Hey, how you doing? Justin here.
Today I'd like to talk a little bit about ear training for beginners.
Now some of you might have heard of ear training.
Some of you might be completely unaware that it even exists,
but you will be aware that we listen to music with our ears.
So if we can do things that increase our ears' ability to hear,
and decipher music, it's gonna improve our musicianship.
Quite considerably, in fact.
Now, most times beginners don't get involved with ear training,
and I included ear training in an earlier version of my Beginners Course,
and more than half of the people seem to not even get involved
with doing it at all. They just skipped over that bit.
So this time round, I've kept it as as a separate thing,
and I've made a whole ear training course
that can be done by more advanced guitar players, as well as complete beginners.
So it's kinda like a standalone course.
And I start with a thing called Interval Ear Training,
which is basically learning to hear the distance between two pitches.
Now...
Again, at a very basic beginner level, it's hard to see how this is relevant,
and how it might help.
But you'll have to take my word a little bit,
that by doing these kind of exercises, your ear gets stronger,
and you hear music differently.
And nearly all of the students I've ever taught this to,
have reported that after 6 months of this kind of training,
they hear music in a different way.
So rather than being able to just hear music as a thing, they can hear the parts
of the music better, cos it teaches your ear to focus in on a particular elements
within music.
Interval Ear Training really helps with singing, as well.
So if you wanna sing and play, ear training is probably
the single biggest thing that's gonna help you sing in tune,
and be able to make intervallic steps in your singing.
And we do this by learning to recognize different distances between pitches.
So if you hear... ♪doo doo♪
I know that's the interval of a Perfect 4th.
If I know that the first note was a C, ♪doo doo♪
the 2nd note will be an F.
I'm not sure what that 1st note was cos I don't have perfect pitch.
♪Doo♪
Actually that was pretty close! I was saying a B.
♪Boo doo♪ I know where the next note's gonna be.
And I know that the interval is called the Perfect 4th.
And every different interval, we relate back to a different song.
So that one I was singing was "The Wedding March"
or "The Funeral March",
depending on the way you look at it. or "Auld Lang Syne" ♪Doo do do do do do♪
or ♪doo doot doo doo♪ It's the same interval.
♪Doo doot doo doo♪
If you look at a Major 3rd, another type of interval. If we start here.
♪Doo boo baa♪ That's singing up a Major 3rd.
♪Boo daa♪ and I know that's where we play it on guitar.
♪Doo daa daa daa♪ ♪Oh when the saints♪ is a song.
So each different interval, we kind of tie it to a song.
So when we hear a distance between two notes, we go,
"Oh that sounds like this song", and therefore you can name the interval.
As you progress on your guitar journey, you'll find it really helpful for
learning songs on your own.
To be able to just listen to a song, and then be able to find out where those
melodies or chords or lines or progressions are on the guitar.
That's not where you're gonna start as a beginner.
You're gonna start on a much more rudimentary level than that.
Even this Interval Ear Training, while it will be very helpful for singing,
you won't use it for transcribing, which is learning songs on your own by ear.
You won't be doing that for quite sometime.
But the benefit is deeper than that.
It's almost like going to the gym for your ear.
And even if it's not directly the thing that you wanna be doing,
it's gonna make your ears stronger and it'll improve your overall musicianship.
It's not something that's essential. I know some really fine, professional
musicians who have never done ear training in their lives, and can't name the pitches
and they play amazingly well.
Same with music theory. I know musicians that are fantastic musicians
that don't understand music theory either.
That's...much rarer, but it does exist.
So that's why these 2 modules are kinda optional,
and not directly included in the course anymore,
but I would strongly recommend that you give it a little look.
It's a lot of fun. A lot of people really enjoy it.
Some people don't. Some people do it, are like,
"Oh man, I really don't enjoy this".
In which case, at the beginner stage, I recommend that you don't do it.
Cos I don't want you to get put off playing guitar,
cos you felt like you had to do ear training and you really hated it.
But I'd recommend you go to the ear training part of the site,
have a look, have a go at the first few exercises, and see if you enjoy it
It's very yes or no. To start off with, you learn 4th and 5ths,
and you listen to some exercises and you learn to tell the difference
between them, and there's little tests.
You do the test and get a score, and you can watch yourself improve.
It can be quite a motivational kind of a thing, as well.
Easy to see the progress and therefore inspire you to keep at it.
But you don't have to. I'd recommend that you look at it, go and have a try,
see if you can stick with it, and if you can't...
it's gonna be okay.
You can come back to it at a later point in your guitar journey,
and start from the beginning again. It's not gonna hinder you too much.
But the earlier you start, the better you'll get at it faster.
So I hope that's inspired you to go have a look at the Ear Training Module.
Next, let's have a little talk about music theory.