Watch on YouTube Ear Training With White Noise by Graham English
Watch on Vimeo Ear Training With White Noise by Graham English
Watch on Viddler Ear Training With White Noise by Graham English

Always be training your ears. Listen with an instrument or tuning fork nearby. Figure out what you’re hearing. And if you can’t do it in the moment, because you don’t have the right tools or whatever, make a note and remember to figure it out later.

If you can identify the skills you want and take action to acquire them, then you’ll improve.

Or, just let go and listen for fun without trying to deconstruct anything. We often forget to do that.

The virtual barber shop is fun! You’ll need headphones. I remember experiencing something like this at Disney World as a kid.

Phantom words creates the effect of a single word using separate sounds, demonstrating how your brain constructs meaning out of meaningless noise.

Temporal induction of speech shows how our brains fill in gaps when data is missing.

The scale illusion demonstrates how our brain groups notes together. See this image for the notation of what’s being played and what you are probably hearing.

Phantom melodies demonstrates how our brain picks out melodies from patterns at high-speeds.

Have fun!

By far the most popular and most controversial post of 2007 was The Zen Of Attraction. I’m surprised at the attention it received because I wrote it as an aside. Some people loved it and some people hated it. But what was most interesting for me was how many people hated not the article, but me. I mean these were just simple ideas that are totally debatable. This post led me to define some comment rules that include no personal attacks. I’m willing to debate ideas but not whether I’m a good person or not. It was a very interesting experience!

The second most popular post was iQuickTwitter – My Quicksilver + Twitter + iChat + Growl Hack. This little app got some serious link love from TUAW, Ars Technica, and many other fantastic blogs. And a big reason why I didn’t blog as much as I did in 2006 was because of Twitter. If I ever had something short and simple to say, rather than try to develop it into at least 250 words, which I previously believed warranted a blog post, I would just post it to Twitter, which has a limit of 140 characters. I think my strategy will change some in 2008. My new Lifestream category will probably see a lot more action whenever I find that 140 characters is not enough. The most significant change is that I won’t keep such a tightly controlled niche blog. The only thing tying this blog together is that I am writing it, not the subject matter. So if I feel like saying something, this blog will take priority.

Along similar lines as iQuickTwitter were my many posts on automation. Some of them were conceptual, like Automation As Part Of An Integral Life Practice and Automating The Quality Of Your Attention. While others were specific and geeky, like IM Status: Update Your Skype, iChat, Or Adium Status With Quicksilver, Top 5 AppleScript Productivity Hacks for WordPress Bloggers and Podcasters, and Blogging With Quicksilver And AppleScript. I’ve really grown to see automation as an important part of life that I need to revisit again and again.

Some of my favorite songwriting articles were Applying The 80-20 Rule To Your Songwriting, my Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast, The Secret Alchemy Of Songwriting, 5 Sure Fire Ways To Kick-Start The Songwriting Habit, Rewriting Song Titles For Practice And Inspiration, and What Makes a Good Song? My biggest disappointment of 2007 was the small amount of completed songs. I finished only about half a dozen songs and published just one of them, which I’m quite proud of, “When The Wall Falls Down.”

I also didn’t write about ear training or music theory nearly as much as I did in 2006. But I have a few favorites, such as How To Use Tension And Release In Your Melodies, my Absolute Pitch Ear Training Podcast, Playing Outside: The Dominant 7 Pentatonic Scale, and Ear Training or Listening Practice?

Two great moments of 2007 were getting my new MacBook Pro and iPhone. The new Mac inspired a whole new series of podcasts called Graham English Talks and introduced my own videos, like The Best Of Dwight Schrute Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. The iPhone inspired Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies For Your iPhone and made my tech life much more streamlined.

2007 was definitely a year of social networking. Twitter, Facebook, Last.fm, Stumbleupon, and many other social networks occupied a large part of my time online. And there were many benefits like making new friends, reconnecting with old friends, finding a larger reach for my articles and music, and discovering new forms of self-expression. It confirms how important relationships truly are.

Which leads me to the very best of 2007, You! My life wouldn’t be nearly as fulfilling without the special presence of you. The support of my readers and listeners has made the tough times easier and the good times even better. I sincerely hope that we stay connected through 2008. Thanks for sticking with me through 2007. w00t!

Sometimes, all it takes is a little hands-on mentoring to take you over the top. Visit www.AbsolutePitchUniversity.com today.

You can find out more about his life and music at his official site and on Wikipedia. His music will be missed but never forgotten.

One of my favorite albums featuring Joe Zawinul as a sideman is Why Am I Treated So Bad? by Cannonball Adderley. The title track features a dirty wurlitzer solo by Joe. To me, the best part is the audience participation. It’s a deep conversation between musician and audience.

Another great track on that album is Mini Mama. The transcription I’m posting below is of Cannonball Adderley’s alto sax solo. This is another soulful blues that gets the audience shouting.

Download the transcription: Mini Mama Alto Sax Solo

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Off Bryan Adams’ 1980 self-titled debut album, Remember is probably the best known song. I’m not sure who played the solo, it could be Gary Breit, Tommy Mandel, or Bill Payne.

Take a listen:

The solo builds in these ways:

• By increasing the octave each pass of the motif.
• By gradually bringing in 16th notes.
• It peaks melodically at the end of bar 12 with the highest note of the solo, B.
• It peaks rhythmically in bars 15 and 16 by a repeating 16th note pattern lasting a full two bars.

What caught my ear when I first heard the solo, besides the sound of the synth, was the 16th note pattern in bar 10. It’s very guitar like and a slick departure from the original motif. It’s also perfectly placed to lead into the beautiful and simple melody in bars 11 and 12.

Download the transcription:

Remember Synth Solo

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Today, I decided to open up my thesaurus and see if I could improve my auditory vocabulary. Beginning with the word “sound,” I was led to a synonym “sonance,” which I don’t believe I have ever used before. Drilling down further, I settled on a sound word to explore, “ring.”

Ringing is an adjective in the class of resonance.

resonance
noun
the quality in a sound of being deep, full, and reverberating : the resonance of his voice.
Physics: the reinforcement or prolongation of sound by reflection from a surface or by the synchronous vibration of a neighboring object.

Ringing is having or emitting a clear resonant sound. If we think of sound as pictured by a waveform, we can imagine visually seeing the sound’s amplitude moving between a positive and negative extreme, or peaks and valleys. This is a perfect metaphor for visualizing how language interacts with sound. Words that describe sound will have antonyms that describe it’s opposite pole. The word “clear” implies that sound can also be “muffled.” Therefore, with any description of sound, we can put that description somewhere on a continuum.

Clear ← → Muffled
Audible ← → Inaudible

Here’s a list of words to describe the sound quality of ringing:

ringing, pealing, tolling, belling, sounding, chiming; tinkling, tinkly, tingling, jingling, dinging, donging, knelling, clangor, clanking, clanging, clink, tink, ting, ping, chink, clank, clang, jangle, jingle-jangle

Now, take a moment with each word and imagine a sound that has this quality. How does “chink” sound different from “clank”? How does “jingle” sound different than “jangle”?

Taking the time to experience these sounds will help you to memorize the words that describe them which will help you not only communicate a sound to someone else, but to have a more refined experience of sound yourself. Where most people will only hear something ring, you will know that it is actually a ding.

Ear training has often been half-jokingly, half-seriously referred to as “ear straining.” And I can understand why if it’s something that you feel forced to do, like doing sit ups. Why can’t washboard abs just come with the package?

But a listening practice isn’t something you have to motivate yourself to do every morning. It’s something you get to do all the time. It’s the equivalent of eating whatever you want, whenever you want… without gaining weight!

Your ears are always on. All you have to do is start paying attention. The world is filled with sounds for you to soak up. Your musical ears are hungry for stimulation. It’s time to give them what they want.

Here’s just a few things you can do to begin your listening practice.

First, just start listening unconditionally. We all daydream, so make these times of subconscious wandering into conscious sound expeditions. You’ll be amazed at all the different rhythms, counterpoints, and natural symphonies you will hear. If you can, close your eyes and just listen to the world around you and inside of you.

Second, think on media. Keep a few things with you at all times: music manuscript and a pen, a recording device, and a tuning fork of some kind. When you hear a note, figure out what it is. Teach yourself. Write a scale or a pattern and imagine what they sound like as you write them. Record rhythms and intervals and whatever else inspires you in the moment. Take a recess into the playground of sound. It will be fun and you’ll learn new things and reinforce what you already know.

Start a sound catalog. In a sound journal, begin to catalog all the different sounds and textures you hear. This will increase your “aural intelligence.” People who live bland lives have about a dozen different words that they use to describe their daily emotions. If you only have a dozen different words to describe what you hear, then it’s no wonder your musicianship is straining. But if you have a rich database of descriptive words in your musical vocabulary, then your experience of sound will be rich and abundant. Grab a thesaurus and your favorite album and have some fun.

Stop for a moment and think about these two musicians. One musician trains their ear for 15 minutes every day or so. The other musician actively listens all the time. Which is a better musician?

Answer: The musician with more aural experience. Go get some!

Basically, you just copy the text files to your iPod’s notes folder and copy the MP3s to your music library. Then, in the iPod’s notes menu, you navigate to the main iTheory note and you can test intervals, scales, chords, and absolute pitch.

I think I’m going to hack into mine and personalize it a bit more. It’s really cool how you can reference audio in a note. I wish I knew before that you can do that. My mind is racing with ideas to use this trick.

You can practice speed whenever you hear a song on the radio, when you’re at your instrument, or just in your head. The key is to be relaxed, yet alert, and set the intention of your practice session to improve your speed. The most accurate form of measurement would be a stop watch or timer of some sort. You could measure the time it takes to get a single answer right or how long it takes to get a group of answers right. Then try to beat your previous measurements. Do this with intervals, chords, pitches, and anything else musical that you want to be able to identify.

Even though you are focusing on speed, don’t worry about how long it will take to meet your goals. That’s not really the point of this practice. The point is to use whatever level of improvement you’ve gained to make better music. Having goals and setting dates can be important, but don’t lose sight of the big picture.

Practice so that you can make better music.

• How To Be An Expert
• Your Goals As Waveform
• What is RSS and Why Do I Care?
• The World’s Most Important 6-Sec Drum Loop
• Absolute Pitch Power Blogathon
• Can Hit Songs Really Be Reduced To Science? I Mean, Really?
• An official blogging-songwriter birthday weekend…
• Links for 2006-06-10
• Links for 2006-06-05
• Links for 2006-06-02
• Any Tips On Guitar Tuning, Ear And Pitch Training?
• Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 08-22-06
• Links for 2006-03-27
• Learn Orchestration Free Online
• Absolute Pitch Ear Training Podcast 12-04-06
• How Do You Develop New And Interesting Chord Changes?
• Links for 2006-04-04
• Weekly Music Business Podcast
• Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 09-29-06
• Songwriting For Busy People

• Is Your Ear Suspect?
• Why Singing What You Hear Is Important To Your Ear Training
• Understanding The Art And Craft Of Absolute Pitch Hearing
• Shaolin Ear Training
• Hearing and Consciousness
• Absolute Pitch Ear Training Podcast 12-04-06
• Absolute Pitch Ear Training Podcast 10-06-06
• Absolute Pitch Ear Training Podcast 09-26-06
• Absolute Pitch Ear Training Podcast 08-14-06
• Absolute Pitch Ear Training Podcast 07-30-06
• Naked Pitch
• Ear Training Software and Freeware for Mac and PC
• Why Is Absolute Pitch More Refined Than Relative Pitch?
• The Ear Training You Do Today…
• Quit On A High Point
• Portals Into Absolute Pitch: Silence
• How To Hear Interval Quality Distinctions
• Ear Training With Your Cell Phone Ringtone
• Some Important Absolute Pitch Distinctions
• How To Be An Expert
• Ear Training Hack #3
• Ear Training Hacks 1-2

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Dick Grove has taught music to well over 25,000 musicians! He teaches stuff you won’t get in music school. And he understands how to give you a strong musical foundation so you don’t fall for the dangers of intellectualizing your music… and you can become a truly spontaneous musician.

Watch and learn…

• The six different ears a musician must have
• The “tree” approach to musicianship
• Why you should know at least some piano or keyboard
• The logic to being a spontaneous musician…

Click here to find out more about Dick Grove’s music theory and ear training.

Recognizing that C and F is a perfect fourth is a cognitive exercise. You have to think about it. Maybe only for a split-second, but you still have to translate your physical experience, a verb, into a mental object, a noun.

The experience of C and F is a physical experience. It is a physical vibration traveling through the air and affecting your physical ear. You, who knows the sound of a perfect fourth, and a non-musician, who doesn’t know the name of what they are hearing, still hears the exact same physical vibration coming through the air. That means that the cognitive part of your ear training obviously separates you from the non-musician.

Many musicians only take it that far. They get stuck in their heads. I’m sure you know musicians who seem to know a lot but still don’t have “that feel.”

So naming intervals and understanding music theory is done with the mind while experiencing sound is accomplished by the body. Both are very important.

Take a look at the word emotion. It means, with motion. When we talk about our emotions, we say “I feel…” You feel things in your body. When you sing a tone, you feel the experience in your body. It’s real on the gross level. Whereas the mind experiences things on a more subtle level. If I punch you in the gut, you really feel it. If I insult you, you experience it in a different way. Sometimes that experience will have correlates in the body. So they’re intertwined. But if I punch you, your mind has no choice but to follow your body’s commands. You keel over. If I insult you, you have the choice of ignoring me and directing your mind elsewhere.

If you’re only working on the cognitive, or mind, aspect of ear training and music theory, you’re missing a large chunk of the experience of sound. Singing what you hear brings what you are learning into the body so that you can embody your knowledge of music. It’s not just a theory or skill anymore. It’s part of your identity.

Therefore, you can improve your musicianship by singing, and embodying, everything you learn. Here’s a couple of practical exercises to try.

• Reach out to your instrument and play any two or more tones. Then sing them from the bottom up or top down.
• When you hear sounds that you would like to emulate, try emulating them with your voice first.

Got any exercises of your own to share?

The misconception lies in the implied cause and effect pattern that an activity can “make” another person respond in a certain way. It is also a pattern of universal generalization. It’s sloppy thinking brought on by sloppy language.

Life is never boring, but some people choose to be bored.
-Wayne Dyer

The reason I bring this up is because of the large amount of musicians who tell me that practicing is boring. Or ear training is boring. Or listening is boring. No, my friend, you are boring because you are looking at things in a boring way.

Curious people are seldom bored. Conversely, boring people are seldom curious.
-The Wizard of Ads

How exactly does practicing cause you to be bored? You are choosing this response when you train your ear. Would you like another choice?

The man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore.
-Samuel Butler

If you want to be the best, don’t you think you should learn how to make practicing fun? Do you actually believe that it’s possible to become a great musician without practice? Or do you believe the research that suggests practice makes perfect.

Only those who want everything done for them are bored.
-Billy Graham

I challenge you to look at your musical future in a new light. Would you like practicing to be something you look forward to? How can you be the kind of person who enjoys to ear train? How can you find joy in the simple act of listening?

The concept of boredom entails an inability to use up present moments in a personally fulfilling way.
-Wayne Dyer

You’ve got two choices. You can stop practicing and stop developing. Or you can continue to practice and continue to develop. Which will you choose?

When people are bored it is primarily with themselves.
-Eric Hoffer

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The good news is that people who weren’t fortunate enough to have learned absolute pitch at a very early age can learn to hear with absolute pitch through learning the craft of absolute pitch hearing. And with enough passion, dedication, and tenacity, you will also experience first hand the art of absolute pitch hearing.

The Craft of Absolute Pitch Hearing

Like any craft, the best way to learn is to get a teacher, study, and practice. It’s no different from learning to be a carpenter. First you learn the correct way to make things. With practice, you become good and your skills become second nature. Finally, you add your own twist and find your voice. Maybe you innovate new techniques. Most likely, you begin to understand the art of your craft.

The Art of Absolute Pitch Hearing

Nobody can give you this understanding. Art is discovered through curious personal exploration into the world of sound. It is ineffable. It is a deep knowing through experience. It is the vast and fundamental difference between listening and hearing.

Only time spent in the mystery of sound will teach you to understand the art of hearing.

I leave you with the words of a great artist:

All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.
-Pablo Picasso

And while I don’t like to go “off topic” in my blog too much, I felt I had to, given the significance this information could have on your ear training and musicianship — let alone your entire life.

So one the basic premises of accelerated learning is that your brain is in a state of peak performance when it’s vibrating at a certain frequency. And different frequencies get different results.

There are natural ways to achieve these states, like through meditation, relaxation, and controlled breathing exercises. And there are other ways to induce these brain states, like bio-feedback, hypnosis, and…

Brain Wave Entrainment

Bio-feedback can get pretty expensive. You either visit a bio-feedback lab, or buy costly equipment that can read your vital statistics. But even then, you need to learn *how* to get into these altered states.

Hypnosis scares most people. Not only that, you either need to spend many hours learning how to use self-hypnosis or spend lots of money on a trained hypnotherapist.

But brain wave entrainment is simple and affordable. You simply pop in a CD and your brain will synchronize to the entrainment frequency.

Using binaural beats was all the rage for a while. Lots of people were selling binaural beat CDs and some audio editors would even create them for you. But new research has shown a technique called “Isochronic Tones” to be even better.

Well, being into accelerated learning and brain/mind research, I was blown away when I got an email from one of my trusted mentors, Stephen Pierce. Whenever he sends me an email, I drop everything and read it. But this one got me more excited than usual.

I could repeat everything he said, but I’ll just let you find out for yourself why I’m so excited about Optimindzation. And, why I think it’s going to be an indispensable tool to you, the musician.

Believe me, this changes everything. Find out more here: Optimindzation

In 1973 he founded the world-renowned Grove School of Music in Los Angeles and guided this highly regarded institution into the top rank of leading contemporary music schools, mainly on the concepts and methods included in some 70 music education books he authored during this period.

Dick Grove was very active in the music education field, creating many of the courses for the “School Without Walls”, as well as products for Grove/Rasch Music Education Systems. These products are based on his 20+ years of classroom experience in the fields of harmony & theory, keyboard, eartraining, improvisation, composition, arranging, orchestration, songwriting and contemporary musical styles.

Dick Grove passed away on Dec 26, 1998.

He will be remembered forever by all of his students and friends.

Dick Grove’s Credits

The following exercise is a Shaolin Kung Fu eye focus exercise. This exercise is designed to keep your eyes honed and sharp. I will teach it to you and then we will apply what you have learned to your ear focus. Read the instruction closely and do the exercise.

Stand fully extended and relaxed, hands at sides, facing forward.

Snap your head quickly to the right, turning a full 90 degrees, so that your chin is over your shoulder, and focus your eyes as far into the distance as possible. Snap your head back straight. Now snap it to the left, look far, and snap your head straight again. Do this one quickly. Boom–right. Bam–straight. Boom–left. Bam–straight. Don’t turn your body. Stand fully extended, with your feet planted firmly on the ground and your chest forward.

Even if you’re standing in your bedroom and can only see the wall a few feet away, project your vision farther than that. See as far as Iceland and its polar bears in one direction, and as far as Miami and its dolphins in the other. Fully extend your sight, just as you fully extend your mind, your body, and your whole life.

Do it 10 times quick.

Now imagine the first 5 notes of Bach’s Invention in F.

Imagine each of those notes are like the spots you were looking at in the eye focus exercise. Now imagine increasing your hearing speed to focus on each individual note. It’s different with the eye focus exercise because your eye muscles are at work focusing and moving. Your ears don’t have to do anything. It’s all in the mind and brain. We have to exercise our focus, giving it precision, speed, and accuracy.

Listen to a fugue and pay attention to one voice at a time. Hear each and every single note. Add voices. Hear everything. Work with sequencers, metronomes, and audio editors to slow things down and speed things up. And keep practicing the eye focusing exercises. It will help your sight reading and provide a perfect metaphor to remind you to hear with focus.

Strong senses are of utmost importance to the warrior.

Tone deafness does not refer to a problem with the ears, but to a lack of training. Tone deafness is easy to fix by training the ears and the vocal muscles.

I’ve taught many people that thought they were tone deaf how to match pitches. You should see their faces when they do. It’s sheer joy.

Hearing is the first sense we develop in the womb. The regions of the brain that deal with hearing are the first to finish the developmental process called myelination, in which the connecting “wires” of neurons are finished off with fatty sheaths that insulate the neurons, speeding up their electrical signals. In contrast, the visual system doesn’t complete this last step of myelination until a few months after birth.

Hearing is the last sense to go as we lose consciousness (when you’re dropping off to sleep, your other senses drop away and sounds seem to swell up) and the first to return when we make it back to consciousness.

Every morning I consciously wake up my ears. And I wake up my sense of pitch by picking any note, imagining it, and playing it on the piano. These days, I’m always right. But sometimes on a drowsy day, I’ll be a little flat. Not a full quarter tone. Never am I sharp. I blame my energy level. I’m not “up” yet.

I still carry a tuning fork with me. All I have to do is look at it and I hear an A. I don’t even need it but I bring it along anyway for a couple of reasons.

The first is a symbol. A symbol of absolute pitch. It reminds me to be aware of pitch. The more aware I am of pitch, with time, the more refined my sense of pitch becomes.

Second is a reminder to listen. Strike a tuning fork and put it up to your ear, concentrate only on the sound of it vibrating and listen. Close your eyes. No inner dialogue. Just follow the sound as it fades into silence. Notice how you can’t determine exactly when the sound ends. There’s no clear perceivable line between sound and silence. They live inversely. So I’m reminded of silence and I’m reminded to listen unconditionally.

In the absolute sense, sound is neither good nor bad. All judgments are created by our thinking. In the relative sense, loud sounds can hurt your ears. Sounds can be familiar or unfamiliar, consonant or dissonant, strong or weak. All of that “mental noise” can create distance from our own experience of sound.

If you want refined hearing, refine your thinking.

It’s not easy to tighten the leaky faucet of thought. But a listening practice is good training.

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If you sign up in time — before all the slots are taken — you will be guaranteed personal absolute pitch ear training assistance. I’ll treat you like a king or queen, and help you as hard as I help myself.

I don’t believe anyone, anywhere, has held a teleseminar series like this. There are only a handful of experts CAPABLE of pulling it off… and no on else has stepped up to the plate, as far as I can see.

If this is something you want, get moving on it.

If you have any questions, call me at 303-994-5050 (This is my private cell phone… please respect my time). Otherwise, fill out the Reservation Form right now.