Best Ear Training Resources or Methods?

V

VidarAus

Experienced
Hi All,

I want to really start working on my ear, but am not sure what I should be practising or what courses to follow.

I have seen a program called Ear Master which looks promising.

I have also seen the David Lucas Burge stuff which looks like a marketing ploy.

I am not really interested in perfect pitch (can one 'learn' that anyway?) but I would like a system for honing my relative pitch.

Can anyone recommend and resources?

Thanks a lot,

VidarAus
 
Learning songs from other bands by listening concentrated to them improves the ears very much imho. I stumbled across this lately while learning songs for my cover band. In the beginning I had no idea what to play and a bit later I was able to seperate all the instruments. :shock:

Not all about the pitch issue and maybe obvious ... but nevertheless. :p
 
The David Lucas Burge stuff is actually legit, but i can see how it wouldn't work for everybody. He teaches how to recognize pitches not by their tones, but by their character... kind of like how an artist would recognize colors. When you see the color red, you know that it's red because that's what you were taught. How would you describe that color to somebody that doesn't know what red is? That's the approach he takes with pitch. Some pitches have a smoother sound to them, which rings true in all octaves across all instruments. There are only 12 notes, or colors, to the sonic spectrum. They simply have different shades based on what octave they are in (whiter or blacker).

I've only listened to the first few tracks (pirated off limewire), but I've been kicking around getting the whole set. Since I've started thinking his way it's been a lot easier to recognize notes. In that aspect, yes, you can learn perfect pitch. It hasn't done diddly squat for my horrible singing though!

For interval ear training www.musictheory.net has a great set of tools.
 
I can't suggest you any material as I pretty much never used any
but I can suggest you to sing as much as possible,
sing regular stuff like songs etc but also try to sing the things you play and the other way around,
try to play stuff you sing.
Start with simple lines made of few notes and go more complex by adding jumps and wider intervals.
After a while you'll literally be able to "visualize" fretboard while listening to anything,
you'll "see" the notes you hear on your visualized fretboard.
IMO the key is in degrees and relation between them, once you get that done it's all piece of cake.
And another IMO, relative pitch is far more usable in real life compared to perfect pitch,
further more, perfect pitch can slow you down sometimes,
talking from others experiences and not mine as I don't have perfect pitch, luckily. ;)
 
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