5 Tips On How To Stay Motivated To Train Your Ear
By Dylan Andrews
Staying motivated to practice ear training can be a struggle for most guitar players. But imagine if you were always excited to practice ear training.
What would that do for your guitar playing?
To help you accomplish this, I want to give you my top 5 tips on how to stay motivated to train your ear.
Just follow these five ear training tips, and you will see how you can stay consistently motivated to train your ear.
#1 Get Crystal Clear On Your End Goal
Getting clear on your end goal is the first step to staying motivated to practice ear training.
When things get hard, remembering why you are training your ear will push you.
Without having a strong reason for training your ear, you will easily get off track.
A way to get very clear about your ear training goals is to:
Sit down with a piece of paper and pencil and write out why you want to get better at ear training.
Take your time with this and really think it through. Ask yourself these questions:
What will training your ear do for you?
What is the end result you want?
How will training your ear change your playing?
Once you answer these questions, you will already be ahead of most.
#2 Make A Plan
Without having a plan of action, your ear training practice won't be productive.
Plan it out if you want to train your ear in the fastest way possible.
Each week, create a practice schedule and plan when you will train your ear, how long you will train your ear, and how you will train your ear.
#3 Set Micro-Goals
Micro goals are small things you can achieve in a 15-60-minute ear training practice session.
This will allow you to see progress every time you train your ear.
A few examples of micro-goals include:
- Correctly singing a scale 5 times in a row
- Memorize the intervals in a minor scale
- Play 2 melodies you make up in your head
- Identify a 4-chord progression of a song
Ensure your micro-goals are specific and achievable within a 15–60-minute practice session.
#4 Track Progress Weekly
It has been proven that those who frequently monitor their ear training progress have a much higher chance of reaching their ear training goals.
The more you see yourself progress, the more excited and motivated you become.
This makes you want to practice ear training more and be more focused.
Also, if your progress slows down, you will see precisely where it happened and know how to fix it.
So, at the end of each week, make sure to track your progress.
#5 Integrating Ear Training Items
Integrating different ear-training exercises is how you train your ear to hear actual music.
Music doesn't use one technique or skill over and over, it uses multiple such as chords, melodies, scales, rhythm, picking, etc.
So, if you only practice ear training in isolation, you are not fully preparing yourself for actual music.
Here’s how to practice integration:
- Pick 2-4 items you are going through in your ear training practice.
- Do each item only once and then immediately do the next and the next.
An example of this would look like this:
- Sing the A major scale
- Then sing a chord progression (roots only)
- Then sing a melody
This is only an example, so take what you practice in your ear training and put them together.
I want to help you have a highly trained ear so you can have more fun playing the guitar.