functional ear trainer

[badge]

Hi,

Having never really paid much attention to it in the past, I'm attempting to train my ears, with the longer term aim that if that works I can then try and train my voice (as far as I can tell I have a very limited vocal range), so I can accompany my playing with a bit of singing.

I downloaded the functional ear trainer from miles.be a week or so ago, but so far progress is very slow - I am still making too many mistakes when trying to recognise the first four tones of the major scale. Anyone else have much experience of using this programme and how long did it take to make any real progress?

[Odie1974]

I did it some time ago. The first 4 tones were easy, recognizing all 8 was a slightly bigger challenge. Took me a a week or two of everyday practice (ca. 20 minutes / day) to be able to recognize them reliably.
They were all in relation to C major.

Then I moved to more complex exercises, but quit after a while... IMO the learning curve got too steep.
It can take quite a long time to be able to recognize tones, so do not get discouraged.

I noticed that if you turn on the opening cadence and try to keep the sound of the final "C" in your mind (or even sing / hum it to yourself), the tone recognition was faster and I made less errors. When I was recognizing them w/o singing/humming, the results were worse.

[JanVigne]

http://www.justinguitar.com/en/TR-000-Transcribing.php

http://www.justinguitar.com/en/AU-000-AuralTraining.php

http://www.justinguitar.com/eartrainer/

[ljguitar]

Originally Posted by badge

Hi,

Having never really paid much attention to it in the past, I'm attempting to train my ears, with the longer term aim that if that works I can then try and train my voice (as far as I can tell I have a very limited vocal range), so I can accompany my playing with a bit of singing.

I downloaded the functional ear trainer from miles.be a week or so ago, but so far progress is very slow - I am still making too many mistakes when trying to recognise the first four tones of the major scale. Anyone else have much experience of using this programme and how long did it take to make any real progress?

Hi badge...

If you have a junior college campus near you it might be worth checking to see if they offer an ear-training course. I had to take it as a music major in college, and even though I'd been figuring out music and transcribing it for years, it was helpful to me both instrumentally and vocally (it was a vocal course).

[Hotspur]

Originally Posted by badge

I downloaded the functional ear trainer from miles.be a week or so ago, but so far progress is very slow - I am still making too many mistakes when trying to recognise the first four tones of the major scale. Anyone else have much experience of using this programme and how long did it take to make any real progress?

My experience with the program is that when you hit a step that gives you trouble, it's going to give you trouble for a while and then one day it's just going to be easy.

I didn't get stuck that early, but I did get stuck ... and it took a couple of weeks, and I was getting frustrated, and then one day ... pow! It was easy and obvious.

Stick with it. Make sure you're singing the resolutions. (When you get one wrong have it play you the correct answer and sing the resolution).

Practice, also, singing the major scale. Sing it with your guitar. Then play the tonic, and sing it, checking yourself against the guitar randomly. This should help you, as well.

[Fruitloop]

If you have a smartphone try downloading some of the ear trainer apps. I have an android and found lots of great free ones. They might seem simplistic but IMO the real value of them is you can just whip them out of your pocket and train whenever you want. I do it all the time when I'm somewhere without my guitar and have some time to kill.

I also found some neat apps for practicing the notes on the neck, chord finders (the app named chord! is amazingly useful) and even one that has music theory step by step courses.

Try to suck in as much knowledge as you can, every bit helps and strengthens your ear. Play along with songs on the radio, practice scales/chords, improvise, sight read (hum the notes you are playing).