Ear Training Fundamentals: The Importance of Singing Aloud

Why Singing Aloud is such an effective way to internalize musical sounds and why you should add vocalizing to your daily ear training practice…

Table of Contents

---

Lesson Goal

To understand why Singing Aloud is such an effective way to do ear training… with the hope of inspiring you to add singing aloud to your daily music study and practice sessions.

---

Why Singing Aloud Works

Singing aloud is an extremely effective way to train your ears for at least four reasons:

1. Singing aloud is an active, not a passive, process.
2. Singing aloud requires you to generate something (which is how you perform music).
3. Singing aloud uses and excites a variety of sensory, memory, and motor pathways in your brain.
4. Singing aloud trains you to allow your mind’s ear to be the leader when you perform.

---

How to Do Ear Training by Singing Aloud

The practice is simple: Play and sing a musical chunk (a single note, melody, scale, arpeggio, chord progression voice, interval, harmonic resolution) while associating that musical chunk with your existing knowledge of music theory, music notation, visuospatial layout of keys on the keyboard, or physical choreography.

As you do so, keep the following in mind:

1. When you are first training your ears, your voice my need to follow what you are playing.
2. As your ear training advances, your mind’s ear will become the leader… enabling you to play what you’re hearing rather than just hear what you’re playing.
3. Sing, hum, or scat the sounds in a comfortable part of your vocal range using any syllables (Solfege, numbers, other) that speak to you and feel most natural.
4. Associate what you are singing to your existing knowledge of music notation, music theory, visuospatial layout of notes on the keyboard, and physical choreography.
5. Ear training is not a race. For maximum learning, you must sing each tone long enough for its sound-feeling-function to make a meaningful impression on your mind’s ear. (ref: How Your Brain Works: Soak Time).
6. If you get stuck, use what you already know. It’s ok, for example, to play and sing up or down scale if you’re having a hard time finding a note.
7. Use a tuning app to visually measure your pitch (ref: Frank’s Take on Ear Training Apps). If you feel like you’re out of tune, try adjusting your pitch up or down as if turning a tuning knob. When you’re in tune, you’ll feel a pleasing resonance “pop”.
8. You’ll know when you’ve internalized the musical chunk because you’ll feel something “click” deep in your musical mind. That “click” is the sensation of the contents of your sensory register and short-term memory being attached to something you already know in your long-term memory.
9. Fight for every note. If something feels off, find and fix the problem immediately. You’ll be glad you did.
10. Every bit of progress helps to tune up your musical mind as if YOU are a musical instrument.

---

Benefit of Singing Aloud

There are at least six huge payoffs from singing aloud as you learn new music:

1. The music you are making will move from the outside of you to the inside of you.
2. A world of abstract music symbols will transformed into the concrete reality of how we all experience music.
3. You will learn by experience that ear training isn’t just about musical sounds, but also about feelings and functions.
4. You will start playing by allowing your mind’s ear (right brain), not your intellect (left brain), to be the leader.
5. Instead of the piano playing you, you will start playing the piano.
6. You will quickly add meaningful musical patterns to your musical mind (just as you add new vocabulary and phrases to your spoken language).

---

The Huge Takeaway

Start singing aloud as you learn new music and enjoy the mind blowing realization that you, not the piano, are the real musical instrument.

---

back to… Table of Contents