Upgrade Your Listening Skills with Functional Ear Training

You need to develop many essential skills to move forward as a musician.

Skills like:

• good technique on your instrument
• a great rhythmic feel
• knowledge of stylistic interpretation
• improvising
• reading music, chord charts, tab
• the know-how to arrange music
• an understanding of (basic) recording technology
• "working" your equipment (synth, fx, pedals)
• promoting your music
• people skills (band members, managers, at venues)

But your most prized possession as a musician is:

Your ears!

However, there's more to hearing than registering sound waves via your eardrums.

You need the ability to analyze and interpret the incoming sound. That's what ear training is for. It helps you develop the skill of understanding what your ears are hearing.

Functional Ear Training

One of the best ear training methods I've come across is functional ear training. Instead of learning to recognize the sound of individual intervals, with functional ear training you focus on learning the specific sound of a note in the context of tonality.

What do I mean by specific sound?

Let's listen to a C note followed by a C chord. Notice how stable and resting the C note sounds. The identical C note is then played together with a B chord.

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How come the same C note sounds so different?

Simply put, the C note functions differently in the key of B major than in the key of C major. With the different function goes a different sound quality as well. You just need to become aware of that sound quality and learn to recognize it.

12 Chromatic Pitches - 7 Diatonic Notes

Since there are only 12 different pitches in our western musical system there also are only 12 different pitch qualities to learn. The sound of the major 3rd quality stays the same - regardless of what key you are in. The same goes for the perfect 5th, the minor 7th, etc...

And you don't need to start with all 12 functions immediately. Learn the 7 diatonic notes of the major/minor scale system first, before adding the remaining 5 chromatic pitches.

Here's a short description of what the 7 diatonic notes of the major scale sound like:

In all honesty, due to my heavy teaching schedule and my involvement in other projects I've somewhat neglected my ear training. Therefore I decided to re-tune my ears during my practice challenge for November 09.

I've been a good boy and spent 10 minutes with the Functional Ear Trainer (download the free software) every day.

Here are my results and observing thoughts after the first week:

Day 1

I've deactivated the random key function, so I'm only getting the same I-IV-V-I cadence and the notes from the C major scale. Staying in the same key definitely makes life a bit easier, at first.

Also, I reduced the tempo down to 100 bpm.

If you are completely new to ear training select the "One octave" function to have the software stay in a closer range and don't feel like you have to start with all 7 diatonic notes. Nothing wrong with really drilling in the functional sound of 2 or 3 notes.

Day 2

Unchanged settings just to double-check if my 100% score from day 1 was no fluke.

Day 3

I've increased the tempo to 120 bpm and changed the initial cadence to a ii-V-I progression.

Day 4

No cadence now giving me all the notes from the key - I've changed the setting to a plain I chord. This dramatically reduced the "forced" time of listening to a complete cadence and pushed the number of questions and answers in the 10 minute time frame up to 268.

Day 5

5 mistakes

I underestimated the effect of just getting the root note played instead of a full chord. 4 of the 5 mistakes happened in succession when I somehow lost the sense of tonality and heard Fa as So and vice versa.

Day 6

Faster with less mistakes at the same settings as on day 6. That's how I like it.

Day 7

Slowed down a little and used the "Play again" button any time I wasn't sure. I really wanted to shoot for the 100% and am glad that I made it.

Tune Your Ears

After only 1 week I'm already much more confident and notice positive results in my listening awareness.

I highly recommend you get started with your own ear tune-up. Download the Functional Ear Trainer software and share your progress in the comments.

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Related posts:

1. Learn to Hear all 12 Chromatic Notes
2. Challenge of the Month — November 2009
3. Learn to Play Chord Melody — The Major Family
4. Challenge of the Month — December 2009
5. The Omstrument — Heaven or Hell?

Tagged with: cadence • diatonic • Ear training • intervals • Ludwig van Beethoven • Major scale • Pitch • solfege • tonality

Filed under: Challenge of the Month • Eartraining

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