What's the first step in developing great hearing?

Question

Hearing is the most fundamental building block of learning music, but what if I can't tell what the notes are, or how they relate to each other?

Answer 1

The first step in developing great hearing is to consciously cultivate a habit of listening to high-quality music. Additionally, if you read and try to understand formal or harmonic analyses of the music you listen to, you will gradually develop your own way of listening and interpreting music.

Answer 2

I'll echo Mark and say great question! I think another super important concept are musical scales. These are essentially groups/sequences of notes that have a specific, common sound when played together. So for example, there's the major scale, the minor scale, (and about a thousand more!). Once you really get familiar with an established pitch (perhaps A natural from a tuning fork, like Mark said), I'd strongly recommend then going into scales. Again, a scale is essentially just a sequential group of notes that fit together well.

Often as beginning musicians we will start with the major scale, as it is the basis of just about everything Western music-wise. You can then start comparing the space between notes in this major scale - in other words, the intervals between notes. This is how you starting relating notes together. For example - let's compare the first two notes of the major scale. The gap - or the interval - between them is called a second. What you could do is play these two notes back to back, singing them and internalizing them. After a while, try to do it without a piano (or some kind of instrument). That's when you know it's really internalized.

I hope this helps! I'd be happy to clarify anything.

Answer 3

That's a great question!

One trick that my ear-training teacher in college used and that I still use is what I call 'the A test'.

You have to start somewhere, so how about one note?! Every class, when we would walk in, he would point to a random student and say 'John - sing me an A'. We were all expected to develop the ability to pull an A out of the air without listening to anything. Here's how I learned to do that:

First, purchase a tuning fork on the pitch A 440. This is the universal tuning note for all orchestras, so it's a great place to start. The tuning fork is small enough that you can carry it around with you all the time. Then, occasionally, throughout the day, just tap the fork on something and hold it to your ear and try to hum the note.

Then, after you finish humming, try to hold onto the note in your mind. After several seconds or a minute, listen to the fork again, and see if it matches the pitch you're still imagining in your head. If so, great! now try again after a couple of minutes.. a few minutes... half an hour... an hour... a day!!

At first you may not be able to keep the pitch in your mind very long, but the more you do it, the longer you will be able to keep that reference point. After a while of dreading being called on to sing that A, I started to get it right, and eventually I was able to sing an A whenever I wanted -I could simply call it up in my mind and it was there! If you play an instrument, you can do the same thing - any time you are playing, play the A and hum it and see if you can keep imagining the pitch.

Give it a go and see how you do!