Neil Spencer Bruce

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Steve Vai's Guitar Intervals Ear Training

Neil Bruce

Training the Ear

So, I thought today I would share an ear training method that I have borrowed from a lesson that I had with Steve Vai. I will put this out there first that there are so many good ways of practicing ear training and.....there are SO many good apps out there are well.

Personally, I recommend having a look at EarBeater (you can use it for free on the website) or download the app.

Visualisation : Auralisation

The best way to start with ear training is to start listening out for intervals, the relationship of one note to another and with each of these relationships for an octave (12 intervals) try and assign a aural ‘clue’ or a visualisation of something you can recognise as the interval from an existing song or theme.For example, a descending 5th is the interval of the first two notes of the Flintstones, an ascending b2 (and descending) is the theme from Jaws.

The link below is a list of intervals that I use to make these associations, you may not know some of these tunes or songs, and I would encourage to use your own if you ‘hear’ something more obvious to you.

Interval list.

Now you have an idea of what intervals sound like and hopefully have some strong associations with existing themes, you should be able to start naming intervals when you hear them.

Steve Vai ?

So where does Steve come in?

Well, Steve suggested a number of great methods for working on your ear, including singing the note before you play it, and singing harmonies to the lines you are playing. The one I am going to expand on here is using an existing recording of lots of intervals with them names after they are played, this should enable you to hear the interval, guess the interval and then get the confirmation of the interval.

He suggests recording a whole series of intervals, both ascending and descending and listening to them when you can.For those of us with busy lives, we could then listen to these recordings on the way to work or on the train or at the gym.

And as a BONUS for my loyal readers, I have recorded a series of ear training intervals for you to download for FREE here.

I hope you find them useful and enjoy this exercise and that it helps you with your ear training. Remember it is a continual learning experience!

Enjoy!

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Neil

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