YES YOU CAN! How do i know? Because I have taught over 100 musicians to do it over the past 7 years. These are musicians of all ages and levels of ability on various instruments, and you can be one of them.
Playing by ear is a thrilling experience. With this skill, your instrument can reproduce any song you can whistle or imagine, in any key. You can write down melodies while sitting on an airplane, without consulting a piano. How is this wonderful feat accomplished?
There are two ways a person plays by ear. Either you are born with perfect pitch or you learn to play by ear using relative pitch.
One in 10,000 people is born with perfect pitch. These rare individuals can hear any note and tell you what that note is. Some folks say perfect pitch can be learned, but I am very skeptical of these claims.
Relative pitch – by contrast – is the ability to name any note once you have been given a reference pitch. You figure out the second note by calculating its distance from the given note. I can teach you to do this.
In order to improvise, you must be able to transfer any melody you hear (on the radio, in your memory, or in your imagination) to your fingers and your instrument.
How do You Do It?
My “New Ears Resolution” ear training method is based on the “movable Do” system as elaborated by my teacher, Alvin Learned. Al was Dean of the legendary Westlake School of Jazz, which trained many of the leading Los Angeles musicians of the 1950’s.
By playing along with the “New Ears” CD, you learn to recognize all of the various notes in the major scale, and you become adept at finding any scale degree on your instrument in any key. The difference this makes in your playing is immediate & dramatic!
Visualize two typists, one laboriously “hunting & pecking” for each letter, the other effortlessly spinning out error-free paragraphs. Now imagine two musicians, one painstakingly searching for each note (by trial & error), the other soaring through a melody as if it had been carefully memorized.
A very talented and ambitious young student told me he was trying to memorise one tune per week in all 12 keys. I responded, “That sounds like a mountain of work, and it will take you 10 years to build a repertoire!”
When you play a song by ear, you do NOT memorize the sheet music. Rather, you hear the tune in your imagination, calculate the tune’s formula in real time, and translate the formula into actual notes in the desired key on your instrument, also in real time.
This may sound like it would consume a staggering amount of brain power, but the process becomes amazingly simple, once you have worked through the exercises contained in the “New Ears Resolution” book & CD package. The nine exercises on the CD start out quite simply and grow increasingly complex as your ability and confidence grow.
You play along with the 45-minute CD a minimum of three times.
- The first time, you read through the charts given in the “New Ears” book while you play along with the CD. This also helps refine your sight reading ability.
- The second time, you play along with the CD without looking at the book. You are now playing the exercises by ear. This increases your confidence.
- The third time through, you improvise variations as you play along with the CD. This builds your improvisatory vocabulary.
While this method is primarily designed to teach you to play by ear in all 12 major keys, many other benefits are derived from practicing with the “New Ears” CD.
- Your sight reading grows stronger.
- Your tone develops.
- Your intonation improves.
- Your rhythmic sense increases.
- You begin to develop an improvisational vocabulary.
- Your confidence blossoms.
While the majority of my students incorporate the “New Ears Resolution” ear training method within a series of 12 or more one-hour private lessons, several self-motivated students have found they can learn on their own from the book & CD. For any students who encounter questions or road blocks along the way, I am always available for consultation by email.
Even though the system comes with a money-back guarantee which extends to all serious students who give the method two months worth of serious attention, no one has ever complained or asked for a refund.
Click here to purchase “New Ears Resolution” via secure link to CCNow. The full cost is only $20+$5 shipping. You will receive the complete ear training method – CD and book. When ordering, please specify:
- Concert treble clef (flute, violin, guitar, vibes, oboe, vocal, etc.)
- Concert bass clef (bass, trombone, tuba, etc.)
- Piano (3 staves with melody, chords, bass notes and guitar tableture: more information – more page turns)
- Bb (trumpet, clarinet, tenor or soprano sax)
- Eb (alto or bari sax)
August 14, 2007 at 10:46 am |
Hi Craig,
I take clarinet lessons from Signe, who recommended your ear traing book and CD.
I would like to stop by and pick up a copy (I live in PA) , I will be in Sequim this Sunday around 2:00pm, will be leaving Sequim around 4:30. Would either of those times work to pick up a copy.
August 31, 2007 at 8:55 am |
Hi Craig–It would be clearer if you explained that the movable do is the “do” of “do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do”. Sig
March 27, 2008 at 10:52 am |
I bought the “New Ears” set last May 2007 while attending the Big Band workshop in Port Townsend. I worked on it on my own from time-to-time and was making some progress. Then, in Jan 2008, I had occasion to be on the Olympic Penninsula and arranged to do a lesson with Craig. That 1 session was HUGE help. I understand quite a bit more of what I’m working towards with the New Ears book. Now, I have it on the top of my practice pile and am using it as my warmup each day when I have the opportunity to practice. I can do a lot with it on my own, but I also can see how being able to pair it with regular lessons would be even better. Wish I lived closer! To be able to find someone like you, Craig, here at home to work with on an ongoing basis would be a wonderful thing. In the meantime, I’m learning a lot and seeing some neat places by looking farther afield for lessons and places to play!
November 19, 2008 at 12:16 pm |
Can I order the New Ears Resolution online?
May 24, 2009 at 12:10 am |
Certainly! Click on:
http://www.ccnow.com/cgi-local/cart.cgi?jazzforyouth_NER_http://www.craigbuhler.com/purchase_cds.html
May 26, 2009 at 3:23 pm |
bossachoro Says:
May 26, 2009 at 11:48 am
Hi Craig,
Thanks a lot for your feedback. I play mainly Brazilian music style and also some Jazz and Classical music. I am Brazilian. I play bossa-nova (i.e. Jobim), chôros (i.e. Pixinguinha), some comtemporary (i.e Guinga). I wish to play, I mean be able to improvise mainly over jazz, and brazilian music standards.
I am working every day thru the entire CD of “New Ears Resolution. I find it quite relaxing singing or hearing in my head the solfegio syllable names and playing the guitar at same time. I understand that working with movable DO is important to develop relative pitch and be able to transpose more easily. Do you think it is also necessary to work thru the chromatic scale in the future? I mean using syllables like LI, SI, FI, etc.
I am already feeling some effects of this work when playing by ear or improvising. It is not perfect but it seems the fingers find more “right” notes and faster. How long, in average, do you think it takes to be able to play the things I hear in my head consistently?
In the book, page 6, step 2, you say we could play the chords. For the moment I am playing only the single notes by ear. Is it important to play the chords? Do you mean playing the chords the intervals together? I think most of intervals being played are inside the chords. What is the best way to practice?
Craig, thanks in advance for taking your time. Please let me if there are other materials I can buy from you.
Best wishes,
Luiz
June 4, 2009 at 11:30 am |
Dear Luiz,
I believe i can speak for the entire jazz community when i express how great a debt we all owe to the musicians of Brazil for the profound contribution your country has made to this music. Of course, for most of us our primary connection to Brazil is through the music of Jobim, Gilberto, Bola Sete, and Milton Nascimento. But our appetites have been stimulated to seek more. Perhaps – as i share with you the joy of ear training – you will also teach me more about the music of your countrymen.
Brazilian compositions such as those of Jobim offer us a freshness of rhythmic approach which is widely appreciated, but his music is also very rich in harmonic & melodic content. As you work through “New Ears Resolution,” you are mastering the harmonic language encapsulated by the common II-V-I progression, which is the backbone of jazz standard literature. You are also becoming more secure in your ability to navigate the 12 major scales, which provides a basic vocabulary for melodic construction.
We are considering various strategies to use in volume II of this work: whether to focus on modes, the various minor scales, blues, pentatonics, or chromaticism. Your first work in chromaticism should be in the use of chromatic passing & neighbor tones. For example, if you enlarge on exercise 1, you might vary it first from TI-DO to TI-DO-RE-TI-DO. Then try TI-DO-DI-RE-RA-DO-TI-DO. Obviously, you need to adjust the rhythm to make room for the additional notes. Next, attempt LI-TI-DO-DI-RE-RA-DO-LI-TI-DO. These and other variations can be executed over the same 9 exercises already encountered on the CD. As you begin to elaborate on the original 9 exercises (in all 12 keys), you are:
1. Learning the syllables in all 12 keys.
2. Learning the chromatic notes between the scale tones in those 12 keys.
3. Learning how to plan your rhythmic flow so as to accomodate the number of notes you wish to fit in a given sequence.
4. AND, MOST IMPORTANT, you are beginning to improvise … in a way which fits the melody, the harmony, the key center, and the rhythmic groove.
This last point is perhaps the most essential of all. Many of my students comment that achieving a smooth flow in concept & execution is their biggest struggle. It is not as important to play 3 notes or 5 or 18; what is crucial is that your melodic path unfolds smoothly, consistent with the metric flow & the groove.
Now, in regards to your question about chords, the guitar is BOTH a melodic AND a chordal instrument. Guitarists imply the harmony in various ways.
1. My friend Mark Turnbull can play a melody in such a way that each note in the melody is the top note in a chord.
2. Other guitarists play a melodic phrase and then punctuate that with a chord (like Kenny Burrell).
3. Still others use arpegiated chords (which is what we horn players are forced to do) to deliniate the harmony.
You may wish to start by simply playing the bass notes (the root of each chord), being careful to keep in precise rhythm with the drums. Or you might try playing a harmony to the melody (example: to the melody FA-MI-RE-TI-DO, play LA-SO-FA-RE-MI)
Another area in which “New Ears Resolution” is strengthening you is in the matter of MODULATION. Jobim’s best known song, “Girl From Ipaniama”, is not difficult to play as far as the degrees of the scale go; the melody contains only 2 non-harmonic tones. What makes it a challenge for students is the many modulations it contains in the bridge. The best way to think of a key change is like crossing a border. When i am in Bellingham, WA, i am a citizen; when i travel to Vancouver, BC, i become a visitor. Same person, different function. So, in “Ipanima”, when you move from the verse in F major to the bridge in Gb major, the first note changes from DO to TI. We notate that as DO=TI … the old DO becomes the new TI. As you begin to hear and adapt to these internal modulations, you will no longer get lost, but will always know where you are. It is as if you get off of 1 train and get on to another train. You move at the same speed but in a new direction.