Purchasing Ear Training Courses

Q: I started teaching myself Absolute Pitch about 8 months ago, i then bought your one note ear training course about 2 months ago. The course is great but once i got used to the piano timbre (within about a week or so) i was able to pass both the intermediate Course and the Advanced course multiple times in one sitting. So now my question is, which do you recommend i do next? I don’t wanna be excessively purchasing items for ear training especially if its something that I’m going to pass upon listening to it just once.

Thank you for your time.

A: Nice to hear from you. Glad to hear that you have so little trouble with the one note ear training. Hopefully you are doing it correctly. Some times students use things like resolution tendencies, intervals and other tricks to get the notes right which will work to get the right answer but in the long run this will not help you as you to gain the best aural comprehension possible. Since you are not taking private lessons with me where I can test you on multiple levels of ear training and see how you are doing the ear training it is impossible to know if you can skip any levels. I went back and looked at your purchase history and noticed that the items you purchased for ear training were:

Ear Training Direct Application: Real Aural Comprehension:

Key Note Recognition MP3s ONLY:
Ear Training Two Note Advanced V1:
Ear Training Two Note Advanced V2:

All with just the MP3s and no book. I also noticed that you did not purchase Ear Training One Note Intermediate or Advanced so I’m wondering how you were able to test yourself with these MP3s if you weren’t purchasing these items? I’ll just say that approaching ear training like you have is a very bad idea. I understand that people try to save money or in some cases think they understand a concept but this is a very bad approach. Most likely you will not do the ear training correctly if you haven’t read through the material in the books. Therefore you are most likely learning in a manner that will have to be unlearned and then relearn the correct method. This is a big waste of time and is hurting your musical development. If you are pretty sure you can do the one note ear training then I would start with the Ear Training One Note Extreme so that you can improve your One Note Ear Training recognition time up to where it will need to be to do Two Note Ear Training correctly. There are four levels to the Key Note Recognition which are important to developing your ability to hear more complicated key centers. That is crucial if you are going to apply this ear training to a real musical situation. I urge you to take these recommendation to heart for your own sake.

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.

Purchasing Ear Training Courses

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