Jonathan Shaw
  • Contact

Week 13

Objectives:
1.    Bass Assignment
2.   Ear Training Intro
3.   Ear Training Activities
Assignments:
1.  DUE :  Bass Assignment
2.   DUE:  Passing Version of Home Test (if you haven't passed yet!)

Go Over / Collect Bass Assignment

This is Difficult because it is all about

Critical Listening  or   Isolated Listening


This means we are specifically listening for 1 single part of the song

This is the opposite of what usually happens when listening to music  


Music is almost always listened to as a WHOLE or a FINISHED PRODUCT
 we don't usually listen for just ONE PART of that WHOLE


Example:
We usually wouldn't go home and google baselines to listen to 
we usually wouldn't go home and google horn lines to listen to 
We usually wouldn't go home and google guitar strumming to listen to 

it wouldn't really be natural to do this, AND it is not how the artists intended for us to listen to their song


-----WE DOWNLOAD OR LISTEN TO THE ENTIRE SONG------ 
(unless you have some vested interest in it if you are a musician and doing research, but the general public would never do this)


Isolated Listening :   Listening to one specific part of a whole song



If you had trouble weeding out all the other parts of the song and just listening to the Bass, It's ok because this is a
HARD EXERCISE
especially if you have never done this


Examples:
***** It's a little like a 'Where's Waldo'*****
There's so much else to look at but we are only concerned with only  one part of the picture

**** Or one of those 'find the differences in these pictures' puzzles *****
There are two pictures but we are sifting through all parts of the pictures to find 1 thing

It's almost like an exercise for you EYES

Isolated listening is like and exercise for your EARS

This would be an example of

Ear Training or Aural Skills

Ear Training

Ear Training / Aural Theory:
is a skill where we identify, solely by hearing: Pitches, Intervals, Melody, Chords, Rhythm


Essentially we are talking about a two part process:

Knowing the Sounds      &       Knowing what to call them


These could be things like (but not limited to) :  
  
I Play a note, you name it
I play a Chord, You name it
I play a Rhythm, write down the notation

ALL WITHOUT SEEING ANY NOTATION OR WITHOUT AN INSTRUMENT FOR A REFERENCE

so we have Nothing to help us find it, Just our ears



Example Practical Use : 

-Many times in recording sessions there is no written music, I will show up and the director will demonstrate what to play (play it for me once) and I am expected to know how to play it in a very short amount of time
(time=$ in the studio)


-If i play with a band I have never played before on a gig and there is not music and I don't know the song, the other horn player will play it for me and I am supposed to pick it up just from hearing it once

THERE IS A VERY WIDE RANGES OF SKILL LEVELS CONCERNING AURAL SKILLS
(among both musicians and the general public)


 TONE DEAF : 
unable to perceive differences of musical pitch accurately. 
​- for people who are tone deaf, if I were to play a pitch,
it would be impossible for them to sing back that pitch

PERFECT PITCH:

the ability to recognize the pitch of a note or to produce any given note; a sense of absolute pitch.
- for people who have perfect pitch, I could name any note and they could sing it without a piano, or
 - I could lay my arm down on the piano, hit 10 random notes and they could name them all



For Dylan, Hearing sounds is like seeing colors for us  - 

When we see something that is blue, we just KNOW that it is blue
we don't need to think and analyze and look at another color for reference

​There is some discrepancy as to whether this ability is
LEARNED or GENETIC / GOD GIVEN

and there are differing opinions on whether or not we can LEARN/DEVELOP PERFECT PITCH AS AN ADULT

Most people agree that EXPOSURE plays a part 

********if we go back to our color metaphor,  we are exposed to many different colors from a young age - that's why infant's toys and shows always have BRIGHT COLORS*********


​To be clear :    IT IS A VERY SMALL PERCENTAGE OF MUSICIANS WHO HAVE PERFECT PITCH

ALTHOUGH


MOST MUSICIANS USUALLY HAVE DEVELOPED RELATIVE PITCH TO VARYING DEGREES (I.E. SOME ARE BETTER THAN OTHERS)

Relative pitch is the ability of a person to identify or re-create a given musical note by comparing it to a reference note and identifying the interval between those two notes.

This means that if you have VERY GOOD relative pitch , you could do what Dylan does IF you had a reference pitch, say a G

Example of Trying to Develop Perfect Pitch

Teoria 

Ear Training Exercises 

Goal:     Hear Sounds     &    Knowing what to call them 

We will work from 

SIMPLE   ------------------------------------>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Complex (Dylan)
Exercise 1 : High vs Low

Sounds :   2  single Notes
Identify as :   High  vs Low

I play you TWO NOTES  you tell me Which note is HIGH and which note is LOW

Call them NOTE 1 and NOTE 2

GIVE EXAMPLE

​
Exercise 2 :  Far vs  Close

Sounds :   two intervals
Identify as:   Further apart or Closer together 

I play you two intervals, you tell me which set of intervals was closer together

Call them SET 1 and SET 2

GIVE EXAMPLE



Identifying Intervals

In a music school Aural Theory / Ear Training class, we learn generic songs to remember / help identify random intervals

FOR EXAMPLE  
If i said to you right now to sing me a 5th , that would seem like a hard task

BUT if i asked you to sing the Alphabet song we could all do that right?

THE FIRST 2 NOTES OF THE ALPHABET SONG ARE A PERFECT FIFTH , SO THERE IS ALREADY A REFERENCE IN OUR HEAD

the way we can recall on that song and sing the first to notes is similar to how DYLAN can hear a note and name it - we don't know where but it's in there (your brain) somewhere!!

INTERVAL SONG CHART
Exercise 3 : identifying Intervals

Let's see if we can differentiate between a 3rd and 5th

Sound:  intervals
Identify:   3rd or 5th 

Reference songs :     
5th -  ABC's or Twinkle Twinkle
3rd -  When the Saints,  Kum Bay Ya

I play you an interval and you tell me if it is a 3rd or a 5th

Of course we can use process of elimination  with just 2 intervals by hearing which on is wider that the other (5th is bigger than 3rd)


Exercise 3A
Let's add in an other Interval :   A 6th

Reference for a 6th :  NBC ,   Dashing through the Snow,  My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean

Sounds :  Intervals
​Identify :  3rd, 5th, or 6th




Chords

When identifying chords, we are dealing with 2 intervals  ( 3 notes is like 2 separate intervals)

We are listening more for the sound 

MINOR VS MAJOR

See if we can identify with just the sound (no tune for ref. like the intervals)


Exercise 4 

Sounds :  Chords
Identify:  Major or Minor

I play a chord, you tell me if it's Major of Minor

Proudly powered by Weebly