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I sort of feel like playing or singing by ear is one of those things that you can either just do, or you can’t. I remember being 8 years old and standing next

I sort of feel like playing or singing by ear is one of those things that you can either just do, or you can’t. I remember being 8 years old and standing next to my parents in church, and noticing the choir singing in harmony, I would invent my own harmony line to go with it. It never seemed difficult at all but I don’t think I could explain what I was doing. Most skills can be taught but in my experience when it comes to music, you’ve either got it, or you don’t. If you’ve got it, you know you’ve got it. It’s just easy the same way that walking or talking is easy, but easier, because I could hum on key before I could talk.

cousin_it 7y ago
I sang off key for years, then found an exercise that worked (humming scales while away from the instrument), and a couple months later I found myself being very on key, harmonizing on the fly, noticing tiny off-key moments in popular songs, and getting compliments about "talent". So I think a lot of these skills are just taught wrong. You can teach an untalented person to "get it" - Betty Edwards' books famously do that for drawing skill - but for many skills the right method of teaching hasn't been found yet. It's easier to pick & choose students who already "got it" and then take credit for their success (like most music education, and higher education in general) than to research teaching methods that will work on more people.
djaychela 7y ago
I don't agree with this - I think that practicing your listening skills will make a huge difference in this area. I've been teaching guitar and music technology for about 20 years (and playing for 35), and it all comes from practice if you haven't got perfect pitch (I don't). Doing ear-training drills (listening for intervals, starting out with a simple one, such as the difference between an octave and a fifth) and slowly building on this so that you can quickly (and eventually, instantly) tell the difference between any of the diatonic intervals makes a huge difference. I've had kids who started out literally not able to know if a note was 'up' or 'down' from a previous one eventually be able to accurately discern any of the 12 semitone steps in an octave up or down, just by weekly practice using GNU solfege. Yes, some just 'get it' and don't know what they're doing - particularly with the voice - but most need fine-tuning and practice both in their heads and on their instruments, but after doing it for long enough it's possible to get really, really good at it.
- fallingfrog 7y ago
  It sounds like you’re doing really great things for your students, I’m glad that pitch can be taught. It just feels so weird to me, I can’t imagine not being able to hear pitch! It would be like not being able to see the difference between yellow and green.

cousin_it 7y ago

I sang off key for years, then found an exercise that worked (humming scales while away from the instrument), and a couple months later I found myself being very on key, harmonizing on the fly, noticing tiny off-key moments in popular songs, and getting compliments about "talent". So I think a lot of these skills are just taught wrong. You can teach an untalented person to "get it" - Betty Edwards' books famously do that for drawing skill - but for many skills the right method of teaching hasn't been found yet. It's easier to pick & choose students who already "got it" and then take credit for their success (like most music education, and higher education in general) than to research teaching methods that will work on more people.

djaychela 7y ago

I don't agree with this - I think that practicing your listening skills will make a huge difference in this area. I've been teaching guitar and music technology for about 20 years (and playing for 35), and it all comes from practice if you haven't got perfect pitch (I don't). Doing ear-training drills (listening for intervals, starting out with a simple one, such as the difference between an octave and a fifth) and slowly building on this so that you can quickly (and eventually, instantly) tell the difference between any of the diatonic intervals makes a huge difference. I've had kids who started out literally not able to know if a note was 'up' or 'down' from a previous one eventually be able to accurately discern any of the 12 semitone steps in an octave up or down, just by weekly practice using GNU solfege. Yes, some just 'get it' and don't know what they're doing - particularly with the voice - but most need fine-tuning and practice both in their heads and on their instruments, but after doing it for long enough it's possible to get really, really good at it.

fallingfrog 7y ago
It sounds like you’re doing really great things for your students, I’m glad that pitch can be taught. It just feels so weird to me, I can’t imagine not being able to hear pitch! It would be like not being able to see the difference between yellow and green.