Tuning in my (musical) ear

Last week I wrote about looking into improving my ear when it came to recognising musical intervals. I had been watching various videos from the Musical Ear by Julian Bradley. I had subscribed to his emails to get more, but they turned out to be videos that were on Youtube anyway. As expected he eventually got to the sales pitch for his course. This costs nearly $300, which is fairly standard for this sort of thing. As he says, you can spend a lot more on personal lessons. I am probably not going to buy it for now, partly due to the cost and also that it is aimed more at piano players and so may contain material that is not key to my needs.

Other videos are appearing in my feed related to this topic. This one is by a bass player. He points to some free online resources that can help with this particular skill.

This music theory site sells some apps, but has free online tools. One will test you on intervals. It has lots of options for note range, instrument sound and more. The most useful is that you can select which particular intervals you want to work on. I have selected these as I was having some issues distinguishing them. I find that I may be find at certain pitches, but struggle if it is higher or lower.

One of Julian's videos says you should not rely on using particular songs to remember intervals. I get that this can be a 'crutch' as you go on, but I do find it useful right now. The video above also links to this site that lists a selection of songs that start with each interval, up and down. When I started doing the tests I was getting around 60%, but have managed to improve on that by keeping the tunes in mind.

The particular tunes I am using are:

• Minor third: Dazed and Confused by Led Zeppelin.
• Major third: While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks. I think I was taught this one at school.
• Perfect fourth: Star Wars Force Theme.
• Perfect fifth: Star Wars Main Theme. I grew up with that movie.

Those just happen to work for me, but it can depend on how ingrained certain tunes are with you. I am taking from Julian that you should prioritise the more common intervals. Most tunes do not leap beyond a fifth and some such as the tri-tone are fairly rare. I will work on sets of intervals until I can pretty much get all of them. I will also work on the downward ones. I would hope that this will get them into my head. It is a form of brain training. It takes time to develop the right neural paths.

I could get a mobile app to test myself, but I am home most of the time for now and can use the PC. I do not discount paying for a course if it looks useful, but there are so many free resources I can use for now.

Please let me know if you have found other resources that helped you.