Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Aural skills

The thread about eartraining live vs. computer got me thinking about aural skills. What would be useful skills to have?

Eartraining software I've seen tends to focus in these: identify melodic and harmonic intervals, identify chord types, identify scale types. Working with a teacher, one could add being able to sing a given interval, arpeggiated chord, and scale.

I would add: Given a chord, sing its root. Given a chord, sing all the notes in it. Given a chord progression, sing where it's heading. Given a melody, sing the scale it's in, or at least the tonic.

Also: be able to hear if your piano is in tune or not. I know, by the time you can hear it's out of tune it's past time to call the tuner. But hearing that it's out of tune is useful if it goes out of tune faster than usual, and you have to call the tuner sooner than your usual schedule.

I've left out other staples of aural/singing skills, like: being able to match pitch, or repeat a short melody. These are basic, but unlike all the other skills I've listed, I can actually do them. No wait, I can also sing a major arpeggio (e.g. C E G C), sing an ascending octave, fifth, and fourth, and sing a major scale. And I can often identify if a piece is in a major or minor key (but don't ask me how I do it, or to sing the particular parts that are saying "major" or "minor" to me: I certainly can't say, "listen here: that's the lowered third.")

What other skills would you add to this list? Which can you do, and which would you like to learn to do better? And in what ways, if any do you relate this to playing piano?

Good point! Do you know anyone who can actually do everything you mention in the latter paragraph?

It's the simultaneous hearing of the vertical and horizontal tonal elements all at once and in time from a visual schema that really impresses me. Can people really learn to hear melody, harmony and the progression in their movement just from looking at notation? It would seem they could, but is this something that can really be taught?

If so, I can only imagine the amount of perseverance and patience it would take on both the student and teacher's part. A great idea for an ongoing thread might be one that supported people in this effort and allowed them to compare their ear-training experiences and discuss this ongoing process and their progress with it.

Interesting idea, but I didn't mean these aural skills from looking at notation. I meant in response to hearing. So for example, on hearing a chord, being able to sing its root, or all the notes in it. Or on hearing a melody, being able to aurally hear and sing the tonic of the key it's in.

I'm focussing more on eartraining (understanding what you're hearing) than on sightsinging (converting notation into sound).

Yes.



Yes.



Of course. But that it so for anything, isn't it?

May I ask what you mean? I ask because to me what you write seems like trying to learn to understand a language without learning to speaking it as well.

I hadn't thought of it that way, landorrano.

The parallel I would draw is perhaps with speaking French. I can read French, both silently and aloud, quite well. I can speak and write French adequately. But my aural comprehension lags way behind my other skills. So if I were to study French again now, what I would care most about would be practice in aural comprehension. This might incidentally use the other skills, for example taking dictation or engaging in conversation. But the focus would be aural skills.

Are you saying that in music, if I learned to sing these various things -- major, minor, seventh, diminished, augmented arpeggios, different types of scales -- that that would improve my skill at identifying chords and tonics upon hearing them?

Learning to sing these things could be based on notation, or on repeating an aural example, and I think of the skills to do those (sight-based or ear-based) as being related, but separate. So their bearing on my ability to identify an aural example, or parse a chord into its separate tones aurally, or identify the tonic of a melody, might also be different.

The difference from my French example is that I don't sightsing very well. I can read rhythms easily, but getting the (relative) pitches is harder for me, except for a few simple types of melodies. After I've learned a tune by ear, that's a different story, then the notation easily reminds me of what I should sing. But I can't go straight from notation to accurate singing without an interlude of hearing it first. Anyway, it may be that I need to learn to produce these types of arpeggios and scales first on the way to being able to hear them well.

Thanks for getting me thinking about this!

P88, I started backward from most people. I had a simple kind of movable Do solfege from some primary grade. The type of exercises we were given gave us an underlying sense of function though I only realized that many years later when taking formal theory. For example, in singing Ti (movable Do) the seventh is sung closer than a semitone from the tonic so that you feel a strong movement to the tonic which is part of V7-I. In a capella music you do not have actual chords to give you the sense of movement.

From there I tended to sing what was written in even piano music, simply because I didn't have the real skills. Singing broken chords and hearing those various things mentally even without music were normal. So yes, those things can be done.

Much later there was a 1940's harmony book by Horwood. He suggested that students learn to hear what they write, and he suggested that you start with only one voice and keep practising. So at least at one time this was taught. It seems that the computer programs and modern systems give an ear training where you listen to something an identify it. The opposite side is to try to produce something and check if you are right. I suspect that it's good to go from both sides. I am relatively weak in recognizing and naming things, and stronger if I can sing or play them (sometimes in my head). That is because of how I learned them.

Maybe that ties in with your foreign language experience. You've given me something to think about.

keystring, thank you for your thoughts on this. I hate eartraining programs, because for me they're an endless cycle of "hear an interval, guess the interval, fail to guess correctly, remain clueless about how to guess better." Other people may have cleverer ears than I do. This is purely personal -- I'm sure eartraining programs work well for many people.

I just thought of an idea: play a pitch on the piano. Sing that pitch. Sing another pitch. Find that pitch on the piano. Name the interval you just sang. Sing it several more times. Then start again. Repeat as often as you like. I'd do this starting from the same pitch for a long time before varying the starting pitch, just to give some stability to the process. I'd practice both ascending and descending.

What I like about this idea is that there's no guessing (except for the hunt and peck of finding on the piano the note I sang, but I don't mind that, it doesn't make me feel like a failure). It's just purely exploratory, but in a way so as to make discoveries, like, "oh, that feeling and sound in my voice corresponds to such and such interval." There's no pressure even to remember the intervals, just to play around experimenting and naming.

If I might summarise: PianoStudent88 wants to HEAR music and recognise what is being heard, to the point of reproducing it (or at least being able to) either by voice or piano.

Starr Keys wants to go from the score to singing, understanding and recognising without an intermediate stage on the piano.

Hearing sound and understanding it or recognising it is easily learnt.
Reproducing sound on an instrument or the voice is also fairly easily learnt.
Going from or to the score is harder as notation is an intermedate (and somewhat inadequate) language. It's a question of knowing how to go about it and then making the effort.


Edit: Sorry, this is a little out of sequence as I had to respond to the doorbell during the typing process.

Sort of. What I really want to be able to do is listen to music and be able to tell things like: is this tonal, polytonal, modal, atonal? Has this modulated? Was that a deceptive cadence or not (that is, have we returned to the tonic, or done something unexpected)? What kinds of chords are being used: is this harmonized with bog-standard major chords, or is color like minor, diminished, augmented, or extended chords being added? Does this feel like a phrase end with a cadence: that is, as I hear a penultimate chord, do I strongly expect to go somewhere next, and then does the music meet my expectations, or surprise me?

Basically, all the kinds of things that I can do using the score to do harmonic analysis, I'd like to be able to do by ear from just listening to the music, without the score.

My idea is that to test my hearing, I would reproduce the notes by voice. For example, how can I tell where a progression is tending to if I can't even hear the roots of the chords?

Reproducing them by piano would be amazing, but is vastly outside my abilities at the present, and would be the subject of a whole different thread.


I'm not sure Starr Keys wants to go from the score. As I understand it, Starr Keys is a by ear player and composes his own music. Funny, though, that he expressed so much astonishment at the idea of being able to audiate from notation. To me, audiating from notation seems much more feasible than being able to analyze from sound alone.

I wonder if our ideas about what is harder is influenced by how we play music: Starr Keys, by ear, so notation seems hard; me, from notation, so purely aural skills seem hard.


Here I completely disagree. I can hear sound, and hum back melodies. But as far as describing harmonically or intervallically what's going on from sound alone, or hearing the quality of a chord, or identifying what its root is, I have very little ability. I also have little ability to play by ear. On the other hand, give me a score and I can analyze it and play it (for music within my technical abilities), no problem.

So for me, what I would like to learn about is how to improve my aural skills, which are much less developed than my reading skills. (Except in the realm of sightsinging, but pace landorrano, I think that may be a somewhat separate issue. Or maybe not.)

No; Starr Keys was describing that process only. An inapt choice of words on my part.



Are you disagreeing that's these four skills are easily learnt? Or that it's just a matter of knowing how to go about it? Or the whole quotation?


Recognising the four main chord colourations (major, minor, aug, dim) isn't difficult.
Sevenths aren't difficult. Extended chords are only harder because they're less common.
Recognising the four cadences (perfect, plagal, interrupted/deceptive, or imperfect) isn't difficult.
Modulation without a cadence is...hmmm...I can tell when it shifts but not always where to.
Modality? I can tell minor from major but not Dorian from Aeolian or Mixolydian from Ionian. If they were used more commonly or I spent more time bothering about it, maybe.

I believe if it helped my playing I could learn that stuff. I strongy doubt it's difficult to do.

I can hear an unfamilar (diatonic) phrase, write it out, extend it to four lines with appropriate cadences and harmonise it like a Bach chorale in SATB without reference to a musical instrument.

It took me about a year.


You stretch me, PianoStudent88. Thank you so much.

PS88, it’s clear from your many posts on and around the subject that you’re keen to get to grips with your ear skills and I’m sure if you maintain your determination you’ll succeed. Quite what the most efficient route might be is still anyone’s guess and maybe it always will be; there are perhaps too many variables each with a metric too hard to measure to establish a 'best' way and in any case we don't share the same aptitudes.

Would it be fair to say your current approach leans towards a want of understanding what is going on by way of, for example, harmonic analysis and interval recognition? Have you tried instead just the ‘fumbling about’ method of hammering out a tune that you ‘know’ by pure trial and error. I’m thinking of something light, popular and not too sophisticated. Pop and light music is littered with suitable material and there must be plenty of tunes that are familiar enough to you to provide ready and immediate raw material for the exercise.

I’d also recommend using file-sharing software to get hold of some of the public domain material, the folk and older pop songs often found in the older real-books and use these as simple chord/melody reading exercises. Make it simple. Undecorated melody in the RH and in the LH play the chords in root position or play around with inversions if you want to. If you were to focus, say, on tunes just in the key of C for a week or so I’d be very surprised if this didn’t quickly sharpen your instincts for chord character recognition and typical pop chord structures and generally honing up a lot of the skills you’re trying to acquire at the moment.

I feel the important thing is to relax and treat the objective as recreation rather than study, to familiarise yourself through brute repetition rather than learn via principle.

Ok, time for me to be more precise.

Hearing music: easy for me.

Understanding it: easy perhaps at a visceral level for some types of music (as witness anyone who has been affected by a movie score) but hard for me at a more sophisticated level or for other types of music.

Reproducing sound on an instrument: hard for me, if you mean playing back by ear something I've heard.

Reproducing sound by voice: relatively easy for me, usually.

Going from the score to music: moderately easy for me on piano,  very easy for me on flute, and hard for me with voice if I haven't heard it before.

Notating something I've heard: just about impossible for me to get the (relative) pitches unless I can do a lot of hunt and peck on the piano to get the melody, and even then I may not be accurate.  And forget trying to catch the harmony.  Notating rhythm is a lot easier for me.

As far as learning these things: I don't agree that any of these things are uniformly easy.  For example, it was easy for me to learn how to read music.  But lots of people find it very hard.  Some people seem to find it easy to hear intervals or chord types; I find this very difficult and, based on my failed attempts so far to learn it, it will take me a lot more work than it takes many people.

I'm sure there are ways of going about this that help with learning these, but I'm not entirely sure that the same method will work for everyone.


These are all difficult for me.


I can't tell when it shifts.  So the big thing in a sonata -- wow, it shifted to the dominant the first time around and now it's staying in the tonic -- well, I don't hear that.


Can you hear that something is modal though, i.e. neither major or minor, without necessarily identifying the exact mode?


For me, it seems very difficult.  Curiously, when I was writing the OP, "Nights in White Satin" was on the radio, and I thought, "minor" and, guess what, I was right!  So I have some ability at major vs. minor, but I have no idea how.


See, now there's something that seems to me would be easy to do (except I'd need the melody written out).  When I first studied music theory, the instrument was really an afterthought to me.  I'm an ace at reading notation and applying simpler rules of harmony.


Back atcha!

Any ideas for how to learn these things that to you seem easy?

Easy bit first: can I hear modalities?
There are seven modes. Ionian is our diatonic major. Lydian and Mixolydian are also major. I can't tell them apart and name them though I know when I'm listening to Carlos Santana I'm listening to Mixolydian not diatonic because I'm familiar with the 'feel' of it.

The minor modalites I can tell from the majors but not from each other. Aeolian is our diatonic minor, Dorian and Phrygian are the others. Dorian is frequently used in Jazz and I know Chopin uses it but I can't remember where off-hand.

Locrian is the 'ugly' mode and I haven't heard enough in it to know whether or not I'd recognise it.

And the hard bit: How to learn.
Dire tonic's suggestion seems a good one. Stick to one key for a while. I learnt most of my harmony from the perspective of a guitar. Not many people are aware that it is a 'tuned' instrument (like a tin-whistle is tuned to a key, as opposed to a chromatic recorder). The guitar works best in a very restricted number of keys (the sharped ones - you raise a pitch by fretting but you can't lower it). Consequently most of my ear training was in C and G for a good while. And when I was working out the chords to different songs I put everything in Roman Numerals for comparison and consequently played everything back in C or G - I was looking for models from a song writing point of view.

Further, the guitar is more easily adapted to chordal harmony. I've never really used the piano for rock (save Imagine or Elton John's Funeral for a Friend and such). So I don't do 'chords' on the piano the way I do on guitar.

Rock is harmonically much simpler than classical so stay with that for a while for your listening skills. I'm sure you can tell a major chord from a minor one played at the piano one after another. It doesn't take that long to recognise it on its own. Stay with songs that have simple diatonic chords (I-ii-iii-IV-V-vi and V7). Once the ear starts getting 'tuned in' progress will be made much more quickly.

It's late here. I'll consider this overnight and see if I can come up with more ideas.

Thank you, dire tonic and zrtf90.

Per instructions, I have worked out a tune (The Star Spangled Banner) and found chords for it. Yippee.

I gained my minimal sight-singing ability for pitches over about ten years of paying close attention to the notation and the sounds, so you have led me to feel some confidence that over time and paying attention I can improve at hearing harmony.

Inspired by the Am D7 G of the anthem chords, I'm now motivated to learn a typical way of voicing a ii V7 I progression. And although I can't tell you why, when I play it, it sounds very familiar. I couldn't go the other way yet, and listen to a progression and say "oh yes that's two five one" but it's nice to realize I have some sort of familiarity with basic harmonic building blocks. Plus I just now played three random chords, and I can recognize that they don't sound like ii V7 I. So that's something.

Thanks everyone who answered my questions. They were very helpful. I'm still not able to inhabit the site and be at the computer as often as I'd like, but I do want to take a moment to clear up a few things.

1. I am not a 100% by-ear player. I do read music and I wish to get better at it, for several reasons, the most important being:

a. I think its a great way to study, understand and pick up ideas about arranging.
b. Playing from the sheet or embellishing off it can offer more immediate gratification and pleasure while working on honing an original arrangement and improvisation skills.

2. The last time either I or my husband checked, I was a "she" and not a "he", which could also explain I suppose why, according to Youtube Analytics, most of the hits I get for my videos are women and not men. lol

I'm glad you've noticed some progress, PianoStudent88.


Actually, I think you probably could, you just don't know it yet. There are only so many ways of constructing a perfect cadence. You'll probably know it's not plagal immediately and I'm dead sure you know a final cadence from non-final. However...

After giving this some thought, I have the impression that your knowledge of harmony is far in advance of your aural ability. This presents a little difficulty in that you'll have to settle for simpler harmonic material while your ear catches up.

I suggest you start picking out melodies of familiar songs. Hymns and carols tend to be fairly easy (diatonic) or simple folk songs. When your accuracy improves at the keyboard and you're not hunting for notes, start writing them out in staff notation instead. You WILL get better at this just by trying. Don't be in a hurry. Any progress is still progress.
As your accuracy improves, so will your confidence. Soon you'll be able to add wider melodic leaps and more chromaticism.

Alongside the melodic training start picking out simple harmony. Songs in the standard three chord trick; C, F, G or G, C, D. Start with something like Evangeline (The Band, Emmy Lou Harris) or Presley's Don't Be Cruel. You'll soon get familiar with when to go to the dominant and when to go to the sub-dominant.
Add the minors slowly. C-Am-F-G has been used for any number of songs but Runaround Sue (or nearly anything by Dion) is a start. Try Buddy Holly's Rave On or Presley's Marie's the Name for slightly different progressions.

Just get the feel of when to change and what to change to. Put the knowledge on later. Believe you'll get there. It's difficult to put into words but you want to get to a stage of knowing and recognising a progression or cadence and (later) putting a name on it ('oh, THAT's what it's called') rather than learning what a particular cadence is and wondering if you'll recognise it. Does that make sense?

If I can use chess as an analogy, you get trounced by a computer on the simplest levels while you're becoming familiar with the rules and the moves of the pieces and you'll be beaten long before you get to the end-game. There's a steep learning curve while you're approaching the computer's lowest level and while you are MAKING progress you're not SEEING any. Then suddenly, everything starts coming together and you'll be raising the level every other game up to a moderate club player's level.

Music is the same. You won't SEE much progress until you've reached a certain level. But once your ear gets over the initial hurdles and you can start trusting it, it will soon catch up with your knowledge.

Sorry for getting your gender and degree of by-ear wrong, Starr Keys.

Thank you for the further ideas, zrtf90. You are right, my head knowledge of harmony far outpaces my ear knowledge. I don't mind starting simple. I don't actually know any of the songs you mentioned, but I have a list of other songs I know, plus I'm sure trawling through my favorite albums will turn up more.