Ear training takes a lot of practice with different exercises to become proficient. Until recently ear training courses usually consisted of a few CDs. But more recently computer software is making ear training easier both at home and in the classroom.  Here are some of the reasons why, keep them in mind as you search for an ear training product.

More Varied Exercises

Ear training CDs offer a fixed set of exercises, the same intervals, chords, notes are repeated and after a while you get to know them by heart. Exercises become less effective as you use your memory more than your ears.

Ear training software has a big advantage in this respect. The software can generate new sequences and hardly ever play you the same one twice. No matter how long you work with the software you’ll always have to use your ears to recognize what you are played.

Feedback

Quick and clear feedback works wonders for the learning process. Ear training software can again excel in this area by instantly showing you if your answer is right or not. It can also let you replay the question and your answer as many times as you want so you can compare and learn.

No more waiting until the end of a sequence and then scrabbling around in books to check your answers.

The software can also keep track of your progress through an exercise and show you how you are doing compared to your past performance. This kind of reporting does wonders for practice motivation, turning it into a game against yourself to beat your past scores.

Work With Your Instrument

Some ear training software, Ear Master Pro is one example, lets you input answers by playing notes, intervals or chords on your instrument or by singing into a microphone.

This makes them even more powerful as you develop not only your skill at recognizing the notes and intervals generated on the computer, you develop your knowledge of where they are on your instrument at the same time.

Relating the notes you hear to those on your instrument also helps to develop your sense of absolute pitch. Recognizing notes precisely by their name rather than by comparison with another pitch.

Progressive Training Program

Well designed ear training software can offer you a progressive exercise plan with built-in progress measurement. The program tracks your performance and can adapt exercises to make you progressively better and better.

Statistics reports also provide a simple way to see your progress and help motivate you to do even better.

There you have four good reasons to prefer a software program as an effective ear training partner. Keep these in mind as you compare ear training products to help you develop your musical ear.

Ear Master Pro 5 ear training software lets you enter answers on a virtual guitar fretboard so you build your guitar skills at the same time as you train your ears. Download it today and try it free for 21 days.

Read my Ear Master Pro 5 review.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Ear Master have announced a new light version of the excellent Ear Master Pro 5 ear training software. This new Essential version includes the central features of Ear Master Pro at a price of less than 30 euros.

The Essential edition includes Ear Master’s basic ear training exercise areas: interval comparison and identification, chord identification and rhythm reading.

You won’t get the advanced exercise areas including chord inversions and progressions, scale identification and melodic dictation.

You do get Ear Master’s excellent on screen guitar (or piano, or bass, or staff, or any string instrument) to enter music and responses to exercises. So you get the benefit of matching your ear knowledge to your instrument.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

This post introduces how intervals are played on the guitar fretboard. Ear training teaches you to recognize and think in terms of musical intervals. But you need to know how to play these on your fretboard to apply your ear training skills to the guitar.

Guitar fretboard

You can find and play any interval on your guitar with a little knowledge of the way notes are laid out.

The first thing you must know is that each fret along a string of the guitar is an interval of one half step, or minor second. So two frets equals a whole step, or major second, three frets a minor third, four frets a major third, and so on.

This pattern continues for twelve frets to reproduce all twelve notes of the chromatic scale. This scale is repeated, starting from a different note, on each string. At the open strings in standard tuning the notes from the 6th to the 1st string are E A D G B e.

If you don’t already know all the intervals along a string, pick up your guitar now and learn them. Start at an open string and go up one fret at a time naming each interval in relation to the open string. Fret one minor second, fret two major second.

Name the notes at each fret as you go too. Knowledge of the notes on the fretboard will help you to find melodies and chords easily as you learn.

This post has introduced you to the notes and intervals along the strings of the guitar. But you will often play intervals using notes from two different strings. The next post in this series will look at how these cross-string intervals are created and show you some easy to learn shapes you can memorize to play any interval.

Ear Master Pro 5 ear training software lets you enter answers on a virtual guitar fretboard so you build your guitar skills at the same time as you train your ears. Download it today and try it free for 21 days.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Ear training usually puts a lot of emphasis on learning to recognize notes, intervals, chords, melodies and chord progressions. But the ability to recognize and reproduce rhythms is just as important as these skills.

Most music requires you to learn and reproduce quite sophisticated rhythm patterns. So developing your ability to recognize and reproduce rhythm is essential if you want to transpose music to your instrument.

And what better place to get some rhythm practice than with a drummer? There are few notes to worry about so you can focus all your attention on the rhythm pattern.

So here is a video that will show you some rhythm recognition exercises you can use to improve listening and rhythmic reaction skills. You don’t have to have a drum, simply tap the rhythms on a table or on your thighs and hands.

Test and develop your rhythm skills with drum exercises like these. Combined with interval exercises they will help you develop your skill at recognizing melodies, chords and rhythms.

Want to develop your ear training rhythm skills? Ear Master Pro 5 has exercise areas dedicated to rhythmic dictation that improves your rhythm recognition skills. Download it today and try it free for 21 days.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Ear training is most effective when you develop the habit of doing it every day. You don’t need to spend hours at it, but a few minutes spent every single day will really help you to make great progress.

In fact, I’d go as far as saying that successful ear training really depends most on one critical factor. Daily practice.

Develop a good daily practice habit and you’ll develop a good musical ear. Fail at this and your ear training will take much longer and will be much harder.

So, if a daily ear training habit is a key to success, how do you develop that habit? Well here is one very good way that has been proven by many thousands of people as well as scientific research too.

This effective method you can use to develop any habit is well explained by Leo Babauta, creator of the Zen Habits blog, one of the most read on the Internet. Leo doesn’t play music as far as I know but he does know a thing or two about developing good habits.

To help others do the same Leo has developed what he calls the Power of Less Challenge. The challenge helps you to develop any habit you want. I could explain the Power of Less Challenge to you, but Tim Ferris has already done a great job of this in his review.

You can read his article to learn more or simply get yourself a copy of Leo’s Power of Less book. I’m sure you won’t regret it, it is sure to help you with more than just ear training.

The method described might look deceptively simple. But that is exactly where its power lies, you will find it much easier to develop habits that stick by following the advice in the book. If you’re struggling to develop or maintain a regular ear training habit, why not give it a try?

How do you ensure your daily dose of ear training? I’d love to hear how you developed or keep up a daily practice habit. I’m especially interested in hearing how you apply the Power of Less Challenge to your ear training and how it benefits you.

Get your daily dose of ear training with Ear Master 5 Pro.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Here’s this week’s update on my ear training progress. I’ve been working with Ear Master Pro again this week. Read on to find out how I did and learn about my experience using a guitar to enter answers directly.

This Week’s Progress

This week I scored 100% for the descending major and minor 2nds intervals exercise. This is a big improvement on my 46% two and a half weeks ago, and I’m pretty pleased about it.

But what pleases me most is the change in the way I hear those intervals that occurred this week. For the first time I recognized instantly the sound of each interval.

Rather than humming back the notes to myself to try to figure out the interval, I simply recognized their sound as soon as I heard them. This is a clear sign that Ear Master is developing my ear skills.

Chord Identification

Ear Master’s standard tutor includes chord identification exercises that I tried out this week.

The first few exercises play major, minor, augmented and diminished triads. You respond by entering the three notes played on the music staff, guitar fretboard or piano. I used the guitar fretboard and found it’s also a useful way to revise notes on the fretboard.

After a couple of exercises I noticed that the name of the triad played is shown in the music staff. This made it rather easy to identify the triad!

I couldn’t find a way to turn off the display of the triad name, and it’s hard not to notice it on the screen. I found a workaround by removing the staff to show only the fretboard on screen.

Guitar Input

As I mentioned in my Ear Master Pro review, answers can be entered by singing or playing an instrument into a microphone. I tried this by plugging my electro-acoustic guitar into the computer.

The microphone setup wizard was easy to use and got the microphone levels adjusted for my guitar. I made almost no change to the default settings.

I tested guitar input with interval identification exercises. When Ear Master plays the interval it shows the bottom note on the screen. It took me a few questions to realize that I only had to play the second note, not both notes of the interval.

Once I’d figured this out though the system worked well. You simply play the note to identify the interval and press the ctrl key to select it. The note Ear Master hears is shown on the fretboard or on the music staff while you play it.
I think that playing the notes directly on an instrument is a great way to reinforce the ear training and help associate the sounds you hear to notes that you play. I plan to use this more in the future.

That wraps up this week’s progress report. I’ll be back with another next week. If you want to follow my progress sign-up for the Ear Guitar RSS feed.

Learn more about Ear Master Pro ear training software and download a free 21 day trial at Ear Master.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Ear training should be an essential part of any musicians practice routine. But many guitar learners neglect this important skill.

It takes time to master and it can be frustratingly hard when you start. Your lack of success makes it easy to give up, thinking it is impossible, or only for a gifted few.

But it is possible for anyone to do if you work at ear training. Here are five reasons to encourage you to develop your musical ear.

Break Out Of Boxes

Many guitar players learn to play in boxes, those fretboard patterns of notes to play. At first it is much easier and quicker to learn than taking the time to master the sounds behind them.

But in the longer term it leads to frustration and limitations, leading to all those “How to break out of ____ boxes” lessons.

The best way to break out of playing in boxes is to train your ears to recognize the language of music. Instead of thinking in terms of patterns and boxes on your fretboard you think in music.

With this ability you can play the sounds you hear, and the sounds you imagine, directly on your instrument. You are no longer confined to mechanical box patterns.

Jam With Other Musicians

If you want to play with other musicians a good musical ear is essential. If you are unable to recognize chords and progressions by ear you are limited to playing only songs you’ve memorized in advance.

When you turn up to a jam session or rehearsal where songs you don’t know are played then you’re faced with the embarrassment of being unable to play.

Ear training will give you the ability to understand any song you hear. So you can join in and jam with any band, even if you don’t know the songs beforehand.

Learn Songs More Easily

The same ear skills will also help you to learn and remember songs more easily.

Ear training will help you learn songs just by listening to them. No more time spent searching for tab or song books.

You’ll also remember songs you learn by ear more easily. Instead of memorizing series of chord letters you’ll have the song’s sound in your head. You can simply play it back in your head and know what to play any time you want.

Improvise Solos

Improvisation is one of the most fun parts of playing guitar. Ear training improves your ability to solo and jam and react to other players spontaneously to create moving music.

Open Your Horizons

A musical ear opens up your musical horizons. You are no longer limited to studying the most popular guitarists who are tabbed in music books.

You are free to listen to musicians on any instrument, understand what they play and transcribe their music to your guitar.

Increase Confidence

Learning to hear and understand music is also a great way to boost your confidence as a guitar player. You’ll feel like a real musician when understand what you hear and can play something that fits it.

There you have six good reasons to start ear training today. Don’t wait until later to develop your musical ear, it will help you enormously as you learn to play guitar.

Are you serious about ear training? If you are Ear Master Pro software helps you to train your ear easily and have fun while you do it. Read my Ear Master Pro 5 review to learn how it can help you.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

My Ear Master Pro 5 reviews on this site are based upon the Windows version. If you are a Mac user though you can still benefit from this excellent ear training software.

Ear Master Pro was released for the Mac in November. According to recent news it is proving very popular with that audience.

“EarMaster has received the Staff Pick label on Apple Download and is ranking 7 for all categories this week!

Since the launching of the OS X version of EarMaster 5, Mac users have shown a very strong interest in EarMaster and we keep on receiving enthusiatic feedback from new users who can finally get hold of an ear training program that is both powerful, interactive, flexible and easy to use.”

Mac and Windows users can download a free 21 day trial version for free at Ear Master.

Source: Ear Master news, 27th January 2009.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Here’s the latest on my guitar ear training challenge. It’s been a busy week since my last report, I didn’t do the exercises every day as planned but only every other day. So, what did I learn…?

Interval Comparison

I continued working with the interval comparison tutor. This tutor plays two different intervals and you have to pick which of the two is the greater.

I continued working with minor and major 2nds - where I’d discovered I had plenty of room to improve, as well as minor and major thirds, where I’d scored better.

I improved my scores in all areas, particularly the descending intervals that were harder for me on both 2nds and 3rds. You can see my scores and progress when I show you Ear Master Pro’s statistics feature further down the page.

Interval Identification

I spent more time on the interval identification exercises this week in addition to the comparisons. I was surprised to discover this was easier for me than interval comparisons.

Ear Master Statistics

With over a week of training under my belt I was glad to discover Ear Master Pro’s statistics. While you perform the exercises Ear Master keeps track of your scores and the time taken to answer questions. You can follow your progress by viewing statistics for each exercise.

See my stats for interval comparison exercises below, for example.

Ear Master Interval Comparison Stats

Next Week

Next week I plan to move on and try some more intervals, as well as more difficult exercises. For example, the first interval comparisons use a common note in the two intervals compared. Later exercises use different notes.

I didn’t time to try using my guitar to input answers this week, so that’s another thing I hope to report on next week, too.

Do you have an ear training question or tip? I’d love to hear from you, please leave a comment using the reply form below.

Learn more about Ear Master Pro 5 by reading my review.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

My guitar ear training challenge started one week ago so here’s a first report on my results.

This week I installed the Ear Master Pro 5 application I selected and started to work with it. You can find an initial review of the software here if you’re interested.

Interval Comparison

I started work on the first exercise area, interval comparisons. The standard tutor proposes 42 lessons covering all intervals from unison to octave ascending, descending and harmonically.

The software plays two intervals, either melodically - one note after another, or harmonically - both notes sound together. You must choose which of the intervals is the larger.

The first exercises work with minor and major second intervals, that’s one fret and two frets respectively on the guitar.

Initial scores

Each exercise proposes 15 pairs of intervals to compare. I did quite well with the first on ascending intervals, scoring 82%. The descending intervals were harder for me and I scored only 42% at my first attempt.

Harmonic intervals were much easier for me to identify, I got around 90% here.

Progress?

After doing the exercises for about five to ten minutes each day this week I have improved my scores. More importantly, I am starting to really recognize the sound of the different intervals as soon as I hear them played.

Here are my scores at the end of the first week:

Ascending minor and major 2nds - 90%
Descending minor and major 2nds - 67%
Harmonic minor and major 2nds - 93%
Ascending minor and major 3rds - 100%

Ear Master Remarks

The software has performed reliably and was easy to use. I tried out note entry in Ear Master on the virtual guitar fretboard, stave, and multiple choice. All three work well.

Conclusion

I was surprised to discover I scored so differently at identifying ascending, descending or harmonic intervals. But in all the areas I made quite good progress.

Next week I’ll continue with interval comparisons and will explore some of the other exercise areas. I’ll also try to bring you a report on Ear Master’s history reports that allow you to monitor and track your progress.

Ear Master Pro 5

Read my Ear Master 5 Pro review.

Sign up to the RSS feed to receive updates as I progress with my ear training challenge.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites