MELODIC EAR TRAINING

Description

Melodic EAR-TRAINING

The ability to hear music correctly is an important prerquisite to playing music: To play music, you must first hear the correct notes and rhythms internally.Every time you play a melodic line, you should sing or hum in internally.If you don't allready do this,START TODAY! This alone can make your music MUCH stronger
If you are vocally challenged, don't worry about singing perfectly in tune.Get as close as you can.
If you can hear the correct notes internally you are on the right track.

The next time you have trouble playing a Phrase,try singing it out loud, SLOWLY.If you are unsure about any of the notes, you will have a hard time playing the phrase correctly.

Great musicians have great ears.Your objective is to develop a keen sense of relative pitch,
or the ability to recognize all of the musical intervals by ear.With good relative pitch, you can
locate and identify any notes based on a single reference pitch.Once you have memorized
the shapes of the intervals on the finger board, you can quikly learn to play what you are hearing.
Whenever you identify an interval, visualize yourself playing it on the fretboard.

We've have all seen how the ear is allready familiar with the sound of each interval
through repeatedprevious exposure.Even so, learning to recognize and identify the intervals can be a long and tediousprocess. Practice faithfully, and you will see-or should i say \"hear\"- the result's.Ear-training never stops! Keep listening and always be on the lookout for new melodies> sharpen your skills by
garnering melodic ideas from recording's, live performances, or even the sound of nature, THEN
transfer them to your instrument. YOUR ultimate goal is to be able to play anything you hear.


It is best to begin with the sounds of the MAJOR and PERFECT intervals within one octave of each other. Most ears are allready familiar with the sound of the MAJOR SCALE via the \"solfeggio\" sight-singing singing system (Do-Re-Mi-Fa-So-La-Ti-Do) or, more likely, that damn dear \"deer song\" from \"the sound of music\". Use any major scale fingering starting on any root for the following exercises. As you learn more scales, incorpporate them into your ear training in the same manner



TO PRACTICE ASCENDING OR DESCENDING MAJOR SCALES:

* Play and THEN sing any chosen root note.

* Sing up or down the scale while simultaneously playing it on the guitar.

* Sing the numerical scale degrees that correspond to the ascending and descending intervals-\"1,2,3\" and so on.

* Sing the scale again without playing it.

* Repeat the entire process, singing the names of the notes instead of the scale degrees-for example,\"C,D,E\" and so on.

Practice until you can sing an ascending or descending major scale starting on any root.


TO PRACTICE ASCENDING OR DESCENDING MAJOR AND PERFECT INTERVALS INDIVIDUALLY:

* Play and sing any chosen root note.

* Simultaneously play and sing by major scale degrees up or down to any chosen major or perfect interval.

* Sing and then play from any root directly to the chosen interval, eliminating all in between notes.

* Repeat all of the above, singing the names of the notes instead of their numerical scale degrees.

Repeat the entire process for ALL major and perfect intervals.


TO PRACTICE INDIVIDUAL ASCENDING OR DESCENDING MINOR INTERVALS AND b5s:

* Play and sing any chosen root.

* Simultaneously play and sing scale degrees up or down to the NEAREST major or perfect interval *ABOVE any chosen minor or b5 interval.

* Sing and play the chosen minor or b5 interval by lowering the major or perfect interval located one half-step *ABOVE it.

* Sing and then play from the root directly to the chosen interval, eliminating in-between notes.

* Repeat all of the above, singing the names of the notes instead of their numerical scale degrees.

Repeat the entire process for all MINOR intervals and FLAT 5's.



OPTIONAL PRACTICE IDEAS

Ask a friend who plays any instrument to record a half-hour of random melodic intervals, playing each pair of notes three times apiece. Try to identify each interval by ear from the recording, then check your results on the guitar. If you have access to-and are unfamiliar with-keyboard instruments, play any two consecutive notes and try to name the melodic interval.

For the ULTIMATE SELF TEST!, Radically retune your guitar, then play familiar interval shapes anywhere on the fingerboard and try to name them. In altered tuning's, the shapes you play will produce different intervals then the one's you memorized. This prevents you from identifying an interval by sight and feel, And forces you to do it purly by ear.


Eventually, you will be able to identify EVERY note of the CHROMATIC scale from a single reference pitch. Keep recalling any familiar melodies to help your retention of each interval. Each interval has a characteristic sound. Wire these and you'll be able to identify any type of interval, even without a reference pitch. Your objective is the immediate recognition and identification of the sound and distance of any interval.