Foundations Tuesday: Ear Training

This weekend, my daughter was in the living room watching a movie, and I heard a few bars of whatever the theme song was. Something in me recognized it--not the song, but the pattern.

"Cycle of Fifths!" I said aloud.

So, after a week of listening to Cycle of Fifths songs and working on such songs as Fly Me To the Moon, All the Things You Are, and Autumn Leaves, I'm getting a sense of what this progression sounds like. I've also had some fun just improvising and making things up using the chord patterns. I'd make a video of that, but it's early and my family is still asleep and probably wouldn't appreciate my waking them up. Losers.

More Foundations: Ear Training

Anyway, I was scrolling through the future "Level 4 Foundations" courses the other day and noticed one on ear training. For me, that would literally be ear (singular, not plural) training since my right ear is deaf. Ha ha. I decided to start watching/listening to it, partly so I could "take the course" while in the car, and partly because I know I need ear training.

It's taught by Jonny's brother-in-law, Yannick Lambrecht. He is wonderful!

He also mentioned one of my favorite music-related books, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain by Oliver Sacks! I read it years ago but have decided to re-read it because even though I enjoyed it, I don't remember a lot of it.

The Only Problem ...

Anyway, I really like this ear training course ... but I'm terrible at identifying different chord types! I can usually recognize a dominant seventh if you play it by itself ... but if you play it after another chord? My brain gets all scrambled.

Yannick keeps saying to listen for the top and bottom notes, but I literally can't hear either. I just hear sound. It's like looking at the color green and trying to identify the individual shades of blue and yellow that make up the green. I can't. It's just all green.

I have synaesthesia for numbers, but not for music, other than always having thought dominant sevenths are smug teachers' pets, major sevenths are the cool kids I could never aspire to be, and minor sevenths are ... I don't even know. The sad poetic kids who never call attention to themselves and end up having to miss second semester because they're in and out of the psych hospital.

(Diminished sevenths are the drama kids. Of course.)

Anyway, I'm doing ear training. I really want to get good at this, so I'm not just listening in the car. I'm making up exercises and recording different chords so I can quiz myself. I'm also going to see if these chord types are easier to identify when I'm not wearing my hearing aid. I'll keep you posted!

Comments

Rethinking Bare Necessities

Today's breakthrough moment (there are actually two of them) focuses on "Bare Necessities." As you'll remember, I discovered Jonny May's arrangement back in early March and immediately decided to learn it. I printed out the music, started the course, and proceeded to learn the stride section, posting a few videos of my progress. Ha. I bet those videos make it look like I was making progress. I guess I was ... but not really. And I realized something this weekend that I hadn't before: Because I was thinking of "Bare Necessities" as a "fun" piece, I wasn't practicing it seriously or diligently. I wasn't treating it as something I wanted to master. This mindset might work with an easier piece, but this arrangement isn't easy. The result: despite a little progress at the outset, I wasn't moving forward. I was stalled. Breakthrough #1 The first breakthrough was realizing that if I truly want to learn this piece and play it well,

March Goals Recap/Looking Ahead to April

It's April 1, and time to revisit the goals I set for last month. I practiced a total of 50.45 hours in March, averaging 1.62 hours (or just over an hour and a half) per day. Realistically, I practice about 45 minutes to an hour a day on weekdays, and I usually get at least one longer practice (or multiple shorter practices) in on one or both days of the weekend to bring the average up. CLASSICAL GOALS Chopin, F Minor Nocturne March Goal: Have entire piece by memory and performance-ready. I have about 90% of the piece by memory, but I still have some work to do before it's performance-ready. The only two sections that I don't quite have are "The Agitation" and the "stretto" section with the seventh chords. I'll work on both this week and will have them both memorized before the weekend. April Goal: Finish memorizing, and polish, polish, polish! My focus now is really on phrasing and dynamics. I have the notes down, even in the difficult passages. Fro

Maple Leaf Rag Breakthrough

Oh, Maple Leaf. Where to begin? At the Beginning I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I learned the A and B sections of Maple Leaf Rag back in the 1990s. I can’t tell you if it was early, mid- or late 90s, but it was during those 10 years after I’d graduated college, when I was playing a good bit of piano but not taking regular lessons from anyone. I don’t remember teaching it to myself at all. I just know that, at some point, the first half of Maple Leaf Rag was part of my two- or three-song repertoire of pieces I’d be able to play by memory over the next 25 years. It was always sloppy and I knew it, but people loved it, and so I played it if there was ever a piano around. Back in January, I decided to properly re-learn those two sections, and to finally learn the C and D sections of this wonderful piece. I worked on these over the next month or two, learning (and-relearning) the notes pretty quickly ... but it took time to memorize, and also to get everything to tempo surpassing a

Picking Up the Pieces

Search This Blog