| LearnJazzPiano.com archives: ear training | |
| Paul -- 03/03/2004, 12:11:35 -- #2037 | |
| I am looking for some sort of book or course for ear training geared for jazz players. I guess I'm OK with the basics like interval recognition and I can sing solfeo for basic diatonic music. I guess what I hope to do is improve my transribing skills (which I'm working on) Any recomendations? Thanks, Paul | |
| Sam -- 03/03/2004, 12:39:07 -- #2038 | |
| I'd recommend "A New Approach to Ear Training for Jazz Musicians" by David Baker, published by Warner Bros. This book, which comes with a helpful accompanimental CD, emphasizes singing of jazz patterns, scales, arpeggios etc., which is arguably the best method of ear training. But although this book is nicely organized and systematically layed out, I don't think any book is really essential to develop your ear. Transcribing is extremely helpful, as is developing the ability to sing anything and everything you play. So, sing heads to tunes, any scales you're working on, transcribed solos, etc. Singing is so important because it forces you to internally hear what you are doing, in a way that instrumental and theoretical practice do not. For example, any joe schmo can learn with time to play an appropriate diminished scale over a dominant 7b9 voicing, but you'd be surprised at how many players would be unable to sing such a scale, which only means that they don't really hear it internally. Depending on how far you want to go with this, I would also recommend eventually practicing singing atonal classical music (Schoenberg, Webern, etc.). This stuff gets extremely tricky, but will help you develop monster ears. The point of all this is not to develop your voice, so don't worry too much about tone quality and all that, but rather to develop your inner ear and internal pitch recognition. Do these things and I guarantee your transcription and aural skills will skyrocket. Good luck. Peace, Sam | |
| smg -- 03/03/2004, 13:21:45 -- #2040 | |
| Check out both www.good-ear and the file "Developing...." over at 360 degrees.... | |
| Ryan -- 03/03/2004, 17:16:29 -- #2054 | |
| To all those folks who are "Macintosh" users, I'd also highly recommend checking out http://www.jazzcomp.com This is the website of one of my current professors. In addition to playing and writing, he writes really cool software apps (a few of which are specifically for ear training.) Go to the RonJam music portion of the site and then "Software" and try out the "Modal X" download. The downloads are FREE too, although you can purchase an updated copy which works out some of the bugs. I can't recommend it enough, and there are all kinds of parameters you can set while working with it. Even if you're not a Mac user, there's a simple HTML version at his site as well which will get you through hearing 3-5 part chords. Oh, on a side note, if you're looking for a really in-depth jazz composition book in the "modal" style or just want another way of getting into the modes in general, check out his books! | |
| Paul -- 03/05/2004, 08:17:09 -- #2130 | |
| Thanks for the recomendations Paul | |
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