Why Is Ear Training So Hard?
Summary
TLDRIn this video, the presenter addresses the difficulty of ear training, highlighting two main challenges: practicing exercises that are too advanced for one's skill level and following ineffective training methods. The interval method is criticized for its atonal approach, which doesn't align with how our musical perception naturally develops. The presenter emphasizes the importance of starting with simple tonal exercises to build a musical vocabulary, allowing for intuitive recognition of music. They also suggest measuring practice effectiveness through noticeable improvements and real-world music application.
Takeaways
- 🎓 The video discusses the difficulty of ear training and offers insights into why it can be challenging.
- 🚫 One reason ear training is hard is due to practicing exercises that are too difficult for one's current skill level.
- 👣 It's important to develop basic skills before moving on to more complex ones, akin to learning to walk before running.
- 🔍 The interval method is criticized for not having a gradual step-by-step approach, which can hinder progress.
- 🎵 Intervals are atonal exercises that don't account for the tonal context, making them an advanced skill to master.
- 🧠 Our perception of musical pitch is context-dependent, so starting with tonal context is crucial for effective ear training.
- 📈 To improve, one must internalize the sound of notes in a tonal context before tackling more complex harmonic contexts.
- 💡 Overloading short-term musical memory by trying to memorize too many notes at once can lead to inaccuracies in recognition.
- 🔄 Another reason training is hard is following an approach that doesn't align with how our musical pitch perception develops.
- 🔄 The interval method and trial-and-error approaches don't foster a tonal vocabulary, which is necessary for intuitive music recognition.
- 📊 Effective practice should yield noticeable results within weeks or bi-weekly, indicating whether the training method is suitable.
- 🌟 Developing a tonal vocabulary is essential for an intuitive connection with music, allowing for effortless recognition of melodies and chords.
Q & A
What is the main focus of the video?
-The main focus of the video is to answer why ear training can be so hard and to provide guidance on effective training methods.
What are the two main reasons mentioned for the difficulty in ear training?
-The two main reasons are practicing exercises that are too difficult for one's current skill level and following an approach that doesn't match how our perception of musical pitch works and develops.
Why can practicing exercises that are too difficult be a problem in ear training?
-Practicing exercises that are too difficult can be a problem because it's akin to trying to run before learning to walk well, which can hinder the development of basic skills necessary for more complex ones.
What is the issue with the interval method as discussed in the video?
-The interval method is problematic because it lacks a gradual step-by-step approach and focuses on atonal exercises, which doesn't align with the natural development of musical pitch perception.
How does the interval method differ from a tonal approach in ear training?
-The interval method focuses on learning the distance between two notes without considering their tonal context, whereas a tonal approach emphasizes understanding notes within a harmonic context.
Why is it important to start with a basic tonal context in ear training?
-Starting with a basic tonal context is important because it helps in internalizing the sound of notes within a key, which is essential for recognizing more complex harmonic contexts later on.
What is the trial and error approach in ear training and why is it ineffective?
-The trial and error approach involves searching for notes or chords on an instrument until they match the ones in a song, which doesn't develop a tonal vocabulary or an intuitive connection with music, thus remaining ineffective for advanced ear training.
How can one determine if their ear training practice is ineffective?
-One can determine if their practice is ineffective by not seeing noticeable results within a month or two, or if what they learn doesn't apply well to real music scenarios.
What should be the goal of effective ear training practice?
-The goal of effective ear training practice should be to develop a tonal vocabulary that allows for an intuitive connection with music, enabling recognition of melodies and chords without excessive rational effort.
Why is it important to be patient when developing musical hearing skills?
-Developing musical hearing skills requires patience because it involves a complex system of interrelated skills, similar to learning a language, which takes time and gradual progress from the basics.
Outlines
🎼 Understanding the Challenges of Ear Training
The speaker begins by addressing the difficulty of ear training, suggesting that it's crucial to practice exercises appropriate to one's skill level. They emphasize the importance of a step-by-step approach, starting with basic skills before moving to more complex ones. The speaker criticizes the interval method for its lack of a gradual progression and its focus on atonal exercises, which can be too advanced for beginners. They argue that ear training should start with tonal exercises to build a basic musical vocabulary, which is essential for recognizing more complex harmonic contexts. The speaker also points out that not considering one's musical memory capacity can lead to ineffective practice, as trying to memorize too many notes at once can overload one's memory.
🎵 Overcoming the Pitfalls of Ineffective Training Methods
The second paragraph delves into the second main reason why ear training can be hard: following an approach that doesn't align with how musical pitch perception develops. The speaker reiterates the ineffectiveness of the interval method due to its atonal focus, which contradicts the context-dependent nature of musical pitch perception. They also discuss the trial and error approach, where musicians rely on instruments to find matching notes or chords, which fails to develop a deeper tonal vocabulary. The speaker stresses the importance of developing an intuitive connection with music through a tonal approach to ear training, which allows for effortless recognition of melodies and chords. They suggest that without such a vocabulary, musicians will always rely on rational thinking, which is less efficient.
🚀 Accelerating Musical Progress with Effective Practice
In the final paragraph, the speaker discusses how to ensure effective practice by setting achievable goals and measuring progress. They suggest that noticeable improvements should be seen weekly or bi-weekly, and if not, it's likely that the practice method is ineffective. The speaker recommends testing one's ability to recognize melodies by ear after practicing intervals to gauge the effectiveness of the training. They also emphasize the complexity of developing musical hearing skills, likening it to learning a language, and advise patience and a gradual approach starting from the basics. The speaker concludes by encouraging viewers to subscribe, ask questions, and check out their website and courses for further assistance.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Ear training
💡Interval method
💡Tonal context
💡Musical memory
💡Relative pitch
💡Atonal perception
💡Musical vocabulary
💡Trial and error approach
💡Intuitive connection
💡Ineffective practice
💡Gradual approach
Highlights
Ear training difficulty can stem from practicing exercises that are too difficult for one's current skill level.
It's crucial to develop basic skills before moving on to more complex ones, similar to learning to walk before running.
The interval method often leads to difficulties as it lacks a gradual step-by-step approach.
Intervals are atonal exercises that don't consider the tonality or harmonic context of musical pieces.
Our perception of musical pitch is context-dependent, making the atonal approach of the interval method ineffective.
Starting with simple harmonic contexts is essential for developing a basic musical vocabulary.
Practicing without considering one's short-term musical memory capacity can lead to ineffective training.
Overloading musical memory with too many notes at once can distort pitch recognition.
The second main reason for ear training difficulty is following an approach that doesn't match how our perception of musical pitch works.
The interval method's atonal approach doesn't follow the natural development of relative pitch skills.
The trial and error approach, which involves searching for notes on an instrument, doesn't develop beyond basic pitch matching skills.
Both the interval method and trial and error approach fail to develop a tonal vocabulary necessary for intuitive music recognition.
Great musicians recognize music intuitively by the sensations of musical elements within the key or harmonic context.
To develop intuitive music recognition, one must start ear training with a tonal approach rather than atonal exercises.
Effective practice should show noticeable results within a week or two; lack of improvement may indicate ineffective practice.
Measuring the applicability of learned skills in real music is a good way to determine the effectiveness of one's practice.
Developing musical hearing skills is a complex process akin to learning a language, requiring patience and gradual progression from basics.
Transcripts
hi everyone and welcome to this video in
which i'll answer
a specific question which is why is
your training so hard before getting
started with my answer i just want to
remind you that our your training course
is available right now
and i suggest you check it out on our
website see the links in the description
section
getting back to the main topic of this
video there are two main reasons
why ear training is so hard the first
reason that can cause you to struggle
with your training
is practicing exercises that are too
difficult for you
and i mean exercises that are not
adequate to your current level of skills
of course this can be a huge problem
because
as it happens in the development of any
other complex skills
for example let's say learning to run we
cannot learn to run
before we have learned to walk
very well okay and the same thing is
totally true
also in the case of ear training we need
to develop
very basic skills and then we can
gradually develop more complex skills
starting from that point it's totally
impossible to learn
advanced skills at first so
that's a very big thing to keep in mind
when practicing your training
and that's one of the biggest issues
related to the interval method
because the interval method
unintentionally
asks students to perform very difficult
tasks
since the beginning of their practice so
the interval method
doesn't have a real gradual step-by-step
approach
and i thoroughly explain everything
about what i'm saying
in a very specific video that i did a
few months ago
where i quote all the scientific studies
other researches that really show
why the interval method is ineffective
and why the interval method doesn't
have a step-by-step approach i suggest
you check out that video
you can find the link up here or in the
description section below
but just in a very few words the
interval method doesn't suggest
an effective step-by-step approach
because
intervals are atonal exercises
when you learn an interval you pretend
to learn
just the distance between the two notes
without taking into account
the function that these two notes
assumes
inside the the tonality the key the
harmonic context
of the musical piece so you're just
trying to develop
an atonal perception of the interval
okay the big issue is that this is
a really advanced skill
the first thing we need to do in order
to be able to do that
is internalizing the sound of the notes
in the tonal context
only after that we can try to face
a tonal context because that's
very clear from scientific studies our
perception of
musical pitch is context dependent so
it doesn't make sense to start out
by facing a tonal context which are
advanced contexts okay so the main thing
to understand
here is to start out with very simple
harmonic context
so tonal harmonic context because if we
don't have a very good internalization
of the tonal context the basic tonal
context
we won't have the basic vocabulary the
basic musical vocabulary
that allows us to recognize
more complex harmonic contexts such as
a tonal context such as for example
a contextual intervals so for example it
will feel
almost impossible to even memorize a
very simple interval
if we have not developed a very basic
tonal vocabulary
a basic internalization of the tonal
framework
first the more we internalize the simple
harmonic context
the major key for example the more we
will be able to apply
those tonal memories in order to
recognize and understand
also atonal contexts but then there also
are other reasons why you can't practice
in a way that's too difficult to advance
for your current level of skills
so for example i see many students
practicing in a way
that doesn't take into account at all
their short-term musical memory capacity
so basically what they do for example in
a simple melodic dictation
they try to retain to memorize
too many notes at once okay and what
happens is that
if you try to memorize too many notes
your musical memory will be kinda
overloaded
and you will for sure distort some of
those notes
so if you're kind of distorting the
pitches of the notes
and you're not retaining the correct
pitch
it's obviously impossible for you to
recognize the notes correctly and the
reason is very simple because you don't
have the
right the correct notes in your head
another simple another simple example
could be
when students try to recognize a chord
progression
by singing all the notes that are inside
the chord and trying to find the root
note
and maybe they match the third or the
fifth of the chord
and they don't realize that it's not the
root note
so that's just a very simple example but
let's now
get on the second main reason why
your training is so hard the second main
reason that can cause you to struggle a
lot with your training
is that you might be following an
approach
that doesn't match how our perception of
musical pitch
really works and develops
and this is exactly what happens when
you approach your training
using the interval method because again
the interval method suggests an atonal
approach so the interval method doesn't
take into account the harmonic context
at all okay as we've seen
our perception of musical pitch is
totally context dependent
and again you can find a video up here
or in the description section below
where i explain where i thoroughly
explain everything about that
and there are lots of scientific studies
that show that
so it's not my opinion it's real fact
if you don't believe that there are more
than 500 people
currently subscribed to the course that
can testify
this you can see a lot of comment
they are leaving all over the internet
on
our testimonial page that's available on
our website
you can see a link in the description
section below so since the interval
method
really suggests an atonal approach
to recognizing music to internalizing
music
and developing ear training skills it
doesn't follow at all
the way in which our relative pitch
skills naturally develop
and that's a huge problem because people
think that
they should start developing their ear
training skills by
recognizing short intervals such as a
minor second
and then move on to the major second and
then to the minor third
and then to the major third that's not
how it works
that's not how our relative pitch skills
really develops and starting out to
practice your training
with those kinds of tasks is the wrong
thing to do
and i'm saying that also by my
personal direct experience i tried
interval for 10 years without seeing
even a little
small improvement in return and the same
thing is happening
to a lot lot of other students again
i suggest you check them out on our
testimonial page
another example of an approach that
doesn't match how our
perception of musical pitch works and
develops
is adopting what i call the trial and
error approach
the trial and error approach occurs when
a musician
help himself with an instrument
and he search the notes on his
instrument
till he finds the notes or the chords
that matches the one
that are in the song and this doesn't
involve
any other mental processing
than very simple and basic pitch
matching skills
where base the basic task you are kind
of repeating
over and over is just identifying when
the pitch you are playing on your
instrument
is played in the song okay
so for sure pitch matching is a basic
skill in your training that we must have
but this approach won't allow you to get
any further than that generally speaking
both the interval method and the trial
and error approach
won't allow you to develop a tonal
vocabulary
a musical vocabulary so these two
approaches
won't allow you to develop an intuitive
connection with music
and this means that you're going to
always
need a lot of rational effort
a rational a lot of rational thinking in
order to
recognize chords and melodies by ear and
be able to play them on your instrument
or whatever so this is for sure
something that won't allow you to get a
lot faster
in recognizing melodies in recognizing
chords
if you want to get faster we need to
make a sort of economy of thought okay
we need to develop a music vocabulary
a musical vocabulary that will allow you
to develop
an intuitive connection with music so
you can recognize music
intuitively just by feeling how
a note sounds our chord sounds
you can recognize its feeling and
without thinking you know
what chord it is and that's exactly
what great musicians do they are able to
recognize music
just by recognizing the sensations that
the musical elements
have inside the musical piece
inside the key of the musical piece or
the general harmonic context of the
musical piece
and that allows them to be able to
effortlessly recognize
melodies chords etc so
if you want to develop those kinds of
skills you need to develop this
tonal vocabulary that i'm talking about
and in order to do that you will need to
start out by
approaching ear training in a tonal way
okay not by focusing
on atonal exercises or just by trying to
develop your
pitch matching skills using the trial
and error approach
lastly i just want to answer a very
simple question
that you might have which is how can i
be sure that i'm practicing
ineffectively
the answer is very simple by practicing
effectively you should be able to see
noticeable results on at least
a weekly or bi-weekly basis
so if you're not seeing any results in a
month
or two months then it's very likely
that you're practicing ineffectively and
one of these two reasons
is very likely to be the cause of your
struggles
you can also measure whether you're
practicing effectively
or not by figuring out
how much what you're learning is
applicable
on real music for example you want to
develop the ability to recognize
melodies by ear
and let's say you're trying to
practicing you're practicing intervals
in order to develop this skill you can
just take
four or five simple melodies try to
recognize them by ear
without memorizing them then practice
for two weeks
or a month and then you try to recognize
them by ear
again this way you can clearly see and
clearly measure
whether or not you have improved your
ability to recognize melodies by ear
in that two weeks or that month
of practice this is just another very
simple way in which you can measure
whether your practice is being effective
or not
the last thing i want to say is that
musical hearing skills
are a very complex topic our relative
pitch system
includes a lot of different skills that
interact with each other
and they work together in order to allow
us to perform
those kinds of skills so it's a complex
system of skills
it's a little bit like learning a
language for example okay
no one will ever expect to learn a new
language
from zero in one month
that's to say that also if you're using
the correct approach
it takes time to develop such a complex
system of skills
it can be totally done also if you're
starting from zero
that doesn't matter at all but you need
to be patient and you need to work
gradually starting from the basics and
then building up from there
anyway i hope this video has been
helpful to you
don't forget to subscribe and to leave a
like and if you have some questions you
can ask them
in the comment section below i suggest
you check out our website and our
courses
see the links in the description section
thanks for watching
see you in the next video bye
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