For the LOVE of Music!
Functional melodic analysis & ear training for Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" using Solfege... How to use these Solfege studies... Listen to Frank describe in depth how to use these studies! "Ode to Joy" Solfege 1. Read, play, listen, and sing/hum along... 2. Use your piano, ears, voice, and knowledge of music theory to 1) figure … Continue reading Melodic Analysis & Ear Training: “Ode to Joy”
Functional melodic analysis & ear training for "Mary Had a Little Lamb" using Solfege... How to use these studies... Listen to Frank describe how to use these studies! "Mary Had a Little Lamb" Solfege 1. Read, play, listen, and sing/hum along... 2. Use your piano, ears, voice, and knowledge of music theory to 1) figure … Continue reading Melodic Analysis & Ear Training: “Mary Had a Little Lamb”
Functional melodic analysis & ear training for "Old McDonald" using Solfege... How to use these studies... Listen to Frank describe how to use these studies! "Old McDonald" Solfege 1. Read, play, listen, and sing/hum along... 2. Use your piano, ears, voice, and knowledge of music theory to 1) figure out the key center and tonality … Continue reading Melodic Analysis & Ear Training: “Old McDonald”
Functional melodic analysis & ear training for "Twinkle, Twinkle" using Solfege... How to use these studies... Listen to Frank describe in depth how to use these studies! "Twinkle, Twinkle" Solfege 1. Read, play, listen, and sing/hum along... 2. Use your piano, ears, voice, and knowledge of music theory to 1) figure out the key center … Continue reading Melodic Analysis & Ear Training: “Twinkle, Twinkle”
Functional melodic analysis & ear training for "Are You Sleeping" using Solfege... How to use these studies... Listen to Frank describe how to use these studies! "Are You Sleeping?" Solfege 1. Read, play, listen, and sing/hum along... 2. Use your piano, ears, voice, and knowledge of music theory to 1) figure out the key center … Continue reading Melodic Analysis & Ear Training: “Are You Sleeping?”
Feel free to give Absolute Pitch a try, but whether AP is your bag or not, you absolutely must invest your precious time and energy understanding and developing Relative Pitch... Why? Because Relative Pitch it is the way that the overwhelming majority of we humans hear and enjoy music! Solfege or Interval Ear Training? This is a … Continue reading Ear Training Recommendations
The long short answer is "It depends" and requires some explanation... The honest answer for 99.99% of the population is an emphatic NO! To that end, I will share five first-hand experiences: Experience #1: I bought and tried “the” perfect pitch course. Despite a diligent, open-minded effort on my part, it did not work for me. … Continue reading Ear Training: Can You Learn Absolute Pitch?
A short introduction to Absolute Pitch and Relative Pitch... Absolute Pitch (AP), often called perfect pitch, is the ability to identify a pitch in the absence of any other tonal points of reference. For example, C will always be perceived as C and Eb as Eb, no matter what piece you are playing or what … Continue reading Ear Training Absolute Versus Relative Pitch
If Yogi Berra were a musician he would have said: "You can hear a lot just by listening"... This may sound so obvious as to be insulting, but musical listening is not as simple and straightforward as it might seem. What, in particular, should one listen to? What, precisely, should one listen for? Let's take … Continue reading Ear Training: How to Listen
Three aural comprehension skills: Sight Singing, Playing by Ear, & Dictation... Sight Singing is the process of looking at written music and being able to hear the notes in your "mind’s ear" or to sing them out loud (either in the relative or a absolute sense). Playing By Ear is the process of translating what … Continue reading Ear Training: Three Skills