Any Advice for Training Your Ear?

[bearycool]

I know how to tune and everything but I'm still having trouble with "Hearing" music in videos and being able to play it with almost the exact same notes. I play violin and guitar just in case any of you need that information at all.

if someone plays a single note one at a time slowly I will know the name of that note no matter the instrument but when it comes to fast music that I want to play my hearing on that gets jumbled up and everything.

So any advice on hearing notes going fast at once, this will also help with me making arrangement pieces so please if you can share any advice it will really help!

[aishi]

I suggest taking music theory classes that also focus on ear training and dictation. Because that's how I learned, and I still am learning. It helped a ton! Like anything else the only way to become better at it is to practice it.

[saltnoon]

Is that, when you hear a chord/chord progression so often, you get used to it then you can recognize it very easy after a while.You can easily tell if a guitar or bass is tuned down a half just by the sound of it..

[The-Real-Link]

There is a basic ear training tool (as well as other great stuff like printable staff paper) at Ricci Adams' Musictheory.net

[MilesOfMusic]

Learn to play the piano!

But since you play violin try and first pick out the melody, get it right, then try (this for me takes the longest) to pick out the chords, accompianment, etc

[Nicol Armarfi]

Being able to name a note after hearing it is almost a completely arbitrary ability if you have an instrument with you, or even just a notation program, I find. Being able to hear a note and recite it's name has near zero practical use, so I generally gravitate away from any practise like that; I've always thought that the best way to learn, in this case, is to do. I often just listen to pieces of music and attempt to play along with them while they're going, although if I've memorized a tune I never worry about the original key. I would however reccomend learning certain techniques, specifically being able to name intervals. Being able to differentiate between two notes in a passage of say, thirds or sixths, is an incredibly useful technique for both writing and arranging. The way it's typically taught is that a teacher would play a series of intervals for you, and you would chime off the name of each interval as it's played. I haven't checked it out, but I'd assume TRL's link would have that on there, as it's a pretty standard excersise.

[The-Real-Link]

The ear trainer on the site that I gave does not teach you how to identify individual notes. As Nicol said, that is somewhat arbitrary. The exercises that it provides are in identifieing intervals, scales (as in major, minor, dorian, phrygian, etc.), and I believe differentianting between different chords.

[aishi]

I actually do find perfect pitch to be an advantage in some respects, because it allows you to pick up ear training extremely easily (its always the people with perfect pitch in my classes who ace ear training) and you don't always have to fully rely on instruments or relative pitch. When I compose I can hear notes or a chord that I want, but I don't always know the exact names of the notes, then when I go to a piano or play pitches on a notation system, I lose what I originally wanted by the distraction of wrong notes. So it would be nice if I had perfect pitch. I'm jealous haha

[MilesOfMusic]

Although I have perfect pitch, and I would say that relative pitch is more useful; perfect pitch does help!

UC Genetics of Absolute Pitch Study - Survey

Check this out if you want to find out whether you have perfect pitch or not.

[The-Real-Link]

You might also consider taking an ear training class at a local community college. Classes usually run about $80 at community colleges, and you could probably tak one over the summer or something.