Since we’re getting close to Easter, and I’ve been seeing goddamn rabbits all over the place, I’ve been thinking about ears. So let’s talk about it – in a musical way.

I was blessed with a fairly good ear for pitch and timbre. I could tell instruments apart by their individual sound, and once I learned how to operate musical instruments, I started to be able to pick out melodies. This definitely made teaching myself to play a lot easier, since I could just try and emulate the things in music that I liked, but having a good ear early can be a bit of a curse for a few reasons.

First, it makes it too easy to get around learning to properly sight-read music, since if you have a good ear and decent musical memory, you memorize the music rather quickly and you’re not actually sight-reading anymore. When you’re a kid and you just want to be able to do the thing (play the music), having to concentrate and read isn’t exactly all that fun and it’s not as quick. And if you’re a little lazy, well, you’re going to do the easiest-to-you thing. It’s definitely part of the reason I’m so bad at reading rhythms in sheet music – once we went through the piece a few times, I’d memorize the note durations, rests, and rhythms and the parts where I was supposed to come in, so I wasn’t following it.

Second, when you are blessed with a good ear at an early age it’s kind of like being intellectually precocious – I was very smart very young, and thus didn’t learn good study habits because studying wasn’t actually necessary for me. Of course everyone caught up and most passed me because I sucked at studying. I’m still not great at it, though I definitely try harder to have discipline about things than I did. The early sense of being able to pick things out well is made worse when you’re not around a lot of people who have that same skill – you come to think your ability is actually greater than it is. I fell victim to this mentality for a long time, and then I got over myself when I met someone with excellent relative pitch and I about lost my mind. It showed me everything that was lacking from my understanding of pitch perception – especially being able to hear chords and harmony. I knew I needed work, and I then knew how much I needed to learn. Which is a wonderful thing once you get past how soul- and ego-crushing it can be at first. I’m happy that I now have a better sense of my limitations, because it has enabled me to work past them and improve.

I spend an inappropriate amount of time watching YouTube these days, and I have some specific favorite music YouTubers – most of whom have amazing relative pitch. Rick Beato has forgotten more about music than I can ever learn, and his ear is amazing – I’m so impressed with his teaching and techniques. Charles Cornell is fun to watch as he figures out songs as he’s hearing them for the first time – he’s so quick, it’s really quite impressive!

So that’s my aspiration. Getting to the point where I can just hear something and know where it is on whatever instrument I’m playing. It’s going to take work on my musical memory, my pitch perception, especially to identify chords/harmonies, and devoting the time to break it down and start from the basics with ear training to build it up to what I want.

The most important thing you can do as a musician is improve your ear. So I’m going to. And I encourage you to as well.

There are tons of free apps for you to download that can teach certain ear training concepts, but a truly great course to get started is available for purchase at beatoeartraining.com.

Take care, get your shots, and stay safe out there.
TMS