The Secret of Ear Training

take a lesson of [Music] this you feel that that feeling holds the secret of ear training The Secret of ear training is in the feeling what we're learning to recognize when we say we are ear training is not a particular note or chord or scale or whatever it's the feeling state that is attendant with those things those things and their conceptual understanding the distance of notes and the patterns and all this of course that's all important but experientially we feel something when we hear a particular thing there's a feeling state that comes along with it and it's this feeling state that we're learning to recognize and putting a label to the label is the cord or scale mode whatever it happens to be but it's the feeling that we recognize and if you can feel [Music] this that particular feeling then you can feel any of the musical feelings they're all just like that this is a specific one and it's one we're going to focus on today and it's called the tonic tonic means the home note the generating tone the key Center the resting point of a scale of a mode of a key of a song The tonic and the tonic has a particular feeling State associated with it that has this quality of restfulness or completion or stability or whatever you want to call it and that feeling is something that you can learn to recognize and it's my sincere feeling that it's the most important one to recognize to begin with because it's so fundamental to all of music all of modern music essentially revolves around this tonic this tonal Center that gives meaning that gives experiential quality to all the other notes and chords and everything else that's going on in the music so to be able to recognize that is fundamental so once again here's the [Music] feeling and I mentioned before that it's not the specific note we're interested in in this case the note is C but this same note in a different context will not sound like this it will not have this restful quality to it and we can look at a couple examples so say we're in the key of f [Music] instead there's that C note doesn't feel like it did before say we're in the key of FSH minor [Music] doesn't feel the same as it did before that's the same note that's C right so it's not the particular note it's the relationships we're going to look at three levels you could say of tonic recognition that you can practice these three levels are based on scales based on chords and then based on full arrangements and music so starting with the first level based on scales this is just what we've been doing it's playing a scale from any key say we're in C right now major scale ascending or descending and then hearing and actually I mean bringing about the feeling of this note within yourself of course it's attendant with this particular pitch in this case like I described earlier but it's the feeling that will precipitate the note itself for the given context now you can use any scale for this it doesn't have to be C major of course it could have been F minor could have been a Dorian could have been e harmonic minor whatever it happens to be so long as there is a tonal Center a tonic that's what matters and you play the scale up or down until the note right before the tonic they we take E [Music] minor Can you feel it d so to do it you're bringing the scale to near completion allowing the feeling of the completion that is the tonic feeling to come up in you and then singing the note that brings that feeling about this takes some practice but it's well worth your time because this brings about an experience of producing the tonic feeling not just hearing it so singing is an important aspect here the second level of tonic recognition is through chord progressions so we're going to take a simp simple chord progression and then resolve that just like we did with the scale but again sing the note of resolution so we're back in the key of C you could just take 1 [Music] 145 and when you hit the one again that's the feeling right the one chord now the chord built on the tonic is imbued with the tonic quality itself so again we have so then you can take a more complicated progression still staying within the scale so this time I'll go say 1 6 3 4 3 2 can you resolve it there so you practice playing these chord progressions in any order stopping at some point and then resolving it in yourself so you start with ones that you know and you can repeat easily and then you can start just improvising some chords from the key stopping at some point and saying how do I resolve this whole thing bring the feeling up in yourself sing the note now the last level you could say of this tonic recognition at least for this video is feeling the tonic within real music music as it's streaming in real time now there's many ways to go about this I'm going to cover two here the first is to recognize the tonic chord or the tonic note in a Melody when it comes by in real time and the easiest way to begin is to take a song that you know that you know the chords to and every time that the tonic chord comes around you emphasize it in yourself so you say ah there it is there it is tonic home whatever you want to call it so that as it's coming you can feel it even if it's just for a brief moment you can feel it because sometimes often the tonic chord won't be some super obvious long thing that is like here I am right you might have something as simple if I'm back in C major again it might be the second chord in progression it starts on F then goes to C then a minor and G so every time it comes around there it is one more time there it doesn't have to be like it's at the start of the song or the end of the song It's just in the middle but still it has the feeling it has the feeling state of the tonic associated with it so you start with a song like that where you know what the progression is and you can willingly emphasize it when it comes around then you move on to some music that you don't know the core progression for and you just feel into it and you say can I feel when that tonic feeling arises and you test you keep listening to the song and saying I think it's there I think it's there and then you try to figure out the chords look them up online or tutorial or get them by ear best of all and you test and see is it true did I get it where I thought I did the second way of practicing with real music is similar to the core progression rout but now we have a whole arrangement we let the music play in a real song until some point that we've heard enough of it and you just push stop randomly at some moment and then you try to resolve the whole thing Within yourself and sing the tonic so in this case we're asking okay I've taken in all of these notes basically they're outlining some kind of key Center most likely and I stop and I say if this song were to end right now for instance how would I resolve it what would be the most stable note to resolve this whole thing to and you don't know what cord you're on at that moment or what's going on in the melody or whatever you just stop and you say if I were to resolve all of it now what would it be and can you produce that feeling so we can take a couple examples here from tracks that I've made uh over the past year during my music production streams I host these music production challenges and uh so I've produced a whole bunch of music there and we can use that copyright free okay here's this first example it's kind of a dark slower song [Music] now if I stop it right there can you resolve it try to bring about the feeling of resolution what note would resolve that I'm going to Play It Again [Music] can you hear it can you feel it so to do that we're taking in all the music stopping and you take your time can you bring about the feeling of the resolution if not play it again wait can you bring it about if not play it again wait right this isn't easy doesn't come in the first day or two of practicing tonic recognition but if you can get to this point where you can take in even new music you've never heard before and be able to sing back the tonic by stopping it at a random point you know you've really brought about this feeling within yourself and your tonic recognition is strong let's take another example example in this example the music comes in slowly with elements being added over time and there's an experience here when you've directed your intention towards finding the tonic is a curious experience where your mind is trying to work it out and as every new note enters it's kind of in a way factoring finding the lowest common denominator the note that makes sense of everything that we're hearing so notice that experience it's subtle but notice that as we listen as every new note and instrument comes in it's narrowing down the options and it may crystallize at a point you say oh there it is and maybe not let's see [Music] Can you feel it now that we've got it listen again the notice you might even hear the note right near the beginning and it might give you the feeling I'll point it out as we go [Music] right this is the whole idea taking in letting it settle outputting the note that generates all the others outputting the resting point that makes sense of all the other notes this is tonic recognition if you'd like to chat with me and others about ear training music Theory music production whatever it happens to be you can do that via my Discord server which you can find in the description below Discord is like a community chat room type of thing where we have a very beautiful Community there of people just hanging out and talking about music all the time you're welcome to join I also have some courses you can find the links to those in the description as well these courses are on music theory and composition including ear training uh if you like the video please leave it a like And subscribe to the channel and otherwise I hope you have a great rest of your day and I'll see you soon [Music]

Channel: Max Konyi

Views: 367,323

Keywords: music production, lesson, tutorial, getting started, beginner, basics, composition, music, how to, max konyi, studio, producer, software, sonic sorcery, ear training, melody, tonic, key

Id: u0P7gh789RI

Length: 13min 35sec (815 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 18 2022