What Exactly is Ear Training?

One element of Let's Play Music class that definitely stands out is our inclusion of activities and games that focus on ear training. So today I've asked Christopher Sutton at www.easyeartraining.com to explain it to us!

Ear training is:

• Not an overnight magic trick.

• Not an antidote for deafness.

It can help you make the most of the hearing you still have, but training won't repair hearing loss.

• Not part of music theory.

Think of ear training, music theory and instrument learning as the 'musical trifecta'. All three complement each other, and interrelate. You need all three to be a truly great musician.  That's why Let's Play Music is a good example of a course for the complete musician.

• Not for experts only.

Whatever stage you've reached in learning music-from absolute beginner to seasoned pro- ear training can bring significant benefits and should be part of your practice routine.

Ear training is about:

• Hearing more, and hearing more clearly

...which helps you become a more sophisticated musician.

• Understanding more in what you hear

...so you can play freely, compose, improvise and play by ear.

• Connecting what you hear with what you play

... closing the gap between ear, mind, and instrument.

Ear Training is:   

Anything somebody does 

to improve their ear for music.

In fact, in spite of its name, ear training is not really about improving the ear itself! The majority of 'ear training' exercises are actually exercises for the brain.

We are teaching our brains to reliably pick apart what the ear is physically hearing and turn it into the concepts that are meaningful to us.

As we train we become able to hear more complex concepts and with much greater reliability.  You might start off just hearing that a series of notes are piano notes, but after training you could report that it was "an ascending harmonic minor scale with first inversion i-iv-v-i chords underneath!" You've probably heard great musicians or audio pros do this kind of thing- and you can learn it, too.
   
The Slow Way or the Active Way?
Anybody who sings, plays an instrument, or works in a job where they pay a lot of attention to sound will be doing this already!  However, while their ears will inevitably be getting better as they practice and hone their art, this is a very passive process – and so a very slow process. Ear training is about taking active steps to improve the same skills, so that progress can be much quicker.

For example, humans naturally learn to distinguish male from female voices as we grow up. We are surrounded by them and have the ‘right answer’ given to us most of the time by seeing the person who’s speaking. But if you’re an English-speaker learning Spanish, and want to be able to distinguish regional accents from around Spain, it takes a much more active effort to make progress. You’ll have to find examples and techniques which help you, and the quickest way to make progress will be by focused effort on learning ways to tell the accents apart. Otherwise, it will be years before these skills develop on their own!

The speech examples above illustrate the main kind of ear training – learning to reliably classify what you’re hearing, and then knowing what label to put on it. 

1. Learn the different classes 

(e.g. different instruments, different notes, different types of chords)

2. Learn what to call each class

(e.g. oboe, flute, clarinet...C,D,E,F,G....major, minor, diminished) 

Sometimes the first part is easy- for example, most people will easily hear the difference between a major and minor chord without practice. Once they've been told that the 'happy sounding' chord is called 'major' and the 'gloomy, sad' one is 'minor', they have the second part, too.

You might think that only the first step matters- after all, if you can always hear what 'class' something fits into, why does it matter what label you put on it? Well, there are two good reasons for learning the labels: 

1.Using common terms helps you work and play better together with other musicians, and learn from them.

2. Having clear, defined labels for the types of things you hear greatly speeds up learning to reliably classify them by giving the brain a framework. One reason Let's Play Music uses solfeg is to give this type of framework.  

Hear More at Once

Not all ear training is about identifying sounds.  For example, another important type of training is teaching your brain to process more information in parallel.  coming back to our voice analogy: A young child may be able to tell if a voice is male or female, but still really struggle to understand speech in a room full of people talking! A few years later this will pose no problem, and he'll be able to easily tune into one person or another amid the noise of the room.

Ear training lets you do the same thing with music; when listening to music, ear training can let you:  

• Hear the individual notes in chords and harmonies
• Identify how different instruments co-exist to create the overall sound
• Follow multiple instruments' parts at once rather than just the melody

 The music comes to life, as what used to be a noisy mess becomes clear and richly rewarding.    

Why do ear training:

The skills we improve through ear training are the skills we use all the time as musicians, music parents, or music fans.  They lie beneath everything we do with sound ad music and yet  most people never spend any time on these skills! Sadly, most people assume that these are things you 'just get better at' automatically as you practice your instrument.

By choosing to actively improve your skills through ear training, or enrolling in a program, like Let's Play Music, that incorporates such activities, you will make much faster progress and unlock talents you never thought you'd have.

• If you're a musician, ear training is the number one thing you can do to improve your musicianship an bring life to your music. 

• If you're a music fan, ear training will let you hear things you've never heard before, even in music you already knew.  You'll have a much deeper understanding of the music you love and your tastes will be broadened as you begin to hear what's so great about music you never thought much of before.

• If you're a music parent, ear training will help you help your child- because you'll understand exactly what you're hearing when something sounds wrong.  

-Christopher Sutton
Easy Ear Training, Ltd.
Read more about this here.

You can learn this skill!

As a parent of a Let's Play Music student, you've been exposed to the ear-training, music theory, and musicianship taught in class.  We want to know:

How has being a Let's Play Music parent expanded YOUR musical ambitions? 

Write your answer as a comment below. Thanks for sharing! 


If you are serious about improving musicianship as an adult, you might consider joining Musical U.  At Musical U, you will train your ear through well-planned training modules, AND have the support of a community of learners and musicians coaching you along the way.  Musical U will help you become more musical as you learn to:

• play notes and chords by ear, easily and instinctively
• improvise powerful solos, reliably and confidently
• truly understand what you hear, and create amazing music yourself 

So, tell us what YOU would do with your new musical skills, we love hearing how musical you are becoming through Let's Play Music.

Or, if you're not yet part of our family, but you're ready to jump in and get some ear training, find a teacher near you now!