Ear Training, part 1 - Beginning and Intermediate Students CAN Do it!
Aug 08 '00 (Updated Nov 15 '05)
The Bottom Line Ear training is an integral part of musical expression and musical performance and should be included in musical training, from the beginning.
Using the ear as part of musical expression is a very natural thing. Who among us hasn't hummed along with a favorite song heard on the radio or TV? If that can be done, there is no reason why having a musical instrument in your hands and some ink on a piece of paper in front of you (musical notation) should inhibit that expression. Use of the ear should ENHANCE musical expression.
I believe that there are a lot of things going on during musical expression. The musician is stimulated by the sounds around he or she, the other musicians, the rhythm, etc. There is also visual stimulus - the written music, a band leader directing, an audience, perhaps. Then, there's the musician's internal preparation - the skill in playing the instrument, the brain's experience, intuitive or conscious, in directing the parts of the body in playing the instrument, the person's feelings and physical health that day. The sum of it all is that a musician has a lot of things that need to go on at the same time to be successful. I personally believe that all these things should be worked on together, not discretely.
For beginning students, I first work on fundamentals - how to hold the instrument, how to produce a sound, how to put the instrument together and how to take it apart, etc. Then, I follow a coaching model. I am their musical coach. Since they should be spending a lot more time playing their instruments without me (practice), I get them started on being able to listen to themselves between the lessons.
Most fundamental music books have a selection of familiar children's tunes - Mary Had A Little Lamb, Long, Long Ago, This Old Man, etc. I have the students spend time working on fundamentals, but I also have them do at least 1 song that is familiar to them between each lesson. Each student selects at least one song that they know, so they can practice it and figure out how to play it, correcting themselves as their teacher between the lessons. I started doing this early on when I discovered that students could get something wrong initially and then make the mistake a habit through practice. This does not happen on a song that the student knows.
From the start, I also encourage the students to listen to a lot of music and to play music that they like, perhaps from a favorite video game or something they have made up.
As students progress, I have them extend their range on their instrument by consciously listening to notes in their head. For example, the D and G above the first octave key with the are pretty tough to handle on saxophone for most beginners. I have them teach their bodies to play it like this: I ask them to play the lower note, pause while they hear the upper note in their head, then play it. This approach has been very successful with my students. It's also a way of helping them develop, since most musicians do this, although they may not be self-conscious about it. This approach is valuable with saxophone and clarinet because it also helps the students develop a sense of intonation. While a bad instrument can cause poor intonation, good intonation is the result of a partnership between the player and the instrument, since the player, if trained, can subconsciously influence intonation through the larynx.
Also, as they progress, I encourage them to find music that they like in books and play it. The Disney, Star Trek and Star Wars books are popular, along with ethnic or holiday-based music, such as Christmas. Once again, this develops hearing and intonation, since the students know what they are striving for before they do it and can self-correct.
One example of accomplished "in-your-head" hearing is sight reading. To be a successful sight reader, you need to look at the ink on the page, decide in your brain how it ought to sound, then execute it, all the while listening to yourself to make sure that you are doing it correctly. If you don't have the ability to pre-hear the music you are seeing, then it's a guess.
Further on, I make the point that musicality develops as players can begin to recognize phrases and patterns of notes. This is achieved through study of scales and chords. Every one of my students does some as part of the lesson. I incorporate ear training into this. I make sure that the student has at least one scale that they know REALLY well. Then, I have them learn another scale, without looking at the music. How? I have them play their well-known scale, or "reference" scale, then start on a new note and try to play those same relative note relationships. If they struggle, I have them go back and play the reference scale. Some struggle and this can be a longer project than giving them the notes and telling them to read them. However, once the scale is learned by ear, they then can learn it by sight. This way, the reading and the hearing develop together. They can move on to the next scale and they are better players because they are now hearing the individual note intervals in each key they have learned. This sort of approach is particularly useful in keys with either lots of flats or lots of sharps, because they can initially focus on the SOUND instead of getting hung up with all the ink on the page. I use a similar approach on arpeggios (chords).
By the time a student has developed and is in high school, I work with them to get to what I consider to be a key performance indicator - being able to play EVERY major scale, over the entire range of the instrument, starting on ANY note in the scale. I also have them learn intervals by starting on a note then going down and back, one note at a time, using a major scale and a chromatic scale. By this point, their ears are developed enough so that this is an attainable task. It's a great idea - I'm aware that a couple of the band directors in my community do a similar exercise as a warm-up during band.
I'm going to cover ear training for developed students and improvised music in a future Epinion. However, I want you to understand that ear training is an integral part of musical expression and musical performance and should be included in musical training, from the beginning.
Thanks for reading. God Bless!
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If you like mainstream and fusion jazz, check out my web site, www.jazzobsession.com. You’ll find information on my newly-released CD, The Power of Two by John Temmerman's Jazz Obsession Quartet. It is available through Amazon.com and www.cdbaby.com. I have a special discount available on sales through my web site. Come on by!
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