3 Things That Will Keep You From Getting A Highly Trained Ear

By Dylan Andrews

This article will go through the top 3 most common ear training mistakes people make.

I want to share this so you will know what to avoid, and if you are using these methods, you can stop and use more effective ones.   

Common Ear Training Mistake #1 Inconsistent Practicing 

This is one of the biggest killers of developing a trained ear. 

If you are inconsistent with your ear training practice, you will never get to where you want to go. 

Ear training is very similar to going to the gym. 

If you want to get in shape and grow muscle, you need to work out consistently. 

If you go to the gym for 2 hours once a week, you're not going to see many results.

It would be much better if you went to the gym 20 minutes a day for five days.

This is the same when you train your ear. You don't have to spend hours training your ear every day.

It is best to spend a small amount of time doing it across multiple days throughout the week.

Common Ear Training Mistake #2 Identifying Intervals In Isolation 

You can find people teaching how to identify intervals by ear all over the place in videos, books, apps, etc.   

It is one of the most popular ways to teach ear training and one of the worst ways to train your ear. 

There is nothing wrong with identifying intervals by ear; the issue is that most teach you how to identify intervals by ear in isolation.

The problem with training your ear to hear intervals in isolation is that the feeling and functions change when music is added to those intervals.

For example, I play a major third starting from C; this would be notes C to E.   

If you listen to this interval repeatedly, you can memorize the sound.

Many teachers will even tell you to relate songs to intervals to identify them.

But when I start adding chords over this, the notes will react differently from if it was in isolation.   

So, suppose the intervals change their feeling and function when applied to music. In that case, it is pointless to listen to them in isolation.   

The whole point of ear training is hearing and understanding music, not specific notes in isolation.   

So if you want to know how to train your ear to hear intervals, don't do it in isolation.

Common Ear Training Mistake #3 Taking on too much at once

Many guitar players find it challenging to transcribe music by ear quickly.

For most, the main problem is taking on too much of the music at once.

It is much faster to transcribe music in tiny sections instead of training to do it all at once. 

All you need to do is listen to a small section of a song repeatedly until you can play it on the guitar.

It could even be as small as one note or chord. 

Once you have that small piece, you move on to the next and then the next until you know how to play the entire piece.

If you have made these common ear training mistakes, it's okay! Now you know what to avoid, but there are only my top 3 things to avoid.   

To get more help with your ear training, I invite you to join my online ear training course. This is an online ear training course that will teach you the most powerful ear training exercises so you can learn fast and have more fun playing the guitar.

Click here to learn more about online ear training lessons.