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Tonight I made an ear training video for guitarists. It's meant to help learn the sounds of the open chords on a guitar (a chord with at least one open string left ringing.) Developing your ear in this way enables you to be able to learn songs by ear and be a better all around musician.

The video works like this: First you'll hear a guitar chord and you'll have a chance to make a guess at what it is before the chord plays for a second time with the correct chord shown on the screen (with the chord fingering in tab format.)

You've done well if you pick the correct chord family (the video includes at least one of each of the following types of chords: major, minor, dominant 7, major 7, suspended 4th.) If you also pick the exact right chord (like C7 instead of just "that's a 7th chord") then give yourself bonus points!

There are 24 questions/answers in this video which should be enough that you can use it multiple times before you begin to memorize the answers. I do plan on making more of these videos though because eventually - if this one video is used too many times you'll probably begin to know the answers based on memory rather than your ear.

Embedded below is a YouTube video I've made to help memorize the ascending melodic intervals. The reason I made this is because I was looking for something like it and couldn't find it anywhere. The idea is that there's a piano (a grand piano VSTi from Komplete) playing the intervals with a voice singing the name of the intervals at the same time so that the listener associates the name of the interval with the sound with repetition.

I would think that this would be most effective if you actually sing the intervals along with the recording. This will help you to really internalize the intervals.

By the way, I edited the vocals with Melodyne to make sure they are in tune. It's such an amazing program, I really think I'm just scratching the surface of what you can do with it. And it's so intuitive. So easy to use.

Song Associations

I also included a song association for each interval. It seems to really help the ability to memorize the intervals if you can associate them with a well known songs. For some intervals (the more commonly used ones such as major 3rd and perfect 4th) that's quite easy but with some of the lesser used intervals (such as minor 6th and minor 7th) it's difficult to find well known melodies that feature them.

Minor 2nd: "Jaws Theme" - John Williams

Major 2nd: "Happy Birthday" - Patty & Mildred Hill

Minor 3rd: "Smoke on the Water" - Deep Purple

Major 3rd: "Kumbaya" - Traditional

Perfect 4th: "Bridal Chorus" - Richard Wagner

Tritone: "The Simpsons Theme" - Danny Elfman

Perfect 5th: "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" - Mozart

Minor 6th: "The Entertainer" - Scott Joplin

Major 6th: "My Bonnie" - Traditional

Minor 7th: "Star Trek Theme" - Alexander Courage

Major 7th: "Take On Me" - a-ha

Octave: "Over The Rainbow" - Harold Arlen & E.Y. Harburg

Ear Training Software

EarMaster Ear Training is the best ear training tool I've found thus far. It really lets you improve at your own pace and it's constantly testing you so you can really see your improvement in a concrete sort of way.

I've found (like many others before me) that it's helpful to have a song to reference in your head when you're learning the musical intervals (a great example is how "here comes" in "here comes the bride" is a perfect 4th.)

This lead me to the idea that it would be good to reference a melody that everyone knows to help memorize the intervals that are in that melody. This is my first attempt at putting this idea to work.

The song I'm using is "Happy Birthday" which is arguably the most well known melody in the world so I think it should do the trick.

For my example version I decided to have the first note be a C (which puts the song in the key of F) as that makes it easy to follow.

The first two notes ("hap-py") are on C and then the third note is a D ("birth.") This is a major 2nd interval. The melody then goes back down to a C ("day") before climbing up a perfect 4th to F ("to") and then dropping to an E (which from the perspective of the starting note C is a major 3rd.)

The second time through the "to you" lyric is sang higher. It's a G to an F which is a perfect 5th to a perfect 4th from the starting note ("hap-py" is always a C throughout the song.)

The third (and final) time through the "birth" in "birth-day" isn't a major 2nd up to a D like it is the first two times through, instead it's a leap up to an A which is a major 6th up.

Hopefully you are able to get something out of using "Happy Birthday" as an interval reference. I'm including a video I've put together today as a guide below.

Recommended Ear Training Software

I've been using some ear training software called EarMaster EarTraining which I find works very well. I like the way it's constantly testing me so I can get a real feeling of progress as my ear improves.

While putting together some ideas for the interval ear training program I want to create (which I mentioned in my last post) I noticed that a descending major 3rd interval sounds like a doorbell ("ding dong.")

I think that these sorts of comparisons are really helpful because the big key with ear training is to get these interval relationships into your long term memory and something like the sound of a doorbell is probably already in your long term memory so if you can correlate this interval to that sound then you're set.

This is the basic idea behind the interval ear training program I am working on.

It will probably be some time before I complete this project but I'm leaning towards making it a really good program which is worth paying for rather than just throwing together something and making it available for free.

This program will be intended to be used as a companion to the EarMaster Ear Training Software which I strongly recommend to anyone who is working on improving their ears. It really lets you see if you're really improving (by testing you) or if you just think you're improving. It's nice to have a "measuring stick" to work with.

My last post was on ear training from the recording/mixing perspective (more about frequencies than notes, of course notes are frequencies too but I hope you know what I mean) this post is on the type of ear training that most people think about when they hear the term.

This ear training tip isn't an original idea but it's something that I've found to be very useful. And since I'm not someone who has a "naturally" good ear, I've had to work on it so I figure what works for me could be useful for other people who may struggle with it.

The tip is to associate hooks from well known melodies with intervals. For example I like to use "O COME" that begins the Christmas song "O Come All Ye Faithful" to help me remember what a descending perfect 4th sounds like. I found that by using this song association trick I was able to get through the interval training with the EarMaster software much quicker.

How does it work? When I'm not quite hearing the interval clearly I like to try to sing the song to the notes to see if it "fits." For example if I hear a descending interval and I'm not quite sure what it is but I think it may be a perfect 4th down then I can try singing "O COME" over it to see if it fits. If it does, then it is! If it doesn't then it must be something else.

Of course if you are going to go with this method to learn all of the intervals you will need to come up with song associations for every interval, but I think you should probably just start off with one or two to see how it works for you.

I kind of want to create some sort of training tools (perhaps like a YouTube video, or something that can be downloaded - perhaps for a price if it's good enough and worth it - but more likely just for free) using this concept but it's on a long list of ideas I may never get to.