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3 Fatal Ear Training Mistakes And What To Do Instead

By Mike Hayes | June 20, 2010

One of the most often overlooked aspects of guitar study programs
is ear training, sure you can learn a few tunes, play a couple of
basic scales and chords but it’s only monkey-see-monkey-do type
stuff the player themselves does not really develop his/her
musical ear to the point when they can work out tunes by ear for
themselves.

Once a musician learns the fundamentals of ear training they are
free to play any song and most importantly they can check if the
information they are studying is correct (many harmonic and
melodic errors exist in both online and offline study programs).

Here’s the 3 fatal ear training mistakes and how to avoid them!

Fatal mistake 1: Not practicing ear training on the guitar -
Unfortunately, when it comes to ear training the guitar seems to
get a raw deal, almost all examples whether they are presented on
an audio CD or at a music exam are played on a piano, which means
it’s very difficult for the guitarist to relate to the sounds
being played let alone find them on the fingerboard.

Important: The guitar sounds one octave lower than the piano.

What to do instead: Practice intervals on your guitar everyday,
start with the pitch of middle ‘C’ on the guitar.

(a) middle ‘C’ = third string, fifth fret

(b) progress through the basic intervals i.e., major 3rd, minor
3rd, perfect 5th, perfect 4th etc.

Fatal mistake 2: Audio overload – recently whilst trying to help
a student identify intervals by relating each interval to the
first two notes played in familiar songs (songs that everyone has
heard hundreds of times, unless of course you have just arrived
from another planet), I noticed that he was really struggling to
recall any of the songs I mentioned, in fact he gave me the
impression he had not heard any of them as if he was suffering
from some kind of musical amnesia.

Unfortunately, this condition is becoming more common with young
students and the main reason for this situation is caused by
information overload or in this case audio overload; thereby the
listener is bombarded by an overwhelming amount of audio
information far too much of the untrained listened to cope with.

To prove my point I asked the student “how many songs could he
store on his iPod?” “Thousands”, he replied; and there is the
problem right there; hours and hours of music to listen to and
absorb and if the iPod is set on random it’s quite likely the
listener won’t hear the same song for at least a couple of
weeks, maybe months, possibly never!.

What to do instead: Practice focusing on one song at a time -
really get to know all the nooks and crannies of that song and as
you gather information about the first song use that information
to help you learn your next song more quickly, that’s true
accelerated learning it’s do by connected learning, whereby you
relate unfamiliar material to material already learned.

Fatal mistake 3: Practicing too fast – because we are always
presented with the ‘finished’ audio product it’s easy to lose
sight of the fact that the artist we are listening to achieved
their finished audio product by first practicing everything in
tiny little sections and that they practiced these little musical
cells very s-l-o-w-l-y.

What to do instead: Make a point of writing a giant note to
yourself …

‘SLOW DOWN – speed is a by-product of accuracy’

put this note in your guitar case or stick it on the wall of your
practice room, there’s no point in playing fast and messy,
absolutely anyone can do that, in fact it doesn’t take any
practice at all.

The most important thing to remember about ear training is to
slow down and listen to the ’space’ between each note and make a
conscious effort to remember how they sound and feel it will help
you identify these same notes in the next song you play on your
guitar.

Topics: Ear Training, Guitar Fretboard | No Comments »

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