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How do you actually teach both Rhythm and Ear training? I'm struggling at both right now. I've paid a teacher, and it's helping, but now I'm curious how we actu

How do you actually teach both Rhythm and Ear training? I'm struggling at both right now. I've paid a teacher, and it's helping, but now I'm curious how we actually teach these things.

skybrian 5y ago
For rhythm, counting and clapping seems to help, avoiding the complexity of playing the right notes. Playing to a metronome slowly is good practice but my student dislikes it. I suppose rhythm games might help? For ear training, I’ve read that singing helps, since it associates vocals with pitches. I’ve tried ear training programs and even wrote one, and it’s the sort of thing where you get better by practicing a little a day. Doing a lot of practice at once is just frustrating. I was doing better for a while, but stopped practicing and wouldn’t say my ear is all that good. Recently I’ve been transcribing music, which probably helps some. It’s sort of like figuring out a crossword puzzle where it takes a few guesses to get the notes right.
autarch 5y ago
These are both things where practice can help. For rhythm, as skybrian noted, try counting and clapping along. Then try writing down the rhythm of a melody or some other part of a piece of music. Have your teacher or someone with better rhythm evaluate your work. Keep doing that with more and more challenging pieces over time. BTW, just as an aside, most pop music vocal melodies are fairly syncopated and probably not the best choice for starting. Classical music _of the classical period_ is probably a lot easier (but things get more complex as you move towards the romantic and modern periods). For ear training, you need to practice interval recognition, chord recognition, transcribing melodies, transcribing chord progressions, etc. And _also_ you should be doing a lot of singing, especially sight singing. Again, you'll need someone more expert than you to tell you if you're getting it right in some cases. But if you're transcribing a piece that has sheet music you can get instant feedback. And the same goes for sight singing. Sing it, then play it on the piano and see if it sounds right. Better yet, _record_ yourself singing it and play along on the piano. If the all the notes are the same, you win. The other thing you should be doing is actually playing music! Doing lots of exercises is great, but the whole point of this is to make you a better musician, not just someone who's really good at notating rhythms of the music they hear. (Source: I have a master degree in music composition and I taught ear training and theory during grad school. Plus I also struggled quite a bit with ear training (but not rhythm) myself.)

How do you actually teach both Rhythm and Ear training? I'm struggling at both right now. I've paid a teacher, and it's helping, but now I'm curious how we actually teach these things.

skybrian 5y ago

For rhythm, counting and clapping seems to help, avoiding the complexity of playing the right notes. Playing to a metronome slowly is good practice but my student dislikes it. I suppose rhythm games might help? For ear training, I’ve read that singing helps, since it associates vocals with pitches. I’ve tried ear training programs and even wrote one, and it’s the sort of thing where you get better by practicing a little a day. Doing a lot of practice at once is just frustrating. I was doing better for a while, but stopped practicing and wouldn’t say my ear is all that good. Recently I’ve been transcribing music, which probably helps some. It’s sort of like figuring out a crossword puzzle where it takes a few guesses to get the notes right.

autarch 5y ago

These are both things where practice can help. For rhythm, as skybrian noted, try counting and clapping along. Then try writing down the rhythm of a melody or some other part of a piece of music. Have your teacher or someone with better rhythm evaluate your work. Keep doing that with more and more challenging pieces over time. BTW, just as an aside, most pop music vocal melodies are fairly syncopated and probably not the best choice for starting. Classical music _of the classical period_ is probably a lot easier (but things get more complex as you move towards the romantic and modern periods). For ear training, you need to practice interval recognition, chord recognition, transcribing melodies, transcribing chord progressions, etc. And _also_ you should be doing a lot of singing, especially sight singing. Again, you'll need someone more expert than you to tell you if you're getting it right in some cases. But if you're transcribing a piece that has sheet music you can get instant feedback. And the same goes for sight singing. Sing it, then play it on the piano and see if it sounds right. Better yet, _record_ yourself singing it and play along on the piano. If the all the notes are the same, you win. The other thing you should be doing is actually playing music! Doing lots of exercises is great, but the whole point of this is to make you a better musician, not just someone who's really good at notating rhythms of the music they hear. (Source: I have a master degree in music composition and I taught ear training and theory during grad school. Plus I also struggled quite a bit with ear training (but not rhythm) myself.)