Everyone loves music, but not every person is born musical. Sometimes there comes a time when, in an emotional outburst, you want to sing a couple of lines from Miley Cyrus’s latest hit. However, after the performance you have to catch sympathetic glances and listen to disapproving comments. To prevent this, you need to figure out what an ear for music is and what to do if you don’t have it.
Someone has been given absolute pitch by nature, someone raised him
with time
Musical ear - quite broad concept, containing a whole list of abilities that allow you to fully perceive music and adequately evaluate its advantages and disadvantages. A well-developed ear for music is a vital ability for musicians, producers, and sound engineers. To some it is given by nature, to others they have cultivated it over time. Anyone creative person, even if you are not related to music, it won’t hurt to add this skill to your bank of skills. Recently, experts have proven that an ear for music even helps to master foreign languages.
It has been scientifically established that there is a certain area in the brain that is responsible for hearing music. This bundle is located in the auditory zone: the larger it is and the more nerve fibers it contains, the better a person’s hearing is developed. How can you determine whether you have hearing and how things are going with your neurons in that very area of the brain? To do this, you don’t have to go and have a magnetic tomography scan; it’s enough to try to accurately repeat the melody you heard, for example, from the chorus of the song Reflektor by Arcade Fire, while trying to keep the rhythm. It didn't work out the first time - don't be upset. You probably have poor hearing or vocal coordination and need to exercise more.
It seems to me that professionals will help you determine exactly whether you have hearing or not. But, in any case, there is no point in despair, because all this can be developed. The main thing is that there is a desire.
There are several varieties
musical ear:
This is the ability to accurately determine the pitch (musical note) of any sound without having to compare it to any standard. It is believed that this talent is innate and is present in 1 in 10,000, and even most greatest musicians people in the world do not have absolute pitch.
Relative (or interval)
Hearing capable of detecting and reproducing musical intervals in melodies, chords, etc. In this case, the pitch of the sound is determined by comparing it with the standard.
Inner hearing
The ability to formulate a clear mental picture (most often from musical notation or memory) individual sounds, melodic constructions.
Intonation hearing
A type of perception of music that allows you to understand its character and expression.
Fret hearing
The ability to hear, separate and identify differences in chords, harmonies and sections of melody, for example, their stability and instability.
Rhythmic hearing
The ability to motorly experience music, to feel the emotional expressiveness of musical rhythm.
Vocal masters and musicologists also distinguish harmonic, polyphonic, rhythmic, textured, timbral and architectural hearing.
Setting myself a serious task- by all means, train your ears, of course, you need to contact a specialist and find a teacher in solfeggio (there is a special discipline designed for the development of hearing and musical memory).
It is best to go to an experienced private teacher and it would be good to start mastering musical notation along with the desired instrument. You will be taught to distinguish notes and intervals, and then entire chords, keys, and how to handle all of this. I went to solfeggio when I had an interest myself. Every lesson the brain swells from new information and begins to process it painfully. The most useful thing about solfeggio for a musician is the practical exercises, when you are trained by ear to determine notes and their relationships - intervals, chords, etc.
The most basic exercise is probably just singing the scale (do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-si) in unison under the piano. I would also advise you to select melodies from your favorite tracks on the instrument by ear until you get one to one. It is doubly useful to practice with a metronome and devote special time to exercises on the sense of rhythm.
After practicing for a while, you begin to hear the structure of the compositions on a much more subtle level. You just listen to the music and really get into everything! You mark cool moves or, conversely, simple, elementary ones. In general, you perceive everything more insightfully.
7 programs and applications
If there is no time for a teacher, you can try to train your musical ear using special web services, programs and applications, which Lately a mass appeared. We have selected some of them.
To train your hearing and learning to recognize and identify intervals, chords, timbres, rhythms and other basic elements of music takes a lot of practice. For such practical exercises, it is simply necessary to have an accompanist partner who would play the very intervals and chords on the instrument for guessing. The Ear Teach service allows you to train independently, clearly tracking your progress. The program exists both in a web version and as a separate program (though so far only for Windows).
Theta Music Trainer- a resource that includes several dozen flash games for hearing development, most of which are intuitive. Some games can be played for free without any registration; to access others you will have to enter your data. To fully complete the entire course and access all site materials, you need to create a paid account (for $7.95 per month or $49 per year).
EarMaster 6 is latest version training program for Danish developers. In it you will find 2000 lessons and exercises for both beginners and experienced musicians. By connecting a microphone to your computer, you can hum tunes based on the notes displayed on the screen. The program, in turn, will evaluate your hearing, producing a detailed report on the tone hits. Cost: €47.95
Auralia 4 is a serious program that contains 41 topics covering the basics of solfeggio: intervals and scales, chords and their sequences, rhythms, harmonies and melodies. Auralia allows you to arrange melodic dictations for yourself, connect a MIDI keyboard and microphone. $99.00
Pitch Improver
A simple collection of basic exercises that ask you to play melodies by ear. Press the Play button and try to repeat what you heard on the virtual keys. The first note is marked with a letter, and the rest are highlighted in green. To pass to the next level, you need to play all the notes correctly. You can try Pitch Improver in the online version, as well as download it to your smartphone
An ear for music is not exclusively an innate ability. It can be formed already in adulthood, the only difference is that children learn easier and faster. With enough effort and patience, you can learn to hear music, the main thing is to stop imposing on yourself that you will not succeed just because you have no talent from birth.
We train rhythm and sense of tempo, start with light rhythms and slowly, then speed up:
- We read poems syllable by syllable to music.
- Let's clap to our favorite and well-known melody.
- We create a rhythmic pattern and march at the same time. The count is 1-4, on the first and third strike we stomp harder, then we change and place emphasis on the second and fourth. Practice to different music.
- Listen to melodies with complex rhythms.
- We sing the scale: do, re, mi, fa, salt, la, si, do and vice versa. Repeat at least 20 times until you fix the sound of each note in your memory.
- Chromatic scale - movement in semitones or consisting of semitones. Halftones are the closest sounds. Press all the keys in a row. To sing them clearly requires enormous concentration and attentiveness.
- Study classical music, it has the most expressive and rich melody.
Good luck and inspiration to you!
Online game"Absolute pitch"
To view this page ensure that Adobe Flash Player version 10.0.0 or greater is installed.
If you do not see the game above this inscription, then you need to download and install Adobe Flash Player
For technical reasons, we no longer create a table of records, so you DO NOT need to enter data at the end of the game...
For technical reasons we are more
We do not issue DIPLOMAS and we apologize :-(
The game asks the first 33 questions from this list. The entire list of 55 questions (from 34 to 55 chips with a stave) is presented in full version of this game included in the program.
| 1. BEFORE 2. RE 3. MI 4. SI 5. LA 6. RE 7. MI 8. FA 9. LA 10. SI 11. SALT 12. MI 13. TO 1st octave 14. RE 1st octave 15. MI 2nd octave 16. FA small octave 17. 1st octave G 18. A 1st octave 19. SI small octave 20. TO small octave 21. RE small octave 22. MI large octave 23. FA 1st octave 24. SALT of small octave 25. A large octave 26. SI large octave 27. TO 2nd octave 28. RE 1st octave 29. MI 1st octave 30. FA 2nd octave 31. GR of the major octave 32. A small octave 33. SI 2nd octave |
34. TO 1st octave + staff 35. GR small octave + stave 36. A major octave + staff 37. FA major octave + staff 38. RE major octave + staff 39. MI 1st octave + staff 40. TO 1st octave + staff 41. 1st octave G + stave 42. SI 1st octave + staff 43. RE 2nd octave + staff 44. MI 2nd octave + staff 45. FA 2nd octave + staff 46. G of the 2nd octave + staff 47. SI 2nd octave + staff 48. TO 3rd octave + staff 49. TO 1st octave + staff 50. A small octave + staff 51. FA small octave + staff 52. RE small octave + staff 53. GR major octave + stave 54. MI large octave + staff 55. TO major octave + stave |
Alexey Ustinov, 2011-12-30
Game updated 2013-11-30
Teacher's comment
Absolute ear for music - the ability to determine the pitch of a tone, regardless of other tones, i.e. without comparing sounds with each other and, as a result, assigning a note name to this sound. The nature of this phenomenon has not been sufficiently studied in musicological circles and, apparently, is therefore represented by different points of view. But it is even less familiar to practicing teachers. At the same time, the skill of “absolute musical ear” constantly remains the focus of both interest and controversy among almost all musicians. It is generally accepted that all string players (violinists, cellists) have such hearing, but this is not so! On the contrary, it seems that the pianist does not need it at all - however, those who master this skill say that it helps a lot, for example, when reading scores... Another often discussed question is whether it can be developed, or is it something... Is it innate?...
What to do with a child who easily picks out any melody and does not want to look at the sheet music at all? How to develop hearing for a student who knows musical notation well but can play false notes, memorizes them and the teacher cannot help him in any way?
One day, my second grade student asked me to play him Gennady Sasko’s play “Blues,” which was quite complex in rhythm, with a passage at the end. I played it three times... and at the next lesson he played the Blues without notes and at the same tempo as the piece was played. The case of this boy was for me an example of my incompetence in working with a gifted student with absolute pitch... I have not encountered many children with absolute pitch in my teaching practice. And most often such children did not finish music school. From the very beginning, they could remember and play the pieces by hand, “by ear,” but reading a complex text caused resistance in them and, as a result, they lost interest in learning.
In other words, the skill of “absolute pitch” is not something separate in the learning process, clearly positive or negative. Both its presence and absence require additional attention from the teacher and a special approach to the student. Still, this skill is extremely desirable!
To help my students, and to avoid repeating the mistakes of my youth, I am now using S.M. Maltsev’s method. - the author of a comprehensive methodology for teaching piano playing, as well as solfegging, synchronized with piano playing. This method helps me identify children with well-developed hearing already in the first year of education and constantly work with them by reading notes from a sheet.
For most students and those who want to master musical wisdom, it is easy to learn and play their favorite melodies on the piano or guitar, they still need to develop their hearing. And the game "Perfect Pitch" is an excellent tool for this. It is suitable for all ages.
Small children, who cannot even read, will guess the right answer from the pictures. (You just need to help them - first play the game NOTES - PICTURES so that the child gets acquainted with the notes hidden in in simple words: HOUSE, TURNIP. There, he will become acquainted with the sound of notes.).
Older children and adults, while playing, will discover that they HAVE absolute pitch and that this skill is developing - verified!
Of course, someone might say that there are no halftones in the game (more precisely, a full chromatic scale). Yes, the game only includes white piano keys, i.e. in fact, we are in a major (C) or minor (LA) mode... Someone may note that the degrees of the mode and intervals play a role here... Absolutely right! But, start with simple tasks, achieve confident recognition of these notes, and you will take a big step in improving your musical ear. Believe me, you will get great pleasure from discovering that you can identify the name of a note by ear!
Krivopalova L.N.
Piano teacher, Palace of Children and Youth Creativity, Tomsk
01.05.2011
The Virartek team expresses its gratitude to Lyubov Nikolaevna Krivopalova, who took an active part in the creation of this game and in its testing. THANK YOU! Good luck to you and your students!
It's safe to say that good hearing is the only ability that allows you to become a musician.
Without this nothing can happen.
Of course it is possible to teach how to play musical instrument a person without an ear for music, but his playing will most likely resemble the actions of a robot executing a laid-down program and unable to deviate from it.
When they talk about musicality, they always mean a well-developed ear for music, even if this idea is not voiced.
I think there are many questions related to musical ear, but the most important ones are the following:
- What do you mean by good ear for music?
- What criteria exist to determine it?
- How to develop an ear for music?
Let's start by defining how musical hearing differs from ordinary hearing.
Ear for music- a set of abilities necessary for composing, performing and actively perceiving music. An ear for music, first of all, relies on knowledge and an acquired system of symbols. For example, everyone can sing the melody of the song “A Christmas Tree Was Born in the Forest,” but not everyone can name the intervals and notes that make up it.
On the other hand, if your head has a stable connection between the first intonation of this song and the fact that this is an interval of a major sixth, then when you hear this in any piece of music. You know that this is a major sixth interval and you can play it on the instrument.
The work of hearing in this case is to memorize certain musical structures and endow them with meaning.
As you can see, hearing development is the application of certain knowledge in practice combined with the development of auditory memory.
A lack of understanding of how to relate hearing experience to hearing development can lead people to believe that they are deaf.
However, there are practically no people without hearing. Most of the problems are associated with poor quality teaching of the basics in music schools and other educational institutions.
There are many categories of musical hearing. The most important are:
Absolute pitch- the ability to determine the absolute height of musical sounds without comparing them with a standard. This means that when you hear any note, you can name it.
It is divided into passive (small percentage of note detection, limited application) and active.
Relative hearing- the most important for any musician - defined as the ability to determine and reproduce pitch relationships in melody, chords, intervals, etc.;
Inner hearing- the ability to have a clear mental representation (for example, from musical notation or from memory) of individual sounds, melodic and harmonious structures, and entire pieces of music; very important when learning.
Harmonic hearing- the ability to hear harmonic consonances - chord combinations of sounds and their sequences and reproduce them with the voice in unfolded form or on a musical instrument. In practice, this can be expressed, for example, in selecting an accompaniment to a melody by ear, even without knowing the notes, or singing in a polyphonic choir.
Polyphonic hearing– the ability to listen to all voices in a multi-voice work.
Polyrhythmic hearing– the ability to hear rhythmic figures sounding different sizes and the ability to reproduce these rhythms.
There are several main ways to develop hearing:
Solfage
Solfaging (that is, practice) involves singing intervals, chords, scales, modes, and melodies. This practice strengthens the connection between hearing and the written note, and solfège also forms a specific auditory system.
For example, by singing a major scale, you learn its structure and sound, and gradually it becomes natural and familiar to you, and you will perceive any deviation as an inconvenience. Thus, on the one hand, your hearing is developing, on the other hand, until you master anything else, it will be inaccessible to your perception. This problem can arise, for example, when listening to atonal music.
2. Musical dictation
The process is somewhat opposite to solfege. Here you, relying on the knowledge you have already acquired, write down the melody played by the teacher on notes. For this, various techniques are used (finding stable tonality levels in the melody, recognizing intervals, determining cadences, etc.).
Also musical dictation promotes the development of musical memory.
3. Transcribing (from the English transcribing rewriting) or taking- selection by ear or instrument and recording on 
notes of any work.
This can be either taking your instrument or other instruments, or even writing an entire score.
There are various techniques used by transcribers to speed up the transfer process. sounding music on paper (slow recording, tables, analysis, etc.).
4. Auditory analysis– identification by ear of intervals, chords, chord sequences, rhythmic figures, etc.
You can also use various specialized programs (for example, Ear Trainer) to develop your hearing.
Thus, the criterion for good hearing is the ability to hear and reproduce various elementary structural elements, the ability to write down a heard melody with notes, the ability to anticipate a certain sound, the ability to hear music with the eyes, etc.
A trained person is necessary for everyone who plays music.
What you hear is what you play and if you have trouble recognizing different types chords, rhythm or melodies, this greatly limits your options.
One day after class with my students, I decided to have a cup of coffee. On the way to the coffee shop, I heard the cry of a bird flying past. Nothing strange, you say. But there is one little thing: I recognized in this sound an interval of a major third. And now, I already have an idea for the next article!
I have been teaching guitar for a long time and I can say that most modern guitarists are very good and too good. A great way to see if you can play by ear is to have a friend play an easy phrase twice and then try to play it yourself.
If you manage to play the phrase without errors the first time, you are on on the right track. If you had to search for the right notes for a long time, it’s time to start ear training. Like playing technique, the ability to recognize and understand musical sounds requires constant practice and effort. Many of my students and comrades have no idea how to train their ears, so I have developed several ways to do this.
How to train your ear
A good idea is to go to your nearest music school and find out if they offer courses in solfeggio and ear development. I myself had no idea about the importance of hearing until I started taking ear training classes at music college. Among other things, they teach you how to recognize. You will also learn how to write down melodies on paper and recognize rhythms.
What if you can already select melodies and you don’t need to be an expert in rhythms and musical notation? Great! Now try explaining your musical idea to the band's keyboard player! Remember: professionalism is not a matter of minutes! Your colleagues will certainly appreciate your attention to detail. Ultimately, the majority music courses are based on the same thing. Try playing and singing the major scale, trying to hit the notes.
To start, choose the key that is easiest for you to sing in. Then you can play and sing the notes of the scale with gaps. For example, in the key of G major, you play and sing the note G, skip the note A and sing the note B. Practice until you feel it comes easy to you. Then try singing that note without the guitar. Achieve maximum accuracy.
Sing the degrees of the scale as follows. The first step is tonic, then the second step, etc. In addition, you can also practice singing, as well as other modes and