Singing what you hear is an important part of improving your perception. Let’s look at it from a body/mind perspective.
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?
Anthony says
i have been singing along with the C, E G, A on CD from Absolute pitch power and also when playing on the piano in solfa…I can definitely say that my ear is improving…no end….
Graham English says
That’s awesome news Anthony! Keep it up. 😀
Jeff Stephanoff says
yes!
this is great news
i’ve been matching my voice to notes on my guitar
and matching my voice to music i hear
and natural sounds that i encounter i everyday life
it’s done wonders, and has really made me aware of how inaccuate i was and how much i’m improving everyday
it’s a wonderful feeling!
Graham English says
I know how you feel Jeff!
mike says
try this , get on a piano and go up a c major scale and
sing along with it, eventually you will go out of your range, but your ear can still hear it, keep going till you run out of notes, now try to keep imagining notes that are higher than on the keyboard, you can probably imagine three or four but then its like you can’t even think it ! now try decending till you run out it works both ways you can’t imagine a note that low, it goes out of the range of your ear, definitely shows a ear mental connection. mike
Graham English says
Cool trick of the mind. Thanks for sharing.
Ross says
I guess it’s all about translating from the passive observer, the listener, to the creator, the origin. What interests me is the action of singing a note from the mind, rather than from the environment. This practice is far more difficult than you would think. When I try to create a note in my voice that is in my mind, I begin to question just how robust the note is in my minds’ ear. Particularly, there is a difference in the strength of a memory of a recently heard note and that of one, which has been imagined.
Graham English says
Good points Ross. And you’re right. It’s harder to sing what’s in your mind than people think. Which is why we should all practice it as much as possible. Because the more experience you have translating music from imagination to the voice or your instrument, the easier it becomes.
keith hudson says
about how many times would u say one would have to sing say the c major scale…and then
the c chromatic scale before one can actually
hear that note and repeat what it is…as a martial artist…one would have to practice a particular block no less than 1000 times before that block will be of use to him in a self defense situation…just wondering…
Graham English says
I don’t have an answer. The trite answer is it takes as long as it takes. A timeline would depend on how much has been done already, and that’s hard to measure. I would just say to practice for the sake of practicing. Sometimes the journey is the destination.
Erminio says
Graham English,i knew alot about the things that you are talking about. But i was,or so it seemed to me for a very long time,that i was the only one that knew.
Keep up the good work!