How to develop an ear for music?

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Music is an integral part of many people's lives, but not every person is born musical. It happens that you hear your favorite song and you just want to sing along with your favorite artist, but the fear of hearing disapproving comments destroys the desire in the bud. However, even an ear for music is just a matter of practice and diligent study.

What is a rumor?

The simplest explanation is that ear for music is certain skills and abilities that allow you to fully perceive music and hear all its incredible sounds or even minor errors. Not a single musician, sound engineer or even producer can do without such abilities.

Absolute ear for music

It is believed that it is impossible to train absolute pitch, this is a talent that lives with a person from birth, and the chance to have absolute pitch falls to one person out of ten thousand. which means that manytruly great musicians did not have perfect pitch. Absolute pitch is the ability to accurately determine the pitch of any sound without the help of standards. Simply put, it is an innate ability to capture the structure of music.

Relative or interval hearing

Allows you to define the value of musical intervals, as well as play them. The pitch in this case is determined by comparing with the standard.

Inner hearing

This type of hearing is associated with mental activity. Simply put, this is the ability to mentally represent music and its individual components. Often this happens from musical notations or just from memory.

Intonation ear

Allows you to perceive music, defining its character, expression, tone. The most effective way is a specialized solfeggio training course. It is important that it be aimed at aesthetic education, and not technical.

Rhythmic ear

This is the ability to feel the emotional expressiveness of rhythm. Everyone can learn to hear and feel the beat.

And this is not a complete list of types of hearing known to mankind, but these are the important components on which the classical understanding of musical hearing is based. Having trained them, a person acquires the ability to hear and understand the melody. However, the question of whether a particular person has musical taste remains open.

The human brain has certain parts,which are responsible exclusively for the musical ear. This area is located in the auditory zone, and the more nerve endings it contains, the better a person's hearing is. It is possible to determine how things are with hearing in a particular person at home, without resorting to magnetic tomography. To do this, you can simply try to repeat the melody you heard, let it be the chorus from your favorite song. The main thing is to keep the rhythm. And even if the first time turned out to be a failure, you definitely shouldn’t panic, it’s better to spend your energy on hard work and train more.

How to start hearing music?

Developing an ear for music is a task that is much easier to handle than it seems. The ideal option is to go to solfeggio lessons with a professional teacher. The essence of this subject lies precisely in the development of hearing and musical memory. However, if this is not possible, you should stock up on a ton of patience and do it yourself. What does it take?

The first way is any musical instrument. This option is one of the most affordable and effective. Develops all of the above types of hearing. Do you want to train them to the maximum? Learn to play any instrument. Ever dreamed of learning to play the guitar since childhood? It's time to do it. Thanks to the lessons, you will not only remember by ear how each note should sound, but also perfectly train your sense of rhythm and finally begin to understand music. This option is suitable for especially patient and those who have enough time

• The second way is singing. The easiest and most obvious way to develop an ear for music. This will require the presence of a piano, but do not be alarmed if there is none at home. Fortunately, we live in a modern world that gives us the opportunity to take advantage of free online versions, which are a dime a dozen on the Internet. Ear development begins with scales, play and sing them daily with the piano. When the skill is perfected and you feel confident with the scales, proceed to the next step - intervals, chords or melodies. It is important to overcome shyness in yourself, if you do not get rid of this feeling, then classes will be meaningless. Choose a time for classes so that no one is at home.
• The third way is exercises that are very reminiscent of meditation. This method perfectly helps to develop attentiveness to sounds, the ability to listen to melodies and understand them. Used to roam the street with headphones on? It's time to stop this business. Leave your headphones at home, go for a walk without them, trying to listen to all the sounds coming through. It does not matter what it will be, fragments of dialogues, sounds of a big city, the noise of forest trees, the crunch of snow or the rustle of leaves. Only by paying attention to all the surrounding sounds, you will understand how many of them are around. Such an exercise can be done at home, do not be too lazy to spend five minutes a day to listen to the noise of the water, the buzzing of the refrigerator, the noise from the street, the barking of the neighbor's dog.
• The fourth way is to listen to the voices. Let even an ordinary conversation with a person becomeexercise. Listen to the voice of your interlocutor, try to remember its sound. Such a manipulation can also be performed when watching movies, remembering the voices of the actors. After that, you can conduct a small exam, try to guess the actor only by voice.
• The fifth way is to think while listening to music, learn to hear it. Almost every modern person will say that he listens to music every day, on the way to work/school/shopping. For many, this is a way to get distracted, and it's great that you can listen to music and not think about anything. But we set a goal to develop an ear for music, so now you need to not just listen to music, but try to hear it, delve into the essence and structure. Practice distinguishing musical instruments from each other. Such an exercise not only contributes to the development of hearing, but also teaches you to hear music more subtly, noticing all the details, which will give even more pleasure when listening. Later you will want more complex compositions, which is great, because it only means that there is progress and you are not standing still.
• Sixth way - learn to feel the rhythm. For this purpose, a device such as a metronome does an excellent job. Working with this device is extremely simple - tap the rhythm that the metronome sets with your finger or hand. As soon as you start to cope with this exercise perfectly, you should move on to recognizing the rhythm in melodies. You should start with compositions in which there are drums; it is much easier to recognize the rhythm by this musical instrument. The most difficult level in rhythm recognition is classical music. Not less thanAn effective answer to the question of how to develop an ear for music is dancing. You can practice both in the classroom with a trainer, and at home on your own. While dancing, try to catch the rhythm and move to the beat of the music.

Seventh way - look for the source of the sound. You can ask someone from the household to participate in this exercise. The essence of the exercise is as follows: close your eyes and ask your assistant to make sounds from different parts of the room. Your task is to guess where the sound is coming from. Such a simple task is more like a child's game, but the task becomes much more complicated if you ask an assistant to go outside the room and move around the apartment. If there is no assistant, you can just go outside, sit on a bench in a busy place, listen to the sounds around you

Hearing test

In order to reliably determine whether a person has an ear for music, you should contact the teacher, it will not be easy to do it yourself. Hearing is diagnosed according to the following criteria:

• Feeling the rhythm.
• Score intonation.
• Development of musical memory.

Exercise

Checking musical ear and sense of rhythm consists in the following exercise: the teacher taps a certain rhythm with any object, and the subject must repeat it as reliably as possible. If the rhythm was reproduced flawlessly, this indicates the presence of hearing. Exercises can be made more difficultto determine the level of development of hearing.

Evaluation of intonation is that the teacher sings a familiar melody and asks the subject to repeat it. This exercise also reveals vocal abilities. But this exercise is not the main indicator in the hearing test. Even with a weak and not very clear voice, a person can develop excellent hearing, which will allow him to master playing any instrument without any problems.

Still wondering how to test your ear for music? There is an answer: musical memory or the so-called game of hide and seek. The exercise is extremely simple: the subject turns his back to the instrument, while the teacher presses any of the keys. The task of the person being checked is to find the same key from memory. If a person is able to accurately guess all the notes when pressing a key and listening to the sound, he has an excellent ear for music.

Earing training is a complex process that is accompanied by the inclusion of the brain, and not mindless exercises. This means that even the acquisition of elementary knowledge about music already contributes to the development of musical abilities. Start with simple musical notation, study classical music. The richness of sounds, harmony, the sound of instruments - what is so necessary for those who wish to develop an ear for music.