A tip for those trying to play by ear...

[mcmurray]

Try this.

 

Play a I, IV, V cadence in a key of your choice, then play the tonic (first scale degree) of that key. For example - key of C: play C major chord, F major chord, G major chord then play the note C.

 

Pick another key and do the same. For example - key of F: play F major chord, Bb major chord, C major chord, followed by the note F.

 

Notice how the tonic always sounds the same in context no matter which key you're playing in?

 

Now play the cadence again followed by the third scale degree of that key. Choose another key and repeat.

 

Notice how the third scale degree always sounds the same in context no matter which key you're playing in?

 

This is the basis for functional pitch recognition, listening for scale degrees once a key has been established in your ear. Every scale degree sounds distinct and they're very easy to discern after a short while.

 

It's that simple folks, no knowledge of intervals required.

[mcmurray]

Tough crowd

Anyone having any luck with this? Can you hear what I'm talking about? :poke:

[GreenAsJade]

I really liked reading about this, I could kind of "hear it in my head what you were talking about".

 

However, I tried it out, and I'm not sure I'm 'there' yet. I'll play around some more. Thanks for the illustration, anyhow, nice concise way of explaining what fuinctional pitch recognition means, I wasn't clear before.

 

GaJ

[FXR]

I'm interested in this and will give it a try. Thanks for the tip.

[mcmurray]

I really liked reading about this, I could kind of "hear it in my head what you were talking about". However, I tried it out, and I'm not sure I'm 'there' yet. I'll play around some more. Thanks for the illustration, anyhow, nice concise way of explaining what fuinctional pitch recognition means, I wasn't clear before. GaJ

Yeah, it works best once the key is established in your ear, this is precisely what the Cadence does. If necessary, play the cadence a few times before playing the single note.

Edward Lowinsky described the cadence as "the cradle of tonality", and with good reason!

[The Extremist]

I really liked reading about this, I could kind of "hear it in my head what you were talking about". However, I tried it out, and I'm not sure I'm 'there' yet. I'll play around some more. Thanks for the illustration, anyhow, nice concise way of explaining what fuinctional pitch recognition means, I wasn't clear before. GaJ

 

 

its kinda like saying how a major chord sounds like a major chord no matter what key you play it in. the distances between the notes are the same. he just using an example where an interval (the tonic) is compared to a chord progression, and how when the progression is played in a different key, the tonic still sounds like the tonic of it's respective key.

 

i think the point is to establish tonal center and navigate by intervals.

 

you're probably sitting there like "o thats it i knew that". ya it's pretty obvious.

 

i'm guessing the point of the thread is that a lot of people get overwhelmed with the whole "7 modes of 4 different parent scales in all 12 keys" thing, without thinking it through and realizing how once you can visualize the whole fretboard layout of a scale as a shape (not as fret numbers), where each interval lies, and which notes make up which chords/arpeggios, you don't have to re-learn all that to play it in a different key. and its the same with hearing it - if you can identify a minor third against an A note, you can do it against an F# note.

 

 

i don't get this line though:

 

 

It's that simple folks, no knowledge of intervals required.

 

 

it seems to contradict everything he just said, like this:

 

 

listening for scale degrees once a key has been established in your ear. Every scale degree sounds distinct and they're very easy to discern after a short while.

 

 

isn't this exactly the study of intervals that your'e promoting?

[mcmurray]

isn't this exactly the study of intervals that your'e promoting?

 

 

No. Intervals are there, yes, but they have nothing to do with distinguishing scale degrees within a key. The degrees have a sound all of their own. I'm talking about hearing the degree instantly against the sound of a key.

 

Allow me to paraphrase Bruce Arnold, I feel he said it best (this is a bit lengthy but it's worth it);

 

One of the most counterproductive assignments relative pitch ear training courses assign is to "learn all your intervals."

 

A teacher sits down at a piano and starts playing different intervals and asks the class to identify which interval is being played. You may ask "What's so bad about that? All music is made up of different combinations of intervals so this should help me to identify pitch, right?"

 

Let's look closer. Let's say you have mastered this assignment; and any interval someone plays, you know what it is instantly. All right, great! Now you are on the band stand and the piano player is jamming along on a C major chord over and over, and the bass player is playing a C note over and over. Most students with a little theory or practical experience know that playing a C chord over and over means the piece is in the key of C. Now your guitar player plays two notes which happen to be an E and a G. You instantly say "that's a minor 3rd that I hear". "all right" says the guitar player "well play it then" but now the real question has to be answered: what minor 3rd is it? If we examine the 12 pitches used in western music we find that there are 12 possible minor 3rd intervals that we could choose from. For example C to Eb, C# to E, D to F - all of these are minor 3rd intervals, and there are 12 possible minor 3rd intervals in all.

 

How do you know which one it is?

 

The answer is you don't because you have only learned what a minor 3rd sounds like and not what the two pitches E and G sound like in the key. So something is missing here. You need to know more than what an interval sounds like; you need to know what the notes sound like in a key.

 

So, back to our example: if you knew what the 3rd and 5th degree of a key sounded like, you would have known which two notes the guitarist played. What the interval was between the two notes is of little importance when trying to identify pitch. The important thing to realize from this example is that all 12 pitches have a unique sound against a key and this unique sound can be memorized.

[mcmurray]

 

i think the point is to establish tonal center and navigate by intervals.

 

 

By doing this you're making the job 1000 times harder than it needs to be.

 

I've taught students to play by ear very quickly without teaching them any intervals whatsoever.

[mcmurray]

More wisdom from Bruce Arnold;

Lets go back to our teacher again and explore another problem that comes from teaching intervals. The teacher tells the student that it may help them to memorisze intervals if they relate the intervals to songs they know. So the teacher suggests common melodies that they can use to help memorize these intervals, things like: a 4th is 'Here comes the bride', a 6th is 'My Bonnie lies over the Ocean'. So the student thinks "Wow this is great, now anytime I hear a 6th all I have to do is sing the first two notes of 'My Bonnie lies over the Ocean' and I'll know what notes are being played."

Once again let's look into this and explore two drawbacks of using common melodies to identify intervals:
1. The first two notes of 'My bonnie Lies over the Ocean' do comprise an interval of a 6th, but the 5th of the key up to the 3rd in the key is also a 6th
Let's listen to this and see what happens when we play our "Bonnie 6th"

We're back on the bandstand playing a C chord vamp. The guitar player is playing the C chord with the bass playing a C, and the sax player plays a G (the fifth scale degree of the key) and then moves up to an # (the 3rd scale degree of the key) and you think "That's a sixth because I can hear that it is the beginning of 'My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean'." Great! Now the sax player plays an Ab (the flat 6th scale degree of the key) and then moves up and plays an F (the 4th scale degree of the key). This is a sixth interval too, but can you easily hear 'My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean' in this sound?

No.

this is because the first two notes of 'My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean' are the 5th up to the 3rd of the key, not the flat 6th to the 4th. So once again the important thing is to learn what each note sounds like in a key, not what the distance is between notes.

2. Let's say you're one of those students who has faithfully learned all your intervals and have developed the ability to grab a sound from any context and place an interval name on that sound by applying our memorized song to this interval.

All right - let's go back to our bandstand again and see how well it works as the band is jamming along.

Again the guitar player is playing the C chord with the bass playing a C and the sax player plays a G (the 5th scale degree of the key) and then moves up to an E (the 3rd scale degree of the key) the first thing that happens is you say to yourself "What is that sound I'm hearing," next you take that sound (the G up to E) and run it through your mental rolodex of 11 basic intervals and the corresponding melodies that you have learned to identify these intervals. You come up with the correct answer and - Oops! The band is 2 bars past this point now and it's too late to use this information because it took you too long to calculate it. Music moves by in time and the only relative pitch ear training that will help you is one that allows you the quickest identification of notes, i.e. functional pitch recognition

[The Extremist]

No. Intervals are there, yes, but they have nothing to do with distinguishing scale degrees within a key.

 

 

An interval is the distance in pitch between two notes. Intervals have EVERYTHING to do with distinguishing scale degrees within a key.

 

I recommend you ask around the forums there are many knowledgeable people here to help clear up your misunderstandings.

[GreenAsJade]

[mcmurray]

An interval is the distance in pitch between two notes. Intervals have EVERYTHING to do with distinguishing scale degrees within a key. I recommend you ask around the forums there are many knowledgeable people here to help clear up your misunderstandings.

 

 

Are you suggesting that Bruce Arnold is not knowlegable?

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Arnold

 

How come I (and others) can teach people to play by ear and transcribe accurately and quickly while at the same time teaching them absolutely nothing about interval recognition?

 

I don't deny the existence of intervals, of course they exist. I'm simply saying that studying them is certainly not necessary in order to develop solid relative pitch. I even agree with Bruce when he states that interval recognition training is in fact counter-productive.

 

Here's some more on the subject;

 

One vexing problem for many aural skills teachers is the study of intervals. Do students need to be proficient at identifying random intervals before they can move on to something else? No, I don't believe so. Do they need to be proficient at hearing scale degrees and relationships within the context of a key? Most certainly. Many students do not do particularly well with random interval identification, but can do well with other aspects of aural analysis. Nevertheless, the identification of intervals seems to be a major component of many ear training and sight singing texts, CAI music software, and presumably, most ear training programs. But at the same time, many aural skills teachers question their importance, or the value of the method by which they are most often taught.

 

http://www.miles.be/art_telesco.html

[mcmurray]

An interval is the distance in pitch between two notes.

 

 

Correct. However, functional pitch recognition does not involve discerning pitch between two notes. It involves identifying the pitch in isolation without reference to any other note, the reference being the key that has been setup within the listener's ear.

[1001gear]

What happens when the key is not immediately discernible or even established?

[mcmurray]

What happens when the key is not immediately discernible or even established?

 

 

If the music is completely atonal (for example a 12 tone row) then functional pitch recognition will not work. This is where raw interval recognition comes in very handy. Alternatively one can try and force a key on it (either the whole lot or small sections) and identify pitches functionally, or take a perfect pitch recognition approach.

 

If the key isn't immediately discernable there is some ambiguity, but the method can still work, and it usually isn't long before the key is discernable. If the key changes, it can be heard and dealt with accordingly.

 

That said, in a huge majority of western music the key is discernable and this method is suitable.

[The Extremist]

Let's look closer. Let's say you have mastered this assignment; and any interval someone plays, you know what it is instantly. All right, great! Now you are on the band stand and the piano player is jamming along on a C major chord over and over, and the bass player is playing a C note over and over. Most students with a little theory or practical experience know that playing a C chord over and over means the piece is in the key of C. Now your guitar player plays two notes which happen to be an E and a G. You instantly say "that's a minor 3rd that I hear". "all right" says the guitar player "well play it then" but now the real question has to be answered: what minor 3rd is it? If we examine the 12 pitches used in western music we find that there are 12 possible minor 3rd intervals that we could choose from. For example C to Eb, C# to E, D to F - all of these are minor 3rd intervals, and there are 12 possible minor 3rd intervals in all. How do you know which one it is?

 

 

By identifying the intervals between each of the two "unknown notes that together make a minor third" against the C note. I hear a major third and a perfect fifth against the C which reveals the notes as E nd G.

[mcmurray]

By identifying the intervals between each of the two "unknown notes that together make a minor third" against the C note. I hear a major third and a perfect fifth against the C which reveals the notes as E nd G.

 

 

And this is a valid way to do it.

 

One question though, how do you identify the tonic? You just hear it immediately right? The same can be done for all other scale degrees without using interval identification.

[The Extremist]

The same can be done for all other scale degrees without using interval identification.

 

 

I think this is where we lose each other.

 

When you say "The same can be done for all other scale degrees without using interval identification.", what scales are you referring to? Because even just looking at the 7 modes of the Major Scale played off the same root, all 12 chromatic notes are used.

[mcmurray]

what scales are you referring to? Because even just looking at the 7 modes of the Major Scale played off the same root, all 12 chromatic notes are used.

 

 

This is where it gets interesting.

 

For this to work in any situation, one needs to be familiar with the sound of scale degrees in both major and minor keys/tonalities (major and minor sound very different from each other). Just studying major or minor keys alone won't be enough to cover everything.

 

Lydian, Mixolydian can be heard as small variants on the major scale (they all share a major 3rd interval between the first degree and the 3rd degree, which is the quality of a major sounding scale).

 

For lydian, the scale degrees are the same as the major scale apart from the 4th degree, which is raised one semitone. This note can be heard as the sharpened 4th degree of the major scale. With Mixolydian, the degrees are the same as the major scale apart from the 7th degree which is lowered one semitone. This note can be heard as a 7th degree, but flattened.

 

Now, with the minor sounding modes and scales (dorian, phrygian, harmonic and melodic) the same concept applies (they all share a minor 3rd interval between the first degree and 3rd degree, which makes them sound minor), so they can be heard as small variations on the natural minor scale.

 

Dorian can be heard as a natural minor scale with a sharpened 6th degree, phrygian can be heard as a natural minor scale with a flattened 2nd degree harmonic can be heard as a natural minor scale with a sharpened 7th, melodic minor can be heard as a natural minor scale with a sharpened 6th and sharpened 7th.

 

You say that the modes all played starting from the same note use all 12 tones, this is true but if you treat each one separately (they don't all occur at the same time in practice), and think of them either in terms of major or minor scales, the scale degrees (or flattened/sharpened degrees, as the case may be) can be heard.

[klwurth]

Thank you, mcmurray...I am going to meditate on this, with guitar in my hands. Getting better at playing by ear is a big thing for me these days, and I'm theory-deficient. I just want to improve at navigating by what I hear and not just by what I can read. I appreciate your suggestion.

[Alexbiscuit]

mcmurray is completely correct

 

i have been teaching myself lead for the past year and found that this method is the best. I have the entire fretboard mapped and can easily switch it down up or in my mind depending on the key or scale i want to play in. I know what the scale degrees sound like in relation to the tonic. it really doesn't get much harder than that. i don't understand why anyone would learn 12 major scales as independent structures on the fretboard without first just learning one REALLY WELL and transposing it everywhere.

[gmar]

I must try this! seems to make sense...

So I should do this with any note?

[Virgman]

I have a hard enough time just playing with a pick and/or fingers.

 

But with my ears? Ouch. That sounds painful.

[mcmurray]

I must try this! seems to make sense... So I should do this with any note?

The idea is to work through all 7 degrees of the major and minor scales.

Good luck

[mcmurray]

bump