Resource Guide for Fall 2005 - by Rob Erickson
These are examples of tunes that contain various intervals between the first and second notes. This can make it easier to train your ears to identify intervals in songs and recognize chord qualities, which are based on combinations of major and minor intervals, for example, major, minor, diminished, augmented, etc… chords. This training is valuable when you are trying to figure out the harmonies, melodies, and licks (riffs) to songs.
Ear training is critical, in the jazz area especially, to improvisation. Since improvising is composing on the spot, there is no opportunity to try various notes to see what sounds good and then write them down before exposing them to your audience. Jerry Coker, a well-known jazz professor, said: “The musical ear is a truly marvelous sense with far more potential than most of us realize. Without conscious development, all our other attempts to become good improvisers will likely fail. An improviser can develop awesome technical command of a musical instrument, know all the theoretical tools (scales, chords, etc.), acquire an impressive repertoire of memorized tunes, practice prodigiously, play lots of gigs, amass considerable experience, even listen to all the great players on record, and still fail for the lack of developed discerning ears. Such improvisers tend to sound mechanistic and musically pointless. We need to be able to pre-hear the phrases we are about to play, listen to it as we accurately play it, and know immediately afterward whether it was a worthwhile musical phrase.”
In conclusion, don’t forget to include ear training in your practice regimen. You will see the benefits as you invest the time in this area.
Download the pdf file here.