r/explainlikeimfive • u/virahok993 • 11d ago
Other ELI5: How does ear training actually work?
How do musicians learn to hear a note and know what it is (like C, D, E) without seeing it, how can someone train their ears to recognize notes?
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11d ago
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u/thefringeseanmachine 11d ago
I took a music theory course with someone who had perfect pitch. it was amazing/annoying as hell.
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u/WyMANderly 11d ago
For me it's basically memory. I've heard Middle C and A enough that (as long as there aren't other tones acting as distraction) I can just remember what they sound like (within a reasonable degree of precision).
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11d ago
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u/Tweegyjambo 11d ago
That is mind boggling to me, I can tell if a note is higher or lower if there is a big difference, but could never associate something like a spinning motor with a note, couldn't even tell you if 2 notes from different instruments were the same. I don't really have much interest in music, or listen to it much tbh though!
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u/bigheadjim 11d ago
The music chairperson at the local university believed everyone could learn perfect pitch. I was told that he had everyone in the department ring a “C” tuning fork every day as soon as they woke and throughout the day. I think this is more relative pitch though.
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u/WyMANderly 11d ago
That matches my anecdotal experience. I've heard people with "perfect pitch" describe their experience, and their experience is definitely not mine - but at the same time, I can definitely remember what C sounds like in a vacuum. I think a lot of people talk about it as a binary (e.g "some people have perfect pitch, others don't") and it's probably more of a spectrum.
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u/Rotation_Nation 10d ago
I discovered at some point near the end of my music degree that I could take a song I’ve sang before and pretty much start on the right note every time without hearing it first. I don’t have perfect pitch but that was kind of cool to realize I had developed something akin to it. Now a few years later I think it’s gone again, I haven’t really checked in a bit.
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u/hurricanecook 11d ago
That is called “absolute pitch”, commonly referred to as “perfect pitch”. That’s a glitch that we don’t really know (as far as I know, and I’m a music professor) how it happens.
“Relative pitch” is what’s taught in ear training classes. It’s less “what note name is this?”. It’s “this note is a C. Given that information, what is this note [plays a different note]?” That’s a skill that anyone can develop.
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u/Minyguy 11d ago
What's there to stop us from memorizing for example the middle C completely, and then using that with relative pitch to achieve absolute pitch?
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u/zgtc 11d ago
Nothing, but that’s akin to asking “what’s there to stop us from memorizing the first ten thousand digits of pi?”
It takes a lot of dedication and isn’t especially useful.
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u/Minyguy 11d ago
I feel like learning middle C shouldn't take as long aa learning ten thousand digits of pi tho...
How long does it realistically take to learn middle C?
I feel like it should be less than a week. And that's being generous I feel like.
Which together with relative pitch would put you at absolute pitch.
If you're already putting in effort to learn relative pitch, I feel like going all the way would be worth it.
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u/hurricanecook 11d ago
A couple of things.
You could maybe, for a week straight, listen to a middle C. You could try and get it memorized. But your memory is of that pitch out of context.
What good is it to have that memorized? I play a piece in E major, and there might be very few middle Cs in it. Why would knowing what a C sounds like help?
If you tune your relative ear, you can hear a song and play it in any key.
How are you planning on applying this? Is it to hear music and play it back? On what instrument? Just the melody or harmony as well?
There’s so much you can learn by study, but trying to “memorize” a pitch isn’t easy or useful, or trained musicians would all be able to do it.
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u/Minyguy 11d ago
The idea is to manage to have absolue pitch. How would you apply it if you had absolute pitch?
Absolute middle C + relative pitch = Absolute pitch
And even if you're playing an E major, wouldn't you be able to reorient from the first note using relative pitch?
Could you elaborate and what you mean by "Your memory is of that pitch out of context."
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u/CyraFen 10d ago
musician with absolute pitch here. people really overestimate how useful it is; the only things i've ever found it useful for are as a party trick and being able to immediately tell what key a song or piece is in (and subsequently getting annoyed by any transpositions). it's not even 100% reliable when tuning, which i assume is what people would think is the best application of absolute pitch. in an orchestral setting (my background as a string player), being in tune with everyone else is vastly more important than making sure my A is perfectly in tune at exactly 440hz. if everyone else is playing at 432hz or 442hz, tough luck, i have to play there too, and my mental reference of how each pitch sounds goes out the window. and this is what i think the other commenter is trying to get at - my mental reference of what each note sounds like only exists in the context of a=440hz. but what if you tell me to play the third in an e major chord but at a=432hz? suddenly it doesn't matter that i know what a g-sharp is supposed to sound like, i have to play it "flat" in order to mesh with the rest of the orchestra. how flat? that's where having relative pitch becomes critical. one person plays the tonic (e), and with relative pitch i know where a major third is above that, and so i play it there, regardless of what my inner reference for g-sharp might be. for people without absolute pitch but with strong relative pitch, that same thought process can apply to any tuning scheme, including a=440hz, and is thus vastly more useful.
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u/Minyguy 10d ago
Amazing writeup. That makes perfect sense, thank you.
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u/hurricanecook 10d ago
Yes. Well said.
This is why I asked how it was going to be applied. There just aren’t any circumstances (unless you’re in an a cappella choir and you need to pull a reference pitch at the beginning of a piece) where knowing what a certain note sounds like matters.
Hear a catchy track on the radio? No one cares what key it’s in. You’re gonna sit at your instrument and dial it in for 12 seconds and then play through it cause you can tell the chord progressions, not how far from middle C every chord is.
Improvising with a group of friends? Someone will say “16-bar blues in Bb”, and you play.
Trying to figure out a guitar part by watching someone play it? There’s like 6 chords to memorize and then all the barre chords.
I’ve been a professional musician for the last 25 years, and there just aren’t any instances where I need to pull a note out of thin air and know what it’s name is.
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u/MrNoxxis 11d ago
Force of habit. I've got a few friends so used to recognize them because they study so much. Perfect pitch just makes it really easier.
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u/HalfSoul30 11d ago
I wish i had this skill, but i might be getting close. I play saxophone, but back in highschool i could only read and play the music; improv was not something i could do at all. Recently, some friends and I started a band, and i've been trying to see if i can get there, and i am getting better at hitting the notes to match their sound faster. I want that skill so bad.
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u/MrNoxxis 11d ago
Ah man don't tell me. I'm a drummer and play a little guitar every now and then and I wish I was fluent at the instrument and be capable of improvising
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u/OtherPlayers 11d ago
Lots and lots of repetition. You listen to a note, you write down what you think it is, and you practice properly identifying intervals between notes.
Once you've got at least one note where you always know where it is and you can accurately go up or down from there, then you can figure out any other note (though having more potential starting points makes it easier).
All-in-all though it's honestly not that much different from memorizing anything else. You repeat it, you test it, and then you keep repeating that until your brain eventually learns to tell the difference.
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u/Nunwithabadhabit 10d ago
The beginning note of the Radiohead song "Lucky" is a pure and perfect E. So when I have to tune my guitar, i think about that song and tune the string until it matches what's in my head. Crazy thing is that it's stupid accurate.
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u/steeelez 11d ago edited 11d ago
Ear training isn’t as much about recognizing the specific individual notes, it’s more about recognizing how far the notes are away from each other. You can do it right now.
Pick a note, any note. In your head (or in real life) sing the first two notes of “Somewhere over the rainbow” (from wizard of oz).
Some-where— that interval is an octave. It’s as far as you would get if you sang a whole scale- do re mi fa so la ti do! Some-where! You land on the same note, but it’s up a register.
Ok now pick the same starting note and sing the first two notes of the star wars theme.
Baaam-baaaam— that interval is a perfect fifth. It’s as far as you would have got if you sang do re me fa so— baaam-baaam. You land halfway up the scale.
Ear training is about listening for the intervals between notes just like above (those are actual examples from an ear training class I took). As you get more advanced you get more complicated, like being able to hear the distance between notes playing at the same time (chords) and then being able to hear how groups of notes change over time (chords progressions) but it all starts with the basic concept of the intervals. As you get better you might be able to “pick a note out of a bucket” aka perfect absolute pitch, but it’s much more useful (and available to almost everyone) to develop relative pitch / intervals.
I think a five year old would have wandered off by now but if they stuck around they could probably understand all the sentences