help how do i aural it plays the sound and it goes hua hauahau

Thorns

Thorns

i could have posted this in the 'who plays instruments' thread but i find this to be different enough to warrant a thread

ok so i am studying music for my HSC (final exams for nsw students) and am currently in the preliminary course. it seems that aural is an important part of the course - learning to discriminate between sounds, basically. i have absolutely no training in this field, despite being a solid performer. i really don't want to give off the image of 'guy who studies music for kicks' and i feel that the first step to becoming an overall better musician is to improve my aural skills.

i can't even tell the difference between intervals, i have trouble discriminating between major and minor chords, i need to have a chord played out slowly just so i can get a faint idea of whether it is major/minor/augmented/diminished/sustained. i really need advice from any musicians here in how to train my ear better, because i don't want to lose supposedly easy marks in exams and stuff and gimp my performance marks.

i play drums, but that's a really weak excuse for why i am shithouse at aural. halp

edit: no 'it's wrong to discriminate' jokes please i get enough of those
 
I sucked nuts at aural too. The best advice I got was to actually imagine myself playing what I was hearing (or trying to sing). Unfortunately that probably wont help you much.

So the only thing I could recommend is to practice singing. And by that I mean practice properly. Get a book or something, and do a lot of scales/arpeggios.

Have a nice day.
 
I did the prelim HSC course in music, and I didn't have much of a problem with aurals because I play(ed) piano. The best thing for it is familiarity with how each chord sounds, by either playing them on a piano or listening to stuff on the internet, although I highly recommend the piano option. Also, trying sounding out in your mind the notes in the chord as you hear it: you should find it is surprisingly easy to do, and a piano will help you to gain confidence.

Above all, the best thing you can do is just practice the kinds of things you're probably doing in class, and which you will have to do in the exam.
 
Yeah athenodros hit it on the nail; I played piano but did have a bit of a problem with aurals. But i basically practiced a TON of playing intervals and chords and listening to them, then later having someone else play them and i guess. It's kinda like flashcards.
 
By aurals here do you mean you need to play back what is played for you or simply be able to hear the differences in the pitch and tell what notes are played?
 
This just takes practice. If two chords sound the same to you, play them one after the other and hear the difference. Also, harmonically analyze music that you play/listen to/generally know well, so you can think of certain intervals or chords as what a particular piece sounds like in a certain place. For example, you could use the beginning of the beginning of the Pokemon title screen theme to remember what a dominant seventh sounds like. Chords and intervals are a lot easier to remember if you have good examples to think of.
 
Aural Skills

I'm a freshman music student in my undergrad and I've definitely had my fair share of struggling with ear training. The most important thing I find helps me when doing dictation is relaxation. Don't try to over-analyze what you're hearing or second guess yourself too much. Freaking out just makes it that much harder for you.

Musictheory.net and similar sites have all sorts of ear training stuff that is pretty helpful. There are also ear training apps for Apple products where they play an interval for you and you pick which one it is from a list of possibilities.They generally have it set up in levels from beginner to advanced so that you can start off with differentiating between just prime, perfect fourth, perfect fifth, and octave at first and work your way up to major and minor thirds and sixths, et cetera. Most of these programs also have harmonic ear training to help you recognize qualities, inversions, and basic chord progressions.

Another neat trick is looking up and familiarizing yourself with songs that use the basic intervals you're going to be tested on so that can associate each interval with a given song. Perfect fourths, for example, are the first interval in Auld Lang Syne, The Star Spangled Banner, and Bridal March from a Midsummer Night's Dream.

No matter what, you should definitely learn to associate intervals with solfege (do re me fa sol la ti do in the major mode). That's a pretty big thing in Music Theory classes, seeing that you have to use it when sight-singing. Singing the intervals in solfege with a piano in different keys has definitely been helping me in my development of relative pitch.
 
ivar said:
because its wrong to differentiate bro
Click to expand...

Calculus teachers across the world just died a little inside.


As for the thread, I'm currently having the same problem in my Music Theory AP class. I can get the intervals correct sometimes, but other times I'm think 3rds are seconds and 5ths are thirds and the augmented chords are diminished, and it's just a trainwreck. I've tried most of these techniques before, but nothing is immediately helpful. Should I just try and practice it more and more to force feed ti into my brain or what?
 
I think this comes a lot more naturally to some people than to others, for me it was a big struggle, and to be honest, I kinda gave up on the whole thing..

I mean I did work at it, though not as hard as I might have, and I did improve somewhat, but in the end, I dont know that it is as big a deal as you might think. I mean, it would help a lot if I was better at this, but it isnt necessary.

I would always completely shit myself when I had a high entry or anything like that, but, everyone completely shits themselves about that. I dont think I was particularly worse at them than anyone else on the whole..

Have a nice day.
 
I'm incredibly awful at aural when it's the test time for me (I take instrumental music separate from classes but we get examinations and tests) but I do really well when it's just practice. Making up your own little mnemonics or associations is really helpful, tacky as it may sound.
 
My vocal range is pretty good; I can go from deep base to soprano.



Blaming it on all the karaoke over many years.
 
it's aural in general, i don't think there will be stuff like 'IS THIS C OR G' but more like identifying intervals etc

i will look into these suggestions and come exam time, bump this thread (if it isn't bumped) and report my findings
 
I can confirm that it will be identifying intervals and such rather than 'what note is this' because I have done the same course. Otherwise, everyone would fail. Immediately.
 
You do probably want to practice before exam time, unless you are going to take my not bother advice..

Have a nice day.
 
TheValkyries said:
Calculus teachers across the world just died a little inside.
Click to expand...

Calculus teachers are all soulless bastards though.

rash generalisations never come back to haunt me
 
learn the piano thats one part. okay here is the secret to being good at aural: find songs to help you memorize intervals, and then chord progressions to help you memorize chords. For example somewhere over the rainbow is obviously how to pick out octaves. Being intimately familiar with a 12 bar blues will help you pick out chords with lowered 7ths. Just get good at singing the chord patterns in your head and you'll be fine.

You will never be tested on pitch identification (as in perfect pitch). You will probably be tested on harmonic dictation (identify chords in a progression), and melodic dictation (writing out a played melody given the starting note).

Be able to sing major, melodic minor, harmonic minor, and natural minor scales. know sol fage (or however you spell it) it will help you memorize chord intervals because you associate a verbal component with a sound component.

Listen to a lot of music and try to figure out whats going on in that song. Just put some music on and try to see if you can follow the chord progression. Identify the meter the song is in, identify the tonic note of the song, is there a repeating pattern? What is it? How many bars long is it?

If you really suck at chords: you can use this website to practice
 
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