How do you develop advanced tone recognition?

Question

I have a pretty good musical ear. I can hear individual tones but I'm not to the point that I can easily hear intervals or chords. When trying to find them on an instrument, it's trial and error until I finaly find it.

One cannot be a performer if they can't recognise these things on demand.

Answer 1

It won't happen overnight, but practicing daily will improve your aural skills immensely. The most important part of ear training is audiation, which is a fancy word for your musical imagination, the tape recorder in your mind that holds the melodies that you hear. I'm sure you've had a song stuck in your head before. The trick to ear training is getting all of the musical rudiments (intervals, chords (arpeggiated, of course), scale degrees (using numbers or solfege syllables), and rhythms) stuck in your head one by one, over and over until you never forget what each one sounds like.

I don't recommend using well-known songs for identifying intervals. Here's why: Let's say you use "Here Comes the Bride" for an ascending perfect fourth. This is scale degree 5 ascending to 8 (or 1 an octave higher), or "sol do". Now that you've learned it, you can recognize that pattern whenever it happens. What will happen if you hear scale degree 3 jumping up to scale degree 6, though ("mi la")? (Listen to the beginning of Brahms's Intermezzo for piano in A minor, Op. 76/7 (http://music.barnesandnoble.com/search/product.asp?z=y&PWB=1&EAN=90266388622 click on track 6). This too is a perfect fourth, and sounds VERY different from "sol do"! Would you recognize that as a fourth? Only if you had also learned to hear that one too! Another different-sounding P4 is 7 to 3 ("ti mi")! When I teach ear training, I teach all of my students (and make them memorize) an interval drill that groups together all of the scale-degree combinations that form a single type of interval. My students sing this etude at the beginning of every class.

A far better approach to ear training than using intervals is using scale degrees. When you practice ear training, do identification drills, always singing what you hear (in a comfortable octave) after listening and then after you've learned the correct ID for the rudiment. Also do dictation. Try to write down melodies that you hear (and have the music for so that you can check your work when you are done). Finally, do a lot of sight-singing. Find melodies that you've never heard before and find out how they sound by singing them from the music. Try to avoid using the piano to help you sing, until you get lost. Then back up and find where you went astray using the piano. There's a difference between producing the right pitches for yourself and matching the pitches you hear. (You must be able to do one before you can do the other, of course.)

There are lots of great online ear training resources. One is http://www.good-ear.com/, and another is http://www.musictheory.net/. I'm sure you can find others on your own. Good luck, and let me know if I can help you in any other way!

Answer 2

There is a really good program called MacGamut, but it is kind of expensive if you are not serious about this stuff. There is also a music theory website that has aural skills training. The main thing is practice. A good idea would be to get together with a group of friends who also want better aural skills, and practice together with chords, 4-part harmonic progressions (good ones that follow good voice-leading principles and make sense), rhythms, intervals, etc. etc. Also, practice chords on the piano, and create pneumonic devices that will help you recongnize different intervals, chords, etc. etc.
You would also be surprised what university courses could do at a university with a good music program. See if you can take some classes from their: they help a lot, especially with good proffesors.
The links to MacGAMUT and the music theory site are in the sources.

Answer 3

Ear Training will help you to recognize not only single notes (that you already dominate) but also chords and intervals. Find an ear training class and Practice sight and singing too. Piano is the best instrument to practice with because you can hear the sounds and you can literally see the keys , so is a good guide to see the interval distances and mayor and minor chords.

Good Luck friend

Answer 4

One of the best way to hear intervals is to associate a sound or song with that interval. These are some of the ones I used in college.
minor second - opening two notes of Jaws theme
Major second - First and third note of Happy Birthday
minor third - calling someone's name from a distance (ex. John-ny)
Major third - First two notes of Swing Low Sweet Chariot
Perfect fourth - First two notes of Here Comes the Bride
Augmented fourth/diminished fifth - Maria from West Side Story
Perfect fifth - First two notes from Also Sprach Zarathustra (2001 A Space Oddessy)
minor sixth - sounds like NBC call letters but not, see next example
Major 6th - first two tones of NBC call letters
minor seventh - intro to original Star Trek tv show
Major seventh - sounds like it wants to go to the octave (in solfege, do - ti)
I hope this helps a little. I would recommend listening to these sounds, both asceding and descending and finds ones that work for you. Practice ear training every day. If you can, have someone play intervals for you and quiz you. As for chords, work on intervals first, and then using them to construct chords, this will better allow you to hear intervals within the chord as this will be important when chords are inverted (arranged in a different order, but still using the same notes).

Answer 5

It's very possible to learn to sing well. You just need to know the right methods. Learn here https://tr.im/mTuoV

Singing teachers will cost money and can be expensive so they're not for everyone. Singing can be learned so it's not an "either you have it or you don't" kind of thing.

Whether you sound like crap or you're decent, I recommend this singing course. It's one of the best methods to learn to sing well in a short amount of time. It's all about using efficient techniques that work.

Answer 6

Yes! Of course. Rats are highly intelligent and can recognize and remember many different people They usually don't even feel as comfortable with people other than their owners. They not only know their owner, they develop a bond.

Answer 7

learn some piano, and practice playing and listening to various notes and chords. That's the only way, repetition.