Ear Training | Learning Intervals
By Dylan Andrews
Aural Skills (ear training) is one of the most important skills you need to develop to express yourself fully and play the guitar effortlessly.
One of the keys to ear training is identifying intervals by ear. Unfortunately, most guitar players don’t practice ear training and can’t do many things on the guitar. Such as:
- Play what you hear in your head
- Figure out songs without having to look up unreliable tabs or chord charts
- Know what notes are going to sound like before you play them
- And countless others
Many guitarists who practice ear training use inefficient ear-training exercises that leave them feeling frustrated and stuck for months or even years.
Spending hours, months, or years training your ear and finding out that you’re doing it wrong is no fun.
How To Train Your Ear The Right Way So That Music Becomes More Fun For You
When most people practice ear training, they relate intervals to songs. This method works in the short term but doesn’t work when you try to transcribe music.
A much better way to train your ear is by learning how to identify intervals based on their function and feeling. The great thing about identifying intervals by ear is no matter what key you’re in, the feeling of each interval is always the same. So, you need to listen to each interval and assign an emotion to it.
Watch this video to find out how you can do this.
I didn’t give you a list with each interval, and their emotions are because everyone will hear the intervals slightly differently. I may feel one interval has a specific feeling, and you might think it has a different one. This is okay, you need to find what each interval feels like to you.
The key to success is to train your ear to hear intervals consistently.
Schedule time to make practice ear training each week, and after a little while, you will see a difference. It may be slow going at first but don’t give up, you can do this!
If you want to learn more about identifying intervals by ear, get my free video on my top 5 favorite ear-training exercises.
Dylan Andrews is a professional guitar teacher and teaches ear training lessons online.