Ear Training For Old Men
August 23, 2020 11:13 AM Subscribe
Experience or tips for ear training for an (almost) 50 year old guitar player
I've been playing guitar for 35 years, and have recently picked up bass, which has expanded my musical knowledge and enjoyment. However, I've never gotten good at hearing chords or intervals, which has made it hard for me to learn songs and understand the harmonic structure of music.
I can figure out a song's key on my guitar, and pick out single note runs, but am bad at figuring out chord progressions on my own.
I'd like to be able to hear progressions and scale degrees easily, even without my guitar or bass in hand.
Personal experience would be especially appreciated.
I've been playing guitar for 35 years, and have recently picked up bass, which has expanded my musical knowledge and enjoyment. However, I've never gotten good at hearing chords or intervals, which has made it hard for me to learn songs and understand the harmonic structure of music.
I can figure out a song's key on my guitar, and pick out single note runs, but am bad at figuring out chord progressions on my own.
I'd like to be able to hear progressions and scale degrees easily, even without my guitar or bass in hand.
Personal experience would be especially appreciated.
Are you familiar with basic music theory--roman numeral analysis, aka Nashville numbers?
For me this was the key to unlocking ear training. First step is just knowing which degrees have major vs. minor chords, then trying to identify chord progressions in any random song you hear. The advantage being that you don't need an instrument handy at all--you don't care what key it's in, you're just trying to figure out the relationships. Is the progression I-vi-IV-V, or ii-V-I, or whatever. Start by trying to hear which chord is the I, then guess the others from there.
Additional practice--with the guitar, try to get a feel for what the different chord degrees sound like. Play I and ii repeatedly, in different keys, to try and build up a sense of what ii "sounds like", etc.
You can get quite a long way with just the most basic chords I, ii, iii, IV, V, vi--that's enough to explain probably 90% of popular music. Next step is learning which degrees can have which kinds of seventh chords. And then some of the more common deviations that borrow notes from outside the key, like a major chord on the flat seventh degree (bVII), often found immediately before or after I. Or III instead of iii (major instead of minor on the third degree), usually leading up to vi.
posted by equalpants at 3:52 PM on August 23, 2020 [2 favorites]
For me this was the key to unlocking ear training. First step is just knowing which degrees have major vs. minor chords, then trying to identify chord progressions in any random song you hear. The advantage being that you don't need an instrument handy at all--you don't care what key it's in, you're just trying to figure out the relationships. Is the progression I-vi-IV-V, or ii-V-I, or whatever. Start by trying to hear which chord is the I, then guess the others from there.
Additional practice--with the guitar, try to get a feel for what the different chord degrees sound like. Play I and ii repeatedly, in different keys, to try and build up a sense of what ii "sounds like", etc.
You can get quite a long way with just the most basic chords I, ii, iii, IV, V, vi--that's enough to explain probably 90% of popular music. Next step is learning which degrees can have which kinds of seventh chords. And then some of the more common deviations that borrow notes from outside the key, like a major chord on the flat seventh degree (bVII), often found immediately before or after I. Or III instead of iii (major instead of minor on the third degree), usually leading up to vi.
posted by equalpants at 3:52 PM on August 23, 2020 [2 favorites]
Oh, and I am definitely an outlier compared to what they teach in school, but in the context of roman numeral stuff, I've never found it helpful to think about major keys and minor keys as different things.
Like if a song is in A minor, and the chords are A minor, D minor, E7, I would not think of that as i, iv, V7--as that wikipedia article would. I would think of it as vi, ii, III. In other words I use the same "numbers" for both A minor and C major, since those keys have the same notes. If a song is in a minor key I just think of it as having vi as the root/tonic.
IMO this makes things way, way easier for popular music, since it's so common for songs to switch back and forth between major and minor sections in verse vs. chorus, verse vs. bridge, etc.
posted by equalpants at 4:00 PM on August 23, 2020 [1 favorite]
Like if a song is in A minor, and the chords are A minor, D minor, E7, I would not think of that as i, iv, V7--as that wikipedia article would. I would think of it as vi, ii, III. In other words I use the same "numbers" for both A minor and C major, since those keys have the same notes. If a song is in a minor key I just think of it as having vi as the root/tonic.
IMO this makes things way, way easier for popular music, since it's so common for songs to switch back and forth between major and minor sections in verse vs. chorus, verse vs. bridge, etc.
posted by equalpants at 4:00 PM on August 23, 2020 [1 favorite]
I was taught classical music theory, including harmonic analysis, as a kid, but never really heard melodic and harmonic form until I read Harmonic Experience later as an adult. The author is a Western composer and a Sufi and endeavors to establish a theory of modern harmony based on the fundamentals of acoustics and relations among 'pure' intervals. There's a lot of learning to sing these pure intervals, which is in itself fun, and leads to really hearing the sense of harmonic progressions.
posted by bertran at 6:07 PM on August 23, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by bertran at 6:07 PM on August 23, 2020 [1 favorite]
The free app functional ear trainer is pretty cool. It teaches you to distinguish between tones in a key. As a non musician I was surprised by how quickly I was able to recognize intervals using the app.
posted by trigger at 6:27 PM on August 23, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by trigger at 6:27 PM on August 23, 2020 [1 favorite]
You say you can "pick out single note runs". Can you do that without an instrument in your hand? So, if you hear a simple melody, can you work out what the (relative) notes are? If not, work on it. Agreed with trigger on Functional Ear Trainer, that's one simple way to get started. Another is just sounding out nursery rhymes. Can you figure out what the scale degrees are for the notes in Frère Jacques? Etc.
Learning bass lines to songs by ear is great practice. And once you know the bass line, you've got a good start on the chord progression; often it's enough just to have the bass line and the chord qualities (major, minor, etc.). Or you can try to work out the top-line melody and/or inner voices, and then narrow down the chord choices from those. It's a slow process but gets faster (at least for simple cases) the more you practice.
I found Roberta Radley's "Real Easy Ear Training Book" helpful for stepping through that process. It assumes you already have some basic theory.
For me, progress is slow, but it happens if I keep at it a little bit every day.
posted by floppyroofing at 7:49 PM on August 23, 2020 [1 favorite]
Learning bass lines to songs by ear is great practice. And once you know the bass line, you've got a good start on the chord progression; often it's enough just to have the bass line and the chord qualities (major, minor, etc.). Or you can try to work out the top-line melody and/or inner voices, and then narrow down the chord choices from those. It's a slow process but gets faster (at least for simple cases) the more you practice.
I found Roberta Radley's "Real Easy Ear Training Book" helpful for stepping through that process. It assumes you already have some basic theory.
For me, progress is slow, but it happens if I keep at it a little bit every day.
posted by floppyroofing at 7:49 PM on August 23, 2020 [1 favorite]
How does Functional Ear Trainer work? In the mists of time I wrote an interval trainer that worked like this:
It's a "game" in a way I guess, with the functional loop being, it'll play a chord progression, and then a note, and you're supposed to say what the interval is in relationship to the root of the progression. It chooses a random key - starting with just C and as you progress it adds in more keys. It also chooses a random interval, starting with I iv and V and adding more as you progress. At the highest level it just plays the root and an interval. Doing this a few minutes a day I quickly got to the point where I could instantly recognize intervals no problem.
posted by RustyBrooks at 6:17 AM on August 24, 2020
It's a "game" in a way I guess, with the functional loop being, it'll play a chord progression, and then a note, and you're supposed to say what the interval is in relationship to the root of the progression. It chooses a random key - starting with just C and as you progress it adds in more keys. It also chooses a random interval, starting with I iv and V and adding more as you progress. At the highest level it just plays the root and an interval. Doing this a few minutes a day I quickly got to the point where I could instantly recognize intervals no problem.
posted by RustyBrooks at 6:17 AM on August 24, 2020
Response by poster: Thanks for the help, I'm getting started on Functional Ear Training.
posted by signal at 7:02 AM on August 24, 2020
posted by signal at 7:02 AM on August 24, 2020
This thread is closed to new comments.
What I think might be worth trying, if you can get over how elementary it is, is finding a good video or recording of a teacher or musician walking through the storytelling roles of the notes in a major scale - such as "the root feels like home; the second feels like we're starting to venture out just a bit; the third gets tense, etc etc.". For me it is like a cheap and "good enough" way to understand the function of changes and intervals. I know everything isn't a major scale*, but it's pretty foundational.
* I don't actually like KNOW know, on account of the whole bluegrass thing, but I bet there are other scales out there.
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 11:46 AM on August 23, 2020