Yeah, I believe there are effective ways of teaching music and ear training and there are non-effective ways. Although teaching music is completely different from the way I think you should teach ear training. everyone teaches them differently. They should both be approached differently. Music is taught by theory, the best way I think to teach music is to introduce Relative Pitch, because this is how chords are constructed, progressions are made, melodies and harmonies are related, the basic building blocks of all music. There are other things also, but if you want to learn Music and how it works, take Music Theory classes. I don’t believe there is any flaw in Music theory, but most important keep an open mind. Dont let yourself believe that if you weren't taught something you can't use it.
Ear Training from what I hear it is, should be changed a lot. Everybody I know that has taken Ear training has said the same thing your saying. And if everyone is saying the same thing, there is definitely something wrong with it and it should be changed. The first thing I heard about it (your experience may be different) was the instructor saying, “You can learn to recognize and discriminate pitches, but don’t think your going to get Perfect Pitch”. This is so contradictory to itself, that it is absurd. Everybody knows one of the things people with perfect pitch can do is recognize and discriminate between pitches. The flaw in this is that they never teach you how to recognize a pitch. How do you learn something if you don’t understand it? If you can’t recognize a pitch, you sure as hell can’t tell their differences. It’s like a colorblind person trying to name colors. They just skip right over the basics. The next thing they probably do is they will play 2 different notes on the piano, and your supposed to name them as your instructor plays them. Say its C and D. This is very easy, cause once you get one right. You automatically switch on your relative pitch to tell if the next one is higher or lower. Then later, the instructor starts adding more notes, and as they do, you get more and more lost. This is because you didn’t learn the basic sound of each note first. Here’s what I think should be done, First an instructor should make sure you hear each pitches sound, and if your lost they should show you how they sound before moving on to naming them. After that, all these exercises just fall right into place. Now it doesn’t make it easy, it’s still a little hard. The thing is you will learn it faster cause now you have a solid ground to begin with. This brings me to your second question.
When teaching someone an instrument whether they are just beginning or they just want some tips. The first thing to do is introduce them to these pitches, before rhythm, scales, certain songs, anything. (only exception I think is percussion, rhythm should be taught first.) But with any other instrument, make sure they hear and understand these pitches on their instrument. Cause once they do, they become free to do anything. This is with any circumstance whether they want to write music, learn to play songs they hear on the radio, whatever. YOU MUST HIT THE BASICS FIRST, ALTHOUGH IT IS NEVER TOO LATE. Then start teaching them other stuff, like songs and scales. They will then tend to pick up on it a little faster. Like how you notice some people that start playing guitar, learn songs that they hear faster or they’re playing is better than some. The people who learn faster tend to hear these pitches first, rather than those who don’t. The biggest factor in this is “timbre” (pronounced tam-ber). Timbre is the instruments sound, like a guitar is stringy and drums are bangy. This is what draws most people to the instrument they choose to learn. They like its sound. See here is why, when a person first hears an instrument, the ear involuntarily chooses which one it’s going to pay more attention too. The ear’s that choose the pitch sound will have Perfect Pitch, the ones who choose the timbre don’t. Although they both are heard, timbre becomes more dominant than the pitch. Don’t worry about this; you can’t control someone else’s ear. 95% of people choose the timbre, but what you can control, is getting the ear to pay attention to these pitches a little more. People with Perfect pitch whether they learn it or choose it, they can hear them both evenly. So my advice, is get them to hear these pitches as soon as possible.
Another thing, if you can transcribe songs at regular speed especially Jaco Pastorius’s stuff. That’s pretty f#$%^& amazing, I am a bass player so I know exactly what your saying. Well I hope I helped you out man. Take it easy.
[Edited by noticingthemistake on 08-07-2002 at 05:58 PM]
"My whole life is a dark room...ONE BIG DARK ROOM" - a.f.i.
