How to train the musical ear: a step by step plan

The musical ear trains as a muscle: with short exercises, most of them every day and in a logical order. First, you learn how to Tone what you hear, then to recognize intervals and degrees from scale, after to distinguish chords and Progressand at the end write Issuer and get complete songs.

Ten or fifteen minutes a day are enough if you sing out loud and don't just listen. Below you have to train, how to do it and a 12-week plan that you can have with your teacher or with your own.

To sum up

The ear isn't a regular gift: it's a set of skills that are trained separately.
Singing what you listen to accelerates the whole process and multiple choice apps alone get short.
The intervals serve to read and write, and the degrees of the scale, to get songs and to improvise.
To hear progress, first follow the low and ask if the music's at home or far from it.
The best-performing combination: daily practice with tools and periodic review with a teacher.

What's training when you train your ear

"Having a good ear" brings together several different skills. It's best to work them independently, because you can be very good at one and start at another:

The seven skills of the musical ear
Habilidad	What's that?	First financial year
Dying	Play with your voice a note you hear	Sing a note about the piano and check it out at the tuning machine
Intervalos	Recognize the distance between two notes	Distinguish a third largest from a fair fifth
Grados	Know what place a note occupies within the tone	After a Do chord, say if Do, Mi or Sol sounds
Chords	Recognize if a chord is greater, lower, diminished or increased	Major versus minor
Progresiones	Following the chord movement in a song	Counting how many times chord changes in a chorus
Ritmo	Reproduction and write rhythmic figures	To repeat with palms a beacon that someone touches you
Melodic memory	Keep a sentence for singing or writing	Sing back four notes after once listening to them

None of these skills depend on an absolute ear and they are all relative ear and they get better with practice. If you have doubts about that difference, read [an absolute ear and relative ear]](/blog/oido-absoluto-y-oido-relativo).

Intervals and degrees: two complementary ways

The classic path is to recognize intervals by association with the beginning of known songs. It works very well at first and you have a complete table of references at what's a musical intervalTo practice them every day, [hearing training game]](/herramientas/entrenamiento-auditivo) He's propose random intervals and tells you if you're right.

But reference songs have a limit: they are slow as music goes fast and isolates two notes from their context. That's why training by degreesThat teaches how to hear every note with respect to the tonic:

It lays the tone by playing the cadence Do - Fa - Sol - Do.
Touch a single note of Do's scale, at random, or ask someone to touch it.
Sing and walk with his voice, note by note, up to the nearest Do, name every step: "sun, fa, me, re, do."
Count the steps: if you went down four to Do, the note was fifth grade. Check the instrument.
He changes his tone every day so as to avoid memorizing heights but with functions.

The second wants to get up to the tone, the fourth wants to get down to the third, and the fifth sounds firm but open. That's how you get some ear melodies.

Acordes and progressions: listening to harmony

Chord quality

It starts with only greater versus minor: the greater sounds light and the more dark, and the difference is in the third. It plays the chord, and then purps and sings its three notes, from bottom up. When you get better and worse, it adds up to the diminished (tense, tighten) and the increased (suspended and as unsolved). Later on, the sevens come: the seventh best sounds soft and dreamy, and the seventh with a dominant, tense and with a desire to move.

Progresiones

Find the tone: delay the note that feels as "house" at the end of a sentence.
The low remains: the most serious note is usually the fundamental note of chord.
Fan with your hand every time you change the chord, without even worrying about what it's about.
Decide whether each chord is greater or minor.
Test first with I, IV, V and I: cover an enormous number of songs.

A good starting point is any 12-box blues, as "Johnny B. Goode," by Chuck Berry: they have only three chords and they always change at the same place. To understand what they do, look what's musical harmony.

Memory, dictated and rhythm

Sing before you write: If you can't sing back what you heard, you haven't got it in your memory. It starts with three notes and grows from one to another.
The songs that you know about are: write the melody of a childish song, as "The chicks say," and check it out in your instrument. You know the music and you just have to name it.
Rhythmic elks: Someone pat you a bar and you repeat it at once and then write it down. Use a metronome so that his pulse doesn't move.
Listen by layers: put up a song four times and attends to every single thing: the bass, the drums, the chords and the voice. He then identifies where the choir begins.

If you are presenting an admittent test, the dictation has its own examination method, which we explain in musical dictation: how to prepare it.

A 12 week, 15 minutes a day plan

Reaping your level: if a stage doesn't come up yet, repeat
Semanas	Enfoque	Rutina daily
1–4	Retirement and first intervals	To write and check notes, second eldest, third eldest, fifth just and eighth, and greater versus minor, and rhythmic ecics of a beacon.
5–8	All ascending intervals and grades 1, 3 and 5	A set of intervals, degrees after a cadency, reduced and increased chords and dictated with three or four notes.
9–12	descending intervals, degrees of the whole scale and progressions	The harmonic and descending intervales, and the seven degrees, I, IV, V and I saw them in real songs and dictated them from two forms and put out a complete song.

Each day, write down how many good things you have. To see the curve up week by week is best motivation and show you clearly what skill you are lagging behind.

Apps or teacher? What does each bring?

The ideal thing is to combine them.
Criterio	Online Apps and Tools	with faith
Repetition daily	Excellent: fast and always available	Limited to class time
Retirement of your intonation	They don't listen to how you sing	He fixes you at the moment
Musical context	Isolated sounds, with multiple choice	Songs, Repertoire and Your Instrument
Progress plan	Fixed or chosen by you	Fitted to your concrete mistakes
Preparation for admission	good practice of support	Strategy, simulations and reading

The risk of using only apps is to learn how to figure out among four buttons without ever singing. The risk of relying only on class is to practice once a week. music theory Or as a singer, his teacher puts you up with his week and checks what it costs. If your goal is a music race, a preschooler works his ear with his solphis and his theory.

Frequently asked questions

How long does it take to train his music ear?

With daily practice, the first changes are noted in a few weeks: you are more sure and have more and more minor distinction. Recognize all intervals and continue to progress with leaping takes months, and it's a skill that keeps growing throughout your life.

Can an ear train an ear that believes that it has no ear?

Yeah. Except rare cases, whoever claims to have no ear simply did not train him. He starts with his atoning with a visual reference, as the tuning machine, and advances slowly: first achievements usually come earlier than you have been expecting.

Do training his ear work if I play drums?

A drummer needs to recognize the form of the song, anticipate Section changes, listen to the bass and tuning his drums. Rhythmic work and listening to them by layers are especially useful.

What's best, training intervals or degrees?

The two things. The intervals help you read and write dictated, the grades, to get songs, to transport and to improvise, because you think about every note about the tone.