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Post by Mike Hewer on Jun 20, 2018 9:05:19 GMT
Hi All,
I answered a post on VI-C about this and thought it'd be an interesting departure for a discussion. I have decent relative pitch and as a result, can concoct ideas in my head to a certain extent. When I do, the creative freedom is giddying as I can in realtime go (within my limitations) anywhere and try/discard ideas in seconds. I acquired this facility over time and I believe anyone can with a regular organised commitment, there is nothing special about it. Here are some of my thoughts on how one might go about this, please join in, approve or disagree and especially, add to it as it is a big subject.
melodic intervals... The foreground of most music is melody and this seems like a good place to start. Forgive the obvious, but melody is stepwise motion from interval to interval so it makes sense that if you can't sing from any interval to any other interval, you will have to rely on hearing via a keyboard in order to create from nothing (this is not a pejorative in any sense at all). My advice would be to start with just one interval (let's say a perf 5th), play it then attempt to hear it inside. The trick is to keep doing this on as regular a basis as one would practice scales. Once there is a little confidence, try singing a diatonic scale in 5ths ex. c,g,d,a,e,b,f,c and keep at that until it is easy to imagine. There are complications such as chromaticism, eg when does one introduce it earlier or later? Perhaps that is a personal choice, or perhaps some gentle chromaticism from the start would be best. For example, it'd quite difficult if you are new to this to sing these 5ths..c,g, csharp,gsharp d,a,d sharp, a sharp..you get the idea. But perhaps something like this instead, to gradually get use to chromaticism...c,g c sharp, d, a, dsharp, e, b...etc. One can work out many ways to do develop an inner ear if one is autodidactic and it goes without saying that exercises like this should be applied to all intervals before beginning to combine them. I could go on forever with ideas on this, especially concerning combining of intervals and how one could internally sing an interval in a kind of accell that brings the 2 notes closer together mentally thus getting closer to hearing the interval as one (a dyad). You would now be on the way to developing harmonic hearing.
Rhythm too can be internalised, and there is also the question of what timbre one imagines whilst doing this. I believe you can kill two birds with one stone if you decide for one week to imagine a flute, (even record exercises with a sampled flute - see below) the next a trumpet and the the next, a stylophone (no, not that) but far too much of me already...join in chaps.
Edit, before I forget, I should mention that it's neat to programme exercises in your daw/ns record them to your digital media and go to sleep with cans on, or any time you wish. I did this in the past (when there was nowt else to do in bed).
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Post by Dave Dexter on Jun 20, 2018 9:29:00 GMT
Interesting and vital, a fair amount of my music starts in my head and I can go into reasonable complexity in figuring it out mentally - very, very easy for me to forget it though, or change one note and lose the entire structure, so my iPhone is full of 30-second recordings of me on guitar getting out the music before it fails me. I'd never considered a formalised approach to honing this ability though. There are more specifically musical versions of this, but I enjoy this pitch-perception test. It instantly turns rational composers into beasts intent only on winning by discerning the smallest possible difference in pitch, even if it's irrelevant. jakemandell.com/adaptivepitch/
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Post by driscollmusick on Jun 20, 2018 15:03:38 GMT
I know you're talking about something a little different, but I hated and still hate ear training, mostly because I was always bad at it. Perhaps because I started relatively late (12/13), I always felt disconnect between my brain and the outside world of sound. I took some comfort in Hindemith's book where he stated that ear training was a largely irrelevant skill (though he also insisted it must be developed to its fullest extent).
Working entirely at the computer as I do, I find that I write fairly long passages (or make a whole string of detailed edits) without relying on any playback. That must be inner ear, no?
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Post by fuguestate on Jun 20, 2018 15:07:08 GMT
I have relative pitch, and I pretty much learned to recognize intervals "by ear". I'm not 100% certain I've fully mastered it, but generally I can recognize diatonic intervals pretty much instantly, and with more tricky chromatic intervals I usually proceed by mental comparison with diatonic intervals and thereby derive semitone modifications that would rationalize it. Most of my focus is on harmony, though, so generally I'd only worry about melodic intervals when transcribing a melody I hear in my head on paper (or virtual paper on the computer), or when playing by ear on the piano along with someone singing a melody I haven't heard before. In my youth I spent inordinately amounts of time listening to Beethoven symphonies and trying to dissect their harmonies in my head, so, if I do say so myself, I'm pretty good at hearing chord intervals (though with the caveat that since most of my early listening repertoire is Beethoven, I'm a bit weak when it comes to more modern harmonies). But overall, I agree with Mike Hewer that this kind of inner ear training is foundational, and absolutely essential to anyone who wishes to be a composer.
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Post by fuguestate on Jun 20, 2018 15:11:26 GMT
driscollmusick: I have the opposite problem; having learnt pretty much all of my music education on my own, I heavily rely on all things "by ear" and only resort to notation as a means of communicating with the outside world. But I also write quite a lot without relying on playback... I find that if I start getting used to playback too early in the composition process, I have the dangerous tendency of composing to the MIDI mechanical sounds as opposed to being faithful to the more naturalistic sound I hear in my mind. This is especially dangerous for me in orchestral writing because I don't have a very good sound library, so if I'm not careful I end up writing something that won't work well in a real orchestra but still sounds passable in MIDI.
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Post by Bob Porter on Jun 20, 2018 19:02:09 GMT
When I was in school we tuned to A 440, even in band. I could sing that pitch (in my range) on command. That was lost long ago, and I don't miss it. While everything I write is playable, I doubt little, if any, will be played. Because I write pretty much a measure at a time, I rely mostly on playback. As long as I avoid the "throw-up factor", I'm happy. That doesn't mean I don't take composing seriously. I know when I've fallen short. Most of the time, even times when I have some long term goal for a piece, after a few measures the goal is toast because something better has come along.
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Post by fuguestate on Jun 20, 2018 19:23:22 GMT
In my admittedly rather limited experience, I've not written a single piece where any initial long-term goal was met. The music just has a life of its own, and dictates its own direction, which so far has not once coincided with my intentions for it. It's either that, or the piece is dead on arrival (as in, there are notes present, but the music isn't there).
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Post by socrates on Jun 23, 2018 0:43:58 GMT
Aural training, formal as part of a music course, or informal as a self-discipline is very important to me and I have done it (and still doing it sometimes) in both ways. It is indispensable as a skill for any composition of whatever school, level and style. Mike pointed a quite correct and profitable way imo, by referring first to the melodic approach which contains quite a good amount of independent rhythmic training in itself. In the beginning I thought that I was quite useless at it, that was before I knew notation but I was managing quite well on bouzouki and guitar (about the age of sixteen). I did not know what to do with all these verses I was writing and making them into songs on the instrument, so I just started notating them with the usual pitch names of do, re, mi etc but without rhythmic durations. When I learnt notation and started formal theoretical studies and the classical guitar as my main instrument, aural training was in the order of the day and full of formal exercises which still made me feel useless because on one hand I found them quite difficult and on the other too many in quantity: Rhythm, melody, two part counterpoint and four part harmony. I was making a lot of mistakes in dictation and I had to quickly find a solution for myself because my aim was from the very beginning to become a trained composer and not to rely on any particular instrument either for inspiration or checking out and re-assurance. My ideal situation would be if I was able to sit by the sea and make my musical notes as I was making my verse notes. I was twenty by then and quite an accomplished player on the bouzouki (starting getting paid for my gigs), and rock guitar while still struggling with middle grades on the classical guitar. I did formally the Hindemith method for one year and I found that it was not working at all for me, although I could perceive some improvement in the melody and four part writing while the two part remained still very hard. Then I thought of a solution myself and I solved all these problems once and for all. The solution imo was a correct diagnose of the problem. I had a good ear but not a good co-ordination/recognition of pitch between eye, ear and notation (I was still a poor sight reader), so in attempting for example to realise and notate a perfect fifth in a melody I was making ridiculous mistakes like notating a major third. By examination of the mistakes I did finally realize that if I was asked to play that melody on bouzouki or guitar I would have played it correctly strait away because, weird as it may sound, my fingers knew better than my ear. So I started training myself in melody again by imagining the fingering that I would apply on the instrument if I was asked to play it. Then I went one step further with this thought: I know thousands of traditional tunes and I can play them any moment, so why don’t I start notating them? And so I did. After a few initial hiccups the whole operation went very smoothly for me, and as I come from a music tradition which uses both diatonic and chromatic modes, I never noticed any difference in difficulty between their sometimes weird intervals, although this difficulty objectively exists. Talking of intervals, I followed a method which much later I found suggested in formal aural training articles and essays: Interval recognition by reference to a well-known tune that contains that interval as a characteristic part. So, for example, given that a lot of iambic Greek songs begin with an anacrusis, that anacrusis is in most cases the interval of a perfect fourth (dominant to tonic). Now I don’t understand why I didn’t think of it earlier. The only answer I can give is that although I was playing that interval many times every day, I was never really interested what it was. In the beginning I did not even know that it was called a perfect fourth. After that very easy interval, the rising sixth major or minor became quite easy in recognition because they were already very familiar as present in a lot of well-known tunes. Major and minor seconds go without saying as very easy, and before too long, major and minor sixths and sevenths became very easy in recognition by reference to tunes where they are present as characteristic parts of the melody. I dealt lastly with the tritone, and I remember my teacher saying that it is very easy to remember if we refer to L. Bernstein's song "Maria" from West Side Story, but by then I was laughing inside me as this interval was still in everyday occurrence of my well-developed bouzouki repertoire by then. This whole adventure with folk music did not last more than a year, and by the end of it, having written down by memory hundreds if not thousands of folk tunes, I did not find anymore any difficulty in sight singing, four part harmony or difficult free two part counterpoint, in those obligatory dictation sessions of at least twice a week. Now a days I never sketch ideas on an instrument. Just pencil and paper or at the most my electronic pad which gets me a digitised result immediately. I observe that a lot of my guitar/bouzouki pupils are both, poor sight readers and hopeless at aural exercises. I suggest to them to hum or sing whatever they hear as the main melody on any piece they play and to associate it with the letter names of the notes they play, and of course, that they too know by memory a lot of folk tunes, so if they are not too lazy, they should notate them (and maybe invent some new harmony for them).
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Post by rayinstirling on Jun 23, 2018 7:14:08 GMT
I have an extremely keen sense of relative pitch. So much so that I sometimes think of it as a curse. Even to the extent I have difficulty tuning a guitar. Perhaps I should have learned to play a fretless instrument.
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Post by Bob Porter on Jun 23, 2018 14:54:45 GMT
Well, I have all the ear training anyone could what. We learned to be able to solfege a prepared piece that changed clef, meter and key while conducting. Then we had to do the same thing sight reading. We learned to sing any interval on command. We learned to write down four part harmony that the teacher played on the piano. And I wasn't too bad at any of it. But that was a very long time ago. I can't say that I could do hardly any of it now. I might use a little of it while composing, but for the most part, it's probably gone. Oh well.
On the other hand, Theory has stuck a bit better. Though some of it I don't care about. We had to be able to harmonically analyze Chopin. I'm not really interested in that. I do get the importance of it. Notation was what I was most interested in. Sure, you don't need notation to create music. I have all the respect in the world for those that work in a DAW. This isn't about DAW vs NS. It's about being able to get music in front of real players, if that's your goal. If not, that's fine too.
The long and the short of it is that I hated school. Almost all of it. I hated sitting in a classroom and being forced to absorb a bunch of stuff I wasn't interested in. I like to learn stuff. To this day I like to learn stuff that I'm interested in. I'm still learning how to use my software. More importantly, I'm learning how to keep my computers running so that the software has something to run on. Right down to building my own computers.
Sorry to carry on. Just some random thoughts.
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Post by rayinstirling on Jun 23, 2018 15:18:29 GMT
Forgive me for asking Bob but, what has DAW vs NS got to do with the OP’s question?
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Post by Bob Porter on Jun 24, 2018 13:13:53 GMT
Nothing. That was spillover from a different thread.
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Post by Mike Hewer on Jul 2, 2018 8:53:16 GMT
Aural training, formal as part of a music course, or informal as a self-discipline is very important to me and I have done it (and still doing it sometimes) in both ways. It is indispensable as a skill for any composition of whatever school, level and style. Mike pointed a quite correct and profitable way imo, by referring first to the melodic approach which contains quite a good amount of independent rhythmic training in itself. In the beginning I thought that I was quite useless at it, that was before I knew notation but I was managing quite well on bouzouki and guitar (about the age of sixteen). I did not know what to do with all these verses I was writing and making them into songs on the instrument, so I just started notating them with the usual pitch names of do, re, mi etc but without rhythmic durations. When I learnt notation and started formal theoretical studies and the classical guitar as my main instrument, aural training was in the order of the day and full of formal exercises which still made me feel useless because on one hand I found them quite difficult and on the other too many in quantity: Rhythm, melody, two part counterpoint and four part harmony. I was making a lot of mistakes in dictation and I had to quickly find a solution for myself because my aim was from the very beginning to become a trained composer and not to rely on any particular instrument either for inspiration or checking out and re-assurance. My ideal situation would be if I was able to sit by the sea and make my musical notes as I was making my verse notes. I was twenty by then and quite an accomplished player on the bouzouki (starting getting paid for my gigs), and rock guitar while still struggling with middle grades on the classical guitar. I did formally the Hindemith method for one year and I found that it was not working at all for me, although I could perceive some improvement in the melody and four part writing while the two part remained still very hard. Then I thought of a solution myself and I solved all these problems once and for all. The solution imo was a correct diagnose of the problem. I had a good ear but not a good co-ordination/recognition of pitch between eye, ear and notation (I was still a poor sight reader), so in attempting for example to realise and notate a perfect fifth in a melody I was making ridiculous mistakes like notating a major third. By examination of the mistakes I did finally realize that if I was asked to play that melody on bouzouki or guitar I would have played it correctly strait away because, weird as it may sound, my fingers knew better than my ear. So I started training myself in melody again by imagining the fingering that I would apply on the instrument if I was asked to play it. Then I went one step further with this thought: I know thousands of traditional tunes and I can play them any moment, so why don’t I start notating them? And so I did. After a few initial hiccups the whole operation went very smoothly for me, and as I come from a music tradition which uses both diatonic and chromatic modes, I never noticed any difference in difficulty between their sometimes weird intervals, although this difficulty objectively exists. Talking of intervals, I followed a method which much later I found suggested in formal aural training articles and essays: Interval recognition by reference to a well-known tune that contains that interval as a characteristic part. So, for example, given that a lot of iambic Greek songs begin with an anacrusis, that anacrusis is in most cases the interval of a perfect fourth (dominant to tonic). Now I don’t understand why I didn’t think of it earlier. The only answer I can give is that although I was playing that interval many times every day, I was never really interested what it was. In the beginning I did not even know that it was called a perfect fourth. After that very easy interval, the rising sixth major or minor became quite easy in recognition because they were already very familiar as present in a lot of well-known tunes. Major and minor seconds go without saying as very easy, and before too long, major and minor sixths and sevenths became very easy in recognition by reference to tunes where they are present as characteristic parts of the melody. I dealt lastly with the tritone, and I remember my teacher saying that it is very easy to remember if we refer to L. Bernstein's song "Maria" from West Side Story, but by then I was laughing inside me as this interval was still in everyday occurrence of my well-developed bouzouki repertoire by then. This whole adventure with folk music did not last more than a year, and by the end of it, having written down by memory hundreds if not thousands of folk tunes, I did not find anymore any difficulty in sight singing, four part harmony or difficult free two part counterpoint, in those obligatory dictation sessions of at least twice a week. Now a days I never sketch ideas on an instrument. Just pencil and paper or at the most my electronic pad which gets me a digitised result immediately. I observe that a lot of my guitar/bouzouki pupils are both, poor sight readers and hopeless at aural exercises. I suggest to them to hum or sing whatever they hear as the main melody on any piece they play and to associate it with the letter names of the notes they play, and of course, that they too know by memory a lot of folk tunes, so if they are not too lazy, they should notate them (and maybe invent some new harmony for them). Socrates, I too first learnt to hear internally via the guitar and when I was imagining intervals in a linear fashion I used to also mentally finger them (and for a while I could only hear them in a guitar(ish) timbre). As I used to play in clubs to earn a crust, I too got to know a lot of popular song from the 1930's up till the then present day. It is a great way to learn intervals and a lot of composers might not realise they actually do know the sound of them if not their names. 'Maria' as Socrates says is a great example of the tritone and I still sometimes think of the anacrusis in Sinatra's 'My Way' when hearing a major 6th. The minor 7th has to be 'Somewhere' also from West Side Story and to sing a major chord in a broken down arpeggiated form, what about 'Oh My Darling Clementine'. The octave...well...'Somewhere Over the Rainbow' I suppose, a perfect 4th, how about the pick up to Star Wars (for you Dave ). The beauty of this is that music from any style, any period and any genre can be used for training. Now that is a fun way to learn intervals.....
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Post by Tim Marko on Jul 3, 2018 21:10:20 GMT
When I was performing more frequently, my ear was definitely much better. I've always noticed that many guitar players have a really great sense of intervals and pitch, not sure why, but even "untrained" players seem to be able to "play by ear" quite well.
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Post by Dave Dexter on Jul 4, 2018 11:27:32 GMT
When I was performing more frequently, my ear was definitely much better. I've always noticed that many guitar players have a really great sense of intervals and pitch, not sure why, but even "untrained" players seem to be able to "play by ear" quite well. It could be that the frets - and fret markers, where applicable - make for a handy map to overlay in your mind, whereas on something like cello the map is only in your head. And on a wind instrument, the approach is entirely different again. The intervals and patterns of a fretboard definitely factor into my writing when I approach it mentally, I can visualise to a certain extent before picking up a guitar. I'm imagining a blues solo right now, for example. Wish you could hear it. It could even be that the strings and frets form a rough approximation of a stave . . . is that too woolly?
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