-
Does anyone here use solfege as a means of ear training? If so, are there any exercises you could share and such, and has it improved your ability to learn songs by ear?
Just wondering coz I really want to work on my ear training, because I hate using tabs and I'm not as good at reading sheet music as I'd like.
-
05-22-2011 05:43 PM
-
Shadow -- I use solfege, although I'm not yet super-advanced (I'm working hard, though!) Keep in mind that there are at least two ways of approaching it: fixed "do" and (what - movable "do" - or relative "do"?) I happened to learn from Matt Glaser, who's the jazz violin guy at Berklee. Whatever the root of the key happens to be is "do" (doe). If the key changes, as nearly all jazz tunes do, you keep hearing in relation to the original key tonic.
These other guys here know 1000x more than I do, and this method might not be the best one for bebop. Works great for almost everything else. Somewhere on this website is a link to a FREE downloadable software program that will jerk your ears into shape very well. Still, expect to work, to put in the time. I've just started working with this myself.
The "Perfect Pitch" guru/scam-artist, Dr. David Burge, has a relative pitch ear-training course that isn't TOO bad. Expensive, but not too bad.
Solfege is great, imo. The better your ear, the better you'll play, always.
Kojo
-
Used it for the first two years of my undergrad studies (it was required). As soon as I moved over to jazz, I dropped it. Haven't touched it (or missed it) since.
-
It's good to be able to do, I'd recommend this book, I used it for my Musicianship class this semester (I'm currently an undergrad Psychology/Philosophy student but am minoring in music): Amazon.com: A New Approach to Sight Singing (Fourth Edition) (9780393969085): Sol Berkowitz, Gabriel Fontrier, Leo Kraft: Books
Don't let the list price scare you they have used copies from $3.45. It's a great tool for ear training/sight reading and is obviously applicable to all forms of music, including Jazz, especially because it really improves your pitch. As Kojo said, the better your ear, the better you'll play. The "movable do" system is best (whatever the tonic is, is "do"). Here's the solfege for all the scales, excluding modes.
Major Scale: Do-Re-Mi-Fa-So-La-Ti-Do
Minor Scale: Do-Re-Me-Fa-So-Le-Te-Do
Harmonic Minor: Do-Re-Me-Fa-So-Le-Ti-Do
Melodic Minor: (going up) Do-Re-Me-Fa-So-La-Ti-Do/(going down) Do-Te-Le-So-Fa-Me-Re-Do
Here's a great website where you can customize exercises, I use the interval ear training one all the time: http://www.musictheory.net/exercisesLast edited by Extrapolation; 05-23-2011 at 12:47 AM.
-
Cool, Jeff -- I'm really curious about how you approach playing what you hear... have you just linked the "frets" with the sounds they make SO WELL that you just know? Do you have perfect pitch maybe? Or is it scale degrees by number, or by position - or what?
Originally Posted by FatJeff
Of course 2 years of it - wow. That's much more than I've put in.
Anyway, how do you play what you hear, now?
This is what I was trying to ask Reg the other day regarding how he solos with octaves, but I think I made a huge ass of myself, didn't explain it at all. Heh.
Make sense, Jeff?
KJ
-
If you REALLY want to get into sight-singing with solfege, there are plenty of excellent resources all over the place that range from the most basic to the impossible-for-most-people. because a lot of this stuff was developed centuries ago, there are books of exercises that are free of copyright. As to actually doing it, I did it at school when I was there but it was a combination of very lenient teacher and that it was so long ago that I lost whatever development I had achieved. I started over again about two years ago maybe now and worked on it steadily for about a year. It got so tiresome and boring that I switched to other approaches for ear training like melodic call and response with software, playing along with tunes by ear, etc... A professional jazz singer I know told me to do them but WITHOUT the syllables. Sometimes I pick out a tune from the Real Book that is within my abilities and sight-sing through that. My ears have definitely improved a lot, but this is something that seems to take DECADES if I am to compare to people who just hear long strings of 50 notes and then play them back or something. Anyway, here is an old book that is still used in some schools:
Melodia : a comprehensive course in sight-singing (solfeggio)
Anyway, I can point to a lot of resources
-
http://www.lightandmatter.com/sight/sight.pdf
This one explains the solfeggio, is more modern and also free of copyright. But it doesn't go beyond the basic two year level stuff.
-
in my opinion David L Burges relative ear trainig course is absolutely fantastic, and worth it's price five times, at least. It is far better then any ear training I have gotten, bot in high school, Mannes Jazz college in new york, and at Berklee. Originally Posted by Kojo27
I'm sure solfege is great if you start with i tearly, for me, and all the other kids who tested straight in to the last semester of mandatory ear training at Berkle, it was just a pain in the ass, I am absolutely certain that none of us used it ever again after the final exam.
-
Personally, I think it is not at all a question of how much work, how you practice, etc.. It's really just natural abilities and so on. You can develop a little bit, but you know.... the rest is scam.
-
play the first 4 notes of the scale and then sing the next four...
sing the first 4 notes and then play the next four...
sing two notes play two notes....play three and then sing three..etc...
many variations can be made from this...
time on the instrument...pierre
-
Jeez, Morten -- I must confess now that I didn't go very far into Burge's method, because, having burned solfege into my ears so hard, I found myself always using IT to hear what Burge was playing on the piano. He'd play one note, then another, and ask what interval? I'd immediately imagine the first note as "do" and get the second by its relation to that. Originally Posted by MortenFaerestrand
This isn't the way Burge intends, though -- right? It's because I didn't know how to get past doing it this way (above) that I gave up. And I wrote Burge a letter, pleading for help, as I was feeling like a failure. But some secretary sent me a form letter telling me I could "consult" on the phone with "Doctor Burge" for, I think, $200 per half hour! I didn't have the money, so that's as far as I got. /// Oh - and hearing those "easy, easy" harmonic intervals (perfect fourth, perfect fifth) were HELL for me, because I'd try to latch onto one of the notes, call it "do" and then determine the other, then know the interval. Tough!
If you have ANY suggestions about how to learn his method (keeping in mind that I don't know how to stop hearing the first note as "do"), I'd really appreciate it.
Peace,
KJ
-
Fantastic advice, Pierre. You can do this with different scales too and that's a very creative way to practice. Originally Posted by pierre richard
-
I've been picking a note on the guitar, picking another note based on some random criteria and trying to sing the new one to get to be able to recognize intervals without the solfege syllables.
It's a bit sketchy, but I can only improve, right?
When I'm a bit further along, I'll try singing two notes at random and trying to pick what the intervals are, or maybe singing a note and playing one at random on the guitar and then try to pick out what interval it is.
I'm not using ear training software for the simple reason that I find that boring- I like having the guitar in my hands.
-
I've been using this free online ear trainer:
IWasDoingAllRight - Free online ear training tool
Lots of options (ascending/descending, various harmonic and rhythmic options)..... it is kind of boring, but I find it easier to concentrate specifically on pitch if I'm not holding the instrument. Been doing this for several months (about 5 or 10 minutes a day) and I can tell a definite improvement, playing and listening.
-
what's so great about it is the super easy method you practice with it, and the drilling, and speed recognition drilling. I don't really see how you could not understand his system, he explains it step by step, really well. So my suggestion would be just to take it from the start, and take your time with it. If there are any concrete things that you just don't understand, feel free to ask, but again, I really feel that it is very self explanatory. Originally Posted by Kojo27
If the problem is the spelling of the note names, as opposed to using solfege, you just have to work on it, and drill yourself. I actually bought a deck of cards and wrote on them for drilling myself. One half of the deck saying for example "spell a minor 6th DOWN from" and the other half saying note names, for example "Eb" So that's one way. It needs to get to the point where you know all the answers without thinking. (not sure I'm as fast now as I was then, but that's another story.. hehe)
-
This is the work of the Lord. éraised be this man!! Originally Posted by 23skidoo
-
Pasquale Bona's Rhythmical Articulation is a good solfege book, as well as the Dannhauser.
-
What's wrong with the others? The other books are EVIL or something?
-
New England conservatory course in sight-singing : (Solfeggio)
Watch out, this one is NOT in the copyright. It might be EVIL!!
-
I have a couple music degrees and ear training was certainly a part of it. I passed out of it for grad school but my under grad didn't make us use solfege. We could just sing LA. I have a very good ear but the training really helped and more specifically singing the notes took the music out of my head and into my whole body.
So IMO, whether solfege or not, externalizing the notes should really help.
-
I've used it a lot in teaching choral music. I don't really know how highly you should rank solfege among the many other priorities required in studying something like jazz, but it could possibly be a good answer to the "What types of things can I study when I'm away from my guitar."
Work out the solfege to tunes (even something like children's songs) in your head. The cool thing about solfege study is that each scale degree/syllable starts to take on it's own "character", where you can just hear "mi", for example, from any note in the given key without having to think about the intervalic relationship between the two notes.
-
Originally Posted by matt.guitarteacher
Hmm. I really thought that all "play-what-you-hear" musicians played this way. What a goof I am! How else does an improviser know where his fingers have to go in order to get the pitches he's hearing in his head? Scale tones by their number, maybe?
This is at the heart of the question I asked Reg a week or so ago about his improvisations with octaves. I was trying to ask him how he "heard" what to play. He never answered and the whole thread died - haha!!! Must have made ZERO sense. Well, shit. I'm gonna have to break over and go to music school. Any comments - please? I'm really in the dark here.
KJ
-
I've been using solfege for a few years and have found it immensely helpful.
Solfege heads, sight sing, solfege root motion and guide tone lines of tunes...improvise with solfege over chords.
-
You know, I worked so hard at this and failed so consistently (remember, I wrote Burge a desperate letter) that I quit playing guitar! I felt I should be getting it -- Burge kept saying on the tape, "Oh, this is easy, easy, easy," in that annoying voice he has. I was young, and although very advanced for the short time I'd been playing, I could only conclude that my "ear" was bad. These realizations I have now, I didn't have then, you see. I had no teachers, knew no other good players -- so I got really down about it and quit. Didn't play seriously again for years. How stupid when we're young, eh? Originally Posted by MortenFaerestrand
Probably, Morten, if you had already had solfege GROUND into your head, as I did, you might well have had the same difficulties -- or maybe not; I don't know. When I hear more than one note, I can't help but hear one as "do" and the others as whatever they are in relation to "do."
So, because Burge's method isn't based on solfege, I didn't know how to "hang onto" the pitches he played... make any sense? I think I see now that he doesn't want the listener to hang onto the notes -- rather, he wants him to grab the space *between* the two notes -- the interval. Right? If so, he never explained this, and I think he should have, since it was almost inevitable that anyone investing that kind of money in an ear-training course might already have learned some solfege.
Just trying to explain. I do appreciate your great response, above, and your very kind help.
KJ
-
Oh, me, too! It's helpful as can be. I don't know how I'd play without it. I sight-sing using it, write melodies/songs/etc. on manuscript paper using it. I wish I had some facility with these other ways, though. I *really* want to learn Burge's method now that Morten has told me he breezed through it. How to "unlearn" solfege, though? And Burge would NOT answer my letters. Nor email -- nothing. Some woman sends you an offer for a $200 phone consultation. Crap. His method *does* seem extremely thorough and somehow more applicable to improvising. Originally Posted by JakeAcci
Reply With Quote
I found this Ibanez rarity
Today, 03:05 PM in Guitar, Amps & Gizmos