Practice Session Lengths for Ear Training

Hi. I am a few days into Ear Training One Note Complete beginners. I am very enthusiastic about this, because – whatever success I may have with it – it is the first kind of ear training that makes intuitive sense to me. My past efforts at memorizing intervals always seemed useless to me and so I gave up. Now I know why. So that’s great. I have two questions. (I am working my way through all the FAQ entries, so if the answers are in there feel free to just tell me so.)

Q1: In the past two I have often hit about 30 or 40 percent correct answers (guesses), which is far better than I expected. However, today I got suspicious that I may be cheating. When the note plays after the cadence, I can usually immediately recognize a C. I almost always know that a note is either an F or a G (but I confuse the two). And, I fairly reliably recognize notes as a half tone below C, F, or G. The latter thing is, my ear says “that’s a half step below one of C, F, or G. I don’t know if that’s a problem so far. Anyway, I can usually force myself to guess which it is without further mental processing. However, today I became aware that after I guess, I am doing a very quick, fleeting mental (silent) “singing” of the guessed interval. And of course, sometimes I am wrong, so I count that guess as a miss. Should I be working to suppress this after the fact mental interval singing? It could be hard to suppress. In the case of, say, a B I find that my brain is almost “dragged” into silently singing “B -> C”. As far as I can tell I am guessing before doing the interval singing, but the brain is pretty tricky.

Q2: I practice for 10 minutes at a time several times a day. (I am trying to make it 5 times.) I am usually worse in the second 5 minutes of a practice session, sometimes a lot worse. There seems to be some kind of ear fatigue going on. Is that what it is? Is there anything to do about it?

A: Nice to hear from you. You would not to develop a “habit” of singing and checking with your voice after you guess an example. Remember you want to use this ear training in real time with real music someday so you shouldn’t develop any habits that are slowing you down or pulling your mind away from the music you are playing.
People many times find that the longer the practice session the worse they do on the ear training. This is because your memory gets tired. You are probably better off to make your practice sessions shorter but more frequent throughout the day.

Best Regards,

Bruce

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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