, a cold beer and some sweet tunes. He also runs Learn-To-Play-Rock-Guitar.com, but you knew that already! Follow Learn To Play Rock Guitar:I welcome your feedback! Did you like today's message? What other topics would you like to see covered in my e-mails? Please let me know at: dave@learn-to-play-rock-guitar.com As always, please feel free to forward this email to a friend! I review products before recommending them. If you buy a product based on my recommendation, I will receive a commission. However, my emails also contain links that don’t require any investment on your part and are jam-packed with "juicy, guitar learnin' tastiness". We don't rent or share your name with anybody. 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