In general I call my type of ear training Contextual. Let’s first look at some things to keep the following in mind:

1. Ear training can be improved through listening and singing. Listening is obviously crucial. I’ve found that my students improve much more quickly if they also work on singing exercises. Singing exercises are also indispensable for musicians that want to improve their improvisational and compositional skills.

2. This ear training utilizes two kinds of memory: short-term and permanent. The idea is to first get these sounds into your short term memory and after a while it will go into your permanent memory.

3. We learn things in one context at a time so if you are working with one ear training exercise you will tend to learn ear training only in that context. Let’s take the “One Note” exercise found in the book ‘”Ear Training One Note Complete.” You hear a cadence played by a piano and then a random pitch is played. You guess what that pitch sounds like in the key center. It’s an excellent exercise BUT you will tend to only be able to recognize pitches when played in the same context. i.e. a piano sound, a specific cadence, and a single note heard with that piano sound. Of course over time as you apply this skill to other musical situations you will improve at applying this training into other situations but in most cases it doesn’t just happen automatically. Therefore changing up the type of exercise you are doing will allow your ear training skills to develop in a variety of of ways which will help you apply your aural skills to more situations. This is the reason for all the new books and audio files that have been recently released, which I’ll get to in a moment.

4. Since the only way ear training will be useful in a real musical situation is for you to have instant access to it, you have to develop speed. Therefore you just want to listen and guess the first thing that comes into your head. You should not “think” about the correct answer, just react. Eventually you will find your accuracy is improving. Remember you want to use this ear training in “real time.” That means you can’t be devising schemes in your head or counting intervals to get the correct answer. There’s no time for that when you are on the bandstand or playing with other musicians; you just have to know. It needs to be as engrained as color recognition; after all, when you see the color red you don’t have to think 5 seconds about what color you are looking at, you just know. It should be the same for music.

If all of this is completely new to you then you should start by reading the FAQs at:

Ear Training One Note Complete FAQ
Fanatic’s Guide to Sight Reading and Ear Training FAQ

As far as a course of study goes, I usually start students off with the following two books: (I’ve given digital download links in the body of this blog. You will find the physical copy links at the bottom of the post.)

Ear Training One Note Complete Book contains 3 levels. The exercises are the same except for the speed at which you hear each of them. Most students should start with the intermediate level and move on to the advanced level when you are getting 80% correct answers. Beginning level is meant only for students that find the intermediate level to fast, although I find that the majority of students are comfortable starting at the intermediate level. Listen to the exercises at least 5X a day for 10 minutes; the more the better.

Contextual Ear Training Book contains 300 exercises which have you sing notes after hearing a cadence in a major or minor key. This is the first exercise called “one note” from the Fanatic’s Guide book. The Contextual ear training files allow you to do this exercise anywhere as opposed to the Fanatic’s Guide book which requires you to have your instrument near you in order to check your answers.

For the Contextual Ear Training singing exercise make a play list and load all MP3s into an ipod. Make another playlist and only load the root, i.e. the 1st degree of every major and minor key. For example

CMajor1.mp3
CMinor1.mp3
FMajor1.mp3

etc….

When you get 80% correct with the “1″ degree, add in notes in the following order

1,3,5,7,2,4,6,b2,b6,b3,b5,b7

Please note that you should put in the Major 3rd for the Major Keys and the Minor 3rd for the Minor Keys when you work with the “3rd.”

Listen to the exercises at least 5X a day for 10 minutes; the more the better.

Once you are getting around 50% correct answers with the “Ear Training One Note Complete” method it’s time to diversify your listening repertoire. This will help you as you will be hearing the ear training in another context. I would first get the “Direct Application Ear Training Volume One.” This will give you the same “one note” ear training exercise but with real music as the background, not a simple cadence. It will also give you crucial information about how key centers are formed and help you bridge the gap between exercise and real music. I would also start working with the “Instrumental Color Series” which is exactly the same as the “Ear Training One Note Complete” exercises except now the note to identify is played by another instrument, giving you different timbres to work with. With the addition of these other exercises I would break up your listening each day. If you are doing 5X a day for 5 minutes, try to use a different exercise for each of the 5 minute intervals. Along with widening your “context” it is way more engaging –I might even say it’s fun! Also keep in mind that the “Direct Application Ear Training” can be used with your instrument and the tracks are in all 12 keys. You can improvise along with the tracks as you are doing ear training. This adds more time with ear training each day and again now expands the “context” to you playing your instrument and doing ear training at the same time. That step is as important as it gets. There is also an additional companion CD available for the “Direct Application Book.” “Direct Application CD Volume One Major” will give you a further 10 tracks to work with in all styles from bluegrass to orchestral pieces, again expanding your “context.” You could also expand into the “2 Note Melodic Ear Training” at this point if you are also getting over 50% correct with all notes with the Contextual Ear Training exercise. I’d stick to the Beginning Level of the 2 note series so that you still have a firm key center given and the melodic notes are not playing too fast.

Once you are getting around 80% with the “Contextual Ear Training” you can move on to the second singing book Fanatic’s Guide to Sight Singing and Ear Training You could also add in “Secondary Dominants.” This book shows you how to hear chord progressions in one key center which is key to understanding how you should think and hear music when you are playing. I can’t over emphasis the importance of this book. It’s also a great way to apply the the melodic minor ascending scales so commonly used in contemporary improvisation.

Once you get 80% on the Ear Training One Note Complete Advanced audio files you can move on to Key Note Recognition. It’s really the same type of exercise but most students really have a tough time because it’s in another context, and so they feel off balance at first. Although similar to Ear Training One Note Complete it can take some time to get on track. Keep in mind that you will be applying this ear training technique in a variety of situations. Key Note Recognition should be added into the mix of all the other ear training exercises we have just discussed.

Are you still with me? Good. Take a deep breath and here goes more.

Once you have sung through the “Blues” exercise and completed at least 1/3 of the singing exercises in the Fanatic’s Guide bookyou can move on to Key Retention Builder. This book works on improving your ability to keep a key center in your short term memory. Once this is implemented you will find that the 2 note ear training books will be easier, along with your ability to understand the application of ear training to music in general.

Once you have completed Key Note Recognition you can move on to:

1. Ear Training Two Note Complete which will help you to learn how to modulate and hear two notes at the same time.

2. 2 or more note “Melodic Ear Training.”

3. You could also start the Ear Training Three Note Direct Application CD in MP3 format with Arpeggiation at this time. Which again just gives you another way to start applying your ear training skills to real music.

4. Lines Volume One: Sight Reading and Sight Singing Exercises could also be used at this point to working on singing harmony via 2, 3 and 4 part singing.

Once you are getting around 80% correct on the Ear Training Two Note Complete you can move on to the Ear Training Two Note Advanced Volumes of which there are 5 volumes.

If you’ve gotten this far, you get a gold star and it’s time to contact me because I would like to have you start singing through jazz standards to learn how you hear these songs. In general you could start singing any easy one chord music as soon as you get Ear Training One Note Complete Advanced CD at 80% but to sing through music that might modulate you would want to wait till you have completed the Ear Training Two Note series.

After the Ear Training Two Note series you can move onto the:

1. Ear Training Three Note Volumes of which there are 5 volumes.

2. Ear Training Four Note Volumes of which there are 5 volumes.

That would complete the series. You could do more than four note ear training, but I just don’t have files currently available for those combinations. But knowing myself, I’d say I’ll generate them at some point just to torture you.

If you want at this point you could move into “Perfect Pitch Ear Training.” In a way you could have started with Perfect Pitch it’s just that I find Contextual Ear Training to be a far more important skill that Perfect Pitch. That said Perfect Pitch is a completely different way of hearing and identifying pitches. Actually an easier course of study. Most students can develop perfect pitch on one instrument in about 2 years if they work at it about 1 hour a day. There are exceptions but in most cases this is true. Contextual Ear Training is a tougher hill to climb but has great rewards at the top.

I should also mention that if you are someone with limited knowledge of Music Theory you might want to work with these books to improve your understanding. Remember, if you improve your aural skills to the point that you hear a “G” for instance and it sounds like the #4 then you need to know that the “G” is the #4 of C#. If you don’t know this instantly then I would recommend the books below:

For guitarists I would use:

1. Music Theory Workbook for Guitar:Volume One

2. Music Theory Workbook for Guitar:Volume Two

3. Music Theory Interval Recognition

For other instrumentalists I would use:

1. Music Theory Workbook for All Instruments: Volume One

2. Music Theory Interval Recognition

Here are the physical book links. Keep in mind if a reference is not found below it is only available as a digital download.

Ear Training: One Note-Complete

Contextual Ear Training

A Fanatic’s Guide to Ear Training and Sight Singing

Key Note Recognition

Ear Training Two Note-Complete

Key Retention Builder

Lines Volume One: Sight Reading and Sight Singing Exercises

I frequently get parents contacting me about teaching ear training to their children. The only way I have found this to work is for the parent to do the ear training with the child. Keep in mind that most likely your child will outpace you, so try to keep your spirits up. This ear training method is entirely about using your short term memory to learn, and there are several reasons why children usually take to it more easily.

A child learns faster because they are not burdened with all the baggage that older people have when learning something new. That is, young children usually don’t have layers of referential information built into their learning process and that condition helps them absorb memory based things more quickly. A child also uses his or her short term memory better mainly because it’s one of the first learning tools they develop. They are information sponges from the get-go.

One of the main problems adults have in learning ear training is understanding that they should not be relating the sound they are hearing consciously to anything else. I know that seems to go against what I’ve written before in FAQs for these books but there is a subtle difference. Usually I would say that when you guess a note or sing a note you are relating it to the “key center” via the chord progression cadence you hear before answering. This is still true but don’t obsess on the key center; the key center is there as a matter of course, because you’ve learned it just the way you learn how to identify color. You see color all the time but most of the time you don’t think about it. If you left the room you’re in right now and were quizzed about the various colors of objects in the room you most likely would be able to answer correctly. It’s the same with ear training so you need to trust that after hearing the cadence you are in a key center and not concentrate on holding the “root” of the key center in your mind or trying to hear each note within the cadence. Remember if you were unable to hear key centers music would sound like random noise so everyone can hear a key center though often their key center retention is weak.

Adults (as opposed to kids) tend to get upset when they don’t get the correct answer for an exercise. This comes from years of being taught that the right answer is “good” and the wrong answer is “bad.” A child usually hasn’t had decades of this type of programming so they just answer right away because they are not scared about getting it wrong and they don’t get as upset when they miss an answer. (Assuming a patient and loving parent.) On the other hand an older person can get quite upset if they listen to 20 ear training examples and get none of them right. This can set off self defeating thoughts like “I suck,” “I’ll never be a great musician.” Then, as a protection mechanism, the brain releases chemical reactions to protect our minds as we get more and more upset. These protective chemical reactions help us forget these situations, which is exactly what you don’t want to happen because this ear training is again all about building up a short term memory of what a pitch sounds like, until through repetition these sounds go into your permanent memory. So it’s truly important to keep a positive frame of mind when doing the ear training. If you get upset, just stop and wait until you are in a better, happier state of mind.

Kids love games and they also love doing things with their parents –especially if they do better than their parents! So make the ear training a daily situation where you bond with your child and also teach them a valuable skill and as an added bonus your musicianship is also improved. Below is an email I received from a parent about her experience with her child and some of the added benefits she received from the ear training.

Dear Mr. Arnold, it has been several months since I updated you with the progress made by my 7 year old son and me. We started One Note Intermediate and Contextual Ear Training in late January 2010. We can both name all seven diatonic notes with accuracy and speed, and the non-diatonics are starting to stick. We can both sing 1, 2,3,4,5, and 7 and some 6’s. We are currently working on 6.

Just last week, I was admitted into our church liturgical choir. Admittance is based on passage of quite a few skill tests, including sight reading 4 unfamiliar hymns, perfectly. Before I started your program, sight reading seemed an impossibility. During the sight reading test, I was singing a hymn in an unfamiliar key signature (I need more theory work) and I sang a 4 when I should have sung a 5 (having guessed at the key degree, but not the pitch). But, the very next note was a lower 6, and I jumped down to it solidly and continued on from there. The proctor commented how solid I was getting back on melody on the six. She said that in her experience once a person gets off, they have real trouble getting back on the melody. Of course you know why…jumping around based on interval distances has its drawbacks, but I knew what a 6 sounded like, so I was able to jump right to it, no matter what the distance!

By the way, the proctor and everyone else knows all about you and your programs. When I entered the prep choir three years ago, I had trouble even discriminating between a higher and lower pitch. The Choir Director heard me sing recently and his comment was “Your pitch matching has really improved!” I said, “thanks to Bruce Arnold!”

Below are links to the books I would start with for a child. I’ve given both digital downloads and physical book links. Remember the digital links give you a PDF and MP3s; the physical book links give you a physical book and CDs.

Digital Downloads with PDF and MP3s

EarTraining One Note Intermediate Book and MP3s
Contextual Ear Training bundle Book and 4 CDs of MP3s

Physical Book with CD(s)

Ear Training: One Note-Intermediate Level

Contextual Ear Training Memorizing Sound Through Singing

This has been quite a challenge for both of us. The harmonica has many idiosyncrasies and the slide guitar has no frets so intonation is of great concern as is the adjustment to the limits of playing with a steel bar. I’ve created practice regimens to deal with these new challenges but the purpose of this post is to just let you see my new guitar, experience some of the music and a small glimpse into some of the theory behind the composition.

The composition is called Windies (which is a midwest slang for “tall tales.)

Here is a rough mix of the tune:
Windies

Windies is a simple composition with a bass line outlining a C-7 sound and a bridge of simple flat 6, to flat 7 to “one” chord and finally a iv minor at end. The bass line is of particular interest because it is made up of two 025′s:

Bb, C, Eb
G, F, D

For those of you not familiar with integer notation an 025 is just a three note group of notes where there is a whole step and a fourth. You can see that the bass line is composed of these two groups found above. I’ve been studying these three note groups for almost 20 years now. I’ve spent a lot of time on:

013
014
015
016
025
026
027

I’m now turned my attention to 025. I usually spend at least a year on each group, sometimes much more time as in the case of 013 where I’ve been writing compositions with this group for over 10 years.

Hope you enjoy the composition. It has been quite a challenge to learn the slide and to play and solo on it in a duo situation. We are hoping to have our CD done by the end of the month so look out for more information soon.

MY MUSIC: Explorations in the Application of 12 Tone Techniques to Jazz Composition and Improvisation

This tune uses 015 (half step and a 4th) as it’s basic building block. I play this composition both as a solo guitar piece and with a trio. If you take an 015 and move up in minor 3rds you get all 12 notes:

E, B, D#
G, D, F#
Bb, F, A
C#, G#, C

Notice the naming of the chords in this piece. I really tried to let the musicians know exactly what was going on via the chord symbols. This can get very tricky to anticipate what works best but usually a chord symbol is preferred by jazz musicians. The chord symbol gives them a basic idea of the sound you are playing.

The MP3 below is from the solo version of Variation 1. The rhythms are simplified but notes are the same. Hear Trio version in the My Music Book

Variation 1

“Dear Mr. Arnold, it has been several months since I updated you with the progress made by my 7 year old son and me. We started One Note Intermediate and Contextual Ear Training in late January 2010. We can both name all seven diatonic notes with accuracy and speed, and the non-diatonics are starting to stick. We can both sing 1, 2,3,4,5, and 7 and some 6’s. We are currently working on 6.

Just last week, I was admitted into our church liturgical choir. Admittance is based on passage of quite a few skill tests, including sight reading 4 unfamiliar hymns, perfectly. Before I started your program, sight reading seemed an impossibility. During the sight reading test, I was singing a hymn in an unfamiliar key signature (I need more theory work) and I sang a 4 when I should have sang a 5 (having guessed at the key degree, but not the pitch). But, the very next note was a lower 6, and I jumped down to it solidly and continued on from there. The proctor commented how solid I was getting back on melody on the six. She said that in her experience once a person gets off, they have real trouble getting back on the melody. Of course you know why…jumping around based on interval distances has its drawbacks, but I knew what a 6 sounded like, so I was able to jump right to it, no matter what the distance!

By the way, the proctor and everyone else knows all about you and your programs. When I entered the prep choir three years ago, I had trouble even discriminating between a higher and lower pitch. The Choir Director heard me sing recently and his comment was “Your pitch matching has really improved!” I said, “thanks to Bruce Arnold!”

Thank you,
Julie Lolos

You will notice the melody is moving rhythmically in groups of three eighth notes. This allows the melody to be accompanied in two rhythmic levels fairly easily. Below is how the regular time translates into the three eighth note level.

It’s a little tricky moving between the two levels because the three eighth notes cycle doesn’t start in the first measure; it starts in the second measure, so you’ll notice that the three eighth notes page starts on the second measure of the piece. To make this work at the three eighth note level you have to read the 1st measure of the regular time as three beats then jump to the three eighths page and continue from there. If you want to give this a try you can use the metronome file below which first plays the regular time page giving you one click per beat and then plays the piece in three eighth notes of time as seen on the 2nd page. Also when coming back from the three eighth note level chart you have to jump to the 2nd measure of the regular time chart.
5-4_3_Eighths_Odd_Steps
There is a bunch of other stuff going on in this chart. A quick summary would be I’m using “027″ chords for the melody. “027″ would be a whole step and a fifth. In order to keep this sound consistent you’ll notice some rather unorthodox chord symbols. I also solo with “027″ which will be a subject for another post.

Courses give an in depth look into the fields of music theory, time and improvisation and are geared towards the intermediate to advanced guitarist. Ensembles concentrate on sight reading, improvisation, solo guitar playing and other subjects important to a guitarist’s development. We also offer a wide range of master classes and performances that are scheduled weekly throughout the workshop. The courses and ensemble program are cutting edge and focus on developing a solid foundation in music theory, ensemble performance and sight-reading.

Located in the heart of Greenwich Village, students have access to the world’s greatest music scene and are surrounded by legendary jazz clubs including the Blue Note, the Village Vanguard, the Jazz Standard, the Knitting Factory and Birdland. You will have over 25 music clubs within 5 blocks of your dorm room. Dorm rooms are right across the street from the beautiful and historic Washington Square Park.

You will find more specific information on courses, private instruction, ensembles, required books, daily events, application and audition information, meals and housing, fees and age requirements along with the bios of the participating faculty here.

Unlike most summer guitar programs you will be presented with a highly organized approach to music. Much of the infomation presented is not available in any other college program or course. All courses are college level but are presented so that most high school age students will have no problem with comprehension. All courses and ensembles has required books. These books need to be purchased prior to your arrival at NYU. You are also expected to work on these books prior to your arrival at the Intensive. Mr. Arnold will gladly work out a practice schedule with the books to prepare you for the Intensive. In some cases especially with late registers you should have the books sent directly to NYU so that you are prepared for first day of course work. Mr. Arnold will use his “New York Guitar Method” to focus on developing a solid foundation in music theory, ensemble performance and sight-reading. Other books will cover set theory and ear training.

Located in the heart of Greenwich Village, students have access to the world’s greatest music scene and are surrounded by legendary jazz clubs including the Blue Note, the Village Vanguard, the Jazz Standard, the Knitting Factory and Birdland. You will have over 25 music clubs within 5 blocks of your dorm room. Each year we have students perform at various jazz clubs.

Contact Mr. Arnold for further information on anything presented here or if you have general questions.