Choosing Levels in Ear Training One Note Complete

Q: I have read the FAQs & plan on purchasing your Ear Training One Note Complete & Fanatic’s Guide to Ear Training and Sight Singing. I graduated from a performing arts HS, was decent on my instrument, was a good sight-reader, but ultimately didn’t major in music because of my ear. I really questioned my talent & determined my problem was quite unique. Currently I am making the effort for choosing levels of difficulty that may be suited for me.

I really appreciate what you are doing. I struggled with interval identification, & I could never see how this or plugging in licks by the chord changes was really playing by ear. In retrospect, I think my goal or what I THOUGHT I was learning was quite different than what I was being taught.

I am now 32, by the way. I was questioning my talent my senior year of HS, & decided to just take basic courses as an undecided major my freshman year of college. I thought the David Lucas Burge courses would “fix” me, & I could enter another school either my sophomore or junior year as the musician I felt I should have been to major in music in the first place.

DLB Perfect Pitch course – I developed “Active Perfect Pitch” pretty instantaneously, but my “passive PP” is sorely lacking. I then went to his relative pitch course.

I was diligent – I followed all of the instructions. I got to around level 22 (of about 45), & couldn’t pass it for the life of me. I started over. Same level-never could pass it. Decided not to major in music, pretending I just didn’t want to, but in reality I was mortified & really sad about my lack of talent, mainly indicated by my ear inability. I was honestly convinced that if my lessons (improv), “college level” ear training course in HS, & above all, The David Lucas Burge, star of the back of every musicians magazine, couldn’t help me, it was hopeless.

Anyways, I know you get a lot of questions, but I am still a little confused about a few things:

1. Ear Training One Note Complete: For choosing levels, should I just skip beginner level, or should I do it after intermediate & advanced levels?
2. Are your courses self-contained, or do I need to transpose them into the piano? I mean, if you play the audio in C, do I need to do all of the exercises in D, Eb, G, etc. also?
3. Is your Fanatic’s Guide to Ear Training and Sight Singing different pitches over a tonic chord – “Sing the Major 3rd, now Sing a Major 6th” or is it actually reading pitches in the book, you giving us a starting pitch, & us then singing?

Thank you so much for any help you can give me. Have a great day!

A: To be honest with you with this much background I’d recommend doing a few 1/2 hour skype lesson with me so I can get you straighten out. I’ll do my best in an email but there are a lot of issues you raise in this email that are hard to fully answer.

First to answer your questions:

1. In regards to choosing levels, you can start with the intermediate or advanced Ear Training One Note Complete. You can find the intermediate and advanced downloads HERE
2. Courses are self-contained. For some exercises they will be in all keys for others they are just in one key. For some exercises doing them in all keys helps for others it is not important. Ear Training One Note Complete is just in the key of C because you are memorizing the sound of each note in a key center. All key centers are the same i.e. the 3rd of Gb will sound like the 3rd. The 3rd of C is E and it will sound like the 3rd. A point could be made that if you have weak music theory skills that you should do the exercise in all keys to help you built up music theory knowledge. We will build up this theory knowledge with other theory and ear training exercises.
3. I’d like to start you with Contextual Ear Training Course. With this course you are not reading pitches out of a book you are listening to an exercise where you will hear a chord cadence, then asked to sing a pitch and then you will hear the correct pitch played a few seconds later.

Again from reading your message I think you would greatly benefit from a few skype lessons just to first help you realize how the ear training process works. You have been making decisions all along your musical life based on faulty information. Talent has very little to do with becoming a great musician. Learning how to do exercises correctly and unlocking the problems that are keeping you from learning is what needs to happen. Once that is fixed you will be fine.

Let me know if you have further questions

Best Regards,

Bruce Arnold

It is also recommended that you read Bruce Arnold’s Blog at his artist site. It contains more discussion of the musical topics found in these FAQs as well as other subjects of interest. You will also find the “Music Education Genealogy Chart” located here which shows you the historic significance of the music education products found on the Muse Eek Publishing Company Website.

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