This site shared interesting points of view and was also an excellent resource of references pertaining the the research and study of absolute pitch.

One thing I always found really annoying with the site is that the information was not presented in a visually appealing fashion for online reading.

Well, it’s about time! Chris Aruffo updated the website, giving it a nice facelift. The information for developing absolute pitch is so much easier to find and sift through!

Despite many people’s disbelief that absolute pitch is possible to acquire, Chris shares a lot of insight and research that make acquiring absolute pitch seem like a possibility.

He is open enough to say that he has not figured out a way for adults to acquire absolute pitch fully (particularly in the aspect of creating meaning out of pitches). But, that doesn’t make his research and information on the website a waste. The concepts he presents actually make sense. And probably should be explored further by more people if any breakthrough in absolute pitch were to become possible.

I feel relative pitch is the most important and relevant musical skill. However, having absolute pitch would seem to offer another perspective to hearing music and improvising over music.

Although many musicians feel it’s a waste of time to try to acquire (and they may be right), the musicians I know personally that have both relative pitch and absolute pitch, sure seem like monsters on their instrument. And while they may not have the best groove, or best chops, or best whatever… their sense of melody and harmony is pretty darn awesome.

Anyway, check out Chris Aruffo’s research on absolute pitch here: http://www.aruffo.com/eartraining/

You may also like:

1. Perfect Pitch Training and Research
2. Absolute Pitch Online Ear Test

Recently, I came across two websites that provide chord progressions and even single chords of various qualities, that can be used to practice focusing on hearing chord tones.

Two Websites That Can Be Used To Practice Hearing Chord Changes

http://www.playingthechanges.com/

This website allows you to download 72 single chords of different chord qualities.

http://www.zogmusic.com/EarTraining.htm

This website provides methodical chord changes. Once you are familiar with being able to hear chord tones, then hearing changes becomes the next challenge to accomplish. The chord tones will not sustain very long until the next chord is sounded. So you’ll have to hear and process quickly.

Chord Tones: A Simple And Effective Method

For a simple and effective and method for learning how to hear and recognize chord tones, visit: http://www.eartrainanywhere.com/chord-tones-and-how-to-learn-to-hear-them/

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1. Improvise Over Any Chord Progression

However, you will often find these resources to be slow, clunky, and difficult to customize your ear training session.

This interval ear training resource is not like that at all!

Its user interface makes it easy to select the intervals you want to focus on. It responds quickly, provides notation, and best of all it’s free online.

Interval Ear Training, A Foundation For Hearing Chords

If you want to develop relative pitch and start hearing chords, master the skill of hearing your basic musical intervals.

This will set you up with a foundation that makes hearing chords that much easier.

All chords are created by a combination of basic intervals.

A few minutes of interval ear training a day is all it takes to have the foundation to unlock chords.

Train your ear to hear intervals online and visit: http://www.teoria.com/exercises/ie.php

You may also like:

1. Interval Ear Training Best Practices
2. Free Ear Training Software
3. Interval Inversions

This website gives you 67 ear training MP3 tracks to practice hearing and recognizing basic chord triads. Get it now, while it’s still FREE!

Hear Chord Triads Now

Practice hearing chord triads by taking these chord triad ear training MP3 tracks with you.

Learn to recognize basic chord triads and you’ll soon be able to hear these triads within complex chord structures. You will soon realize the complex isn’t really so complicated.

The chord triad MP3 ear training tracks can be found here: http://www.eartrainanywhere.com/chord-triads-and-how-to-hear-the-foundation-of-all-chords/

You may also like:

1. A Jazz Piano Chord Approach That Will Stretch Your Ears
2. Hear Triads

With relative pitch ear training mp3′s, you can load intervals into your mp3 player, allowing you to take your relative pitch practice wherever you go!

If you want permanent relative pitch, practicing consistently is the key. These relative pitch ear training mp3′s will help you do just that!

Train Your Ears Anywhere

Ear Train Anywhere (www.eartrainanywhere.com) provides you with over 500 relative pitch ear training mp3′s that you can load into your mp3 player.

With current technology, most mp3 players allow you to sort these relative pitch ear training mp3′s into specific playlists. This is way cool.

Playlists allow you to focus on specific intervals that you may have difficulty internalizing.

Until now, it’s never been easier to increase the frequency of your relative pitch practice.

You no longer have stuck at home, glued to a computer or your instrument to practice hearing melodic and harmonic intervals.

Now, this doesn’t mean you no longer need to use your instrument or any other ear training software.

It does mean that you can now practice relative pitch ear training anytime you have your mp3 player with you!

Grab these relative pitch ear training mp3′s at: www.eartrainanywhere.com

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1. Measure Your Pitch Perception

Being able to hear the root note of a chord is critical to hearing, understanding, and/or reharmonizing any chord progression.

Hear root notes, and you’ll be able to know and play the chords for any song.

How To Practice Hearing Root Notes

Technically, any bass note can serve as the root note of a chord. More often than not, the root note of a chord will depend upon the melody of the song and the amount of tension you are trying to accomplish.

Learn the melody of a song, and you will be able to manipulate the root note of it’s inherit chord progression.

Here are two effective ways to practice hearing root notes.

Sing A Melody

This practice will teach you how to hear the root note in relation to a melody.

1. Choose a melody of a simple song that you already know.
2. Isolate the first measure and sing just that.
3. On your instrument, play a random note. Listen and feel how that note energizes the melody.
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3, changing the note each time by a half step. You will find that some notes will energize the melody. For example, a melody note “F” may feel somewhat stable when a “Db” is played as the root note. That same melody note “F” may feel unstable when a “G” is played as the root note. When first starting, try to find the note that feels the most stable for the entire measure and choose that as your root note.
5. After you’ve explored all of your note options for possible root notes for the first measure, isolate and sing the next measure.
6. Explore your root note options for that measure. You may find, depending on your melody, that you may need to change your root note more than once within the measure. That’s okay.
7. Continue until you’ve determined a root note for each measure of the melody.

Play a Chord

This practice teaches you to hear the root note in relation to a chord.

1. Play a random chord.
2. Sing a random root note. Listen and feel how that root note energizes the chord.
3. Repeat steps 1 and 2, changing your root note each time. When first starting, try to find the note that feels the most stable for that chord. Choose that as your root note.
4. Repeat steps 1 to 3 with a different chord each time.

After you’ve become comfortable hearing root notes, you’ll be able to easily figure out any chord progression for any song. You’ll even be able to hear alternate root notes and reharmonize the entire chord progression more easily, because you will have learned how a root note can affect any chord and melody. Your decisions for possible root notes will become intentional based on the vibe you are tying to create.

The best way to get this type of understanding organized, is through learning the proper spellings of enharmonic equivalents and the logic behind these spellings.

Start properly spelling your enharmonic equivalents now and save yourself from many future headaches when it comes to ear training.

How To Properly Spell Enharmonic Equivalents

Any note can have multiple spellings, but still sound the same. For this reason alone, many musicians struggle with music theory and their development of relative pitch is grossly stunted.

For example, a Bb (B flat) can also be spelled A# (A sharp) or Cbb (C double flat).

So which one is it? And how do you know which enharmonic spelling to use?

It all depends on the musical context and your understanding of that context.

To keep things simple, let’s take a look at a C major scale.

The C major scale is spelled:

• C (1st degree)
• D (2nd degree: this is a major 2nd from the root note C)
• E (3rd degree: this is a major 3rd from the root note C)
• F (4th degree: this is a perfect 4th from the root note C)
• G (5th degree: this is a perfect 5th from the root note C)
• A (6th degree: this is a major 6th from the root note C)
• B (7th degree: this is a major 7th from the root note C)

Now, let’s look at the note G. Any type of G will be some sort of 5th degree in the scale.

For instance:

• The note G is a perfect 5th
• The note Gb is a diminished 5th
• The note G# is an augmented 5th

If you played a note F# (which is the same sound as Gb) and called it F#, then you are communicating that you are understanding this note to be some sort of 4th. In this example, F# is an augmented 4th.

However, if you communicate that this note was a Gb, then you are communicating your understanding of this note to be some sort of 5th. In this example, Gb is an diminished 5th.

Enharmonic equivalents also pertain to chord spellings.

Musicians that lack an understanding of proper spellings of enharmonic equivalents will often make this mistake when naming the chords of this ii, V, I chord progression.

• Incorrect: C# minor 7, Gb 7, B major 7 (This spells a ii, VI double flat, I chord progression)
• Correct: C# minor 7, F# 7, B major 7 (This spells a ii, V, I chord progression)

See how messy your thoughts can get if you misspell your enharmonic equivalents?

Messy thoughts stunt your growth.

List of Enharmonic Equivalents

Study the logic behind this list and learn how to spell your enharmonic equivalents properly each time.

To keep this list of enharmonic equivalents simple, all notes will be in relation to the note C.

• C = (unison)
• C# = (sharp 1)
• Db = (flat 2)
• D = (major 2)
• D# = (sharp 2)
• Eb = (flat 3)
• E = (major 3)
• F = (perfect 4)
• F# = (augmented 4)
• Gb = (diminished 5)
• G = (perfect 5)
• G# = (augmented 5)
• Ab = (flat 6)
• A = (major 6)
• A# = (raised 6)
• Bb = (flat 7)
• B = (major 7)

If you know how to play any of the basic triads as chords on a piano then you can train your ears to hear even the most complex jazz chords.

Hear, Stack, and Sing Your Basic Triads

Any complex sounding chord can be implied from a combination of stacking 2 simple triads.

Follow these simple steps to get to the point where you can hear and comprehend even the most complex jazz chords.

Step 1: Play a major triad on a piano.

Step 2: Sing each note in that major triad.

Step 3: Play a different major triad.

Step 4: Sing each note in that major triad.

Step 5: Play both major triads at the same time.

Step 6: Sing each note (total of 6 notes) that you are hearing.

By breaking down a complex sounding chord into smaller chunks you can be able to hear the actual notes sounding in a chord more easily.

This concept is similar to hearing slash chords, only this time, instead of just having a chord on top of a single bass note, you’ll be having a chord on top of another chord.

Here are some of the jazz chords you can imply and learn to hear using this simple jazz piano chord approach.

C major triad + D major triad = C 9 #11 add 13 (C, E, G, D, F#, A)

C major triad + G major triad = C major 7 add 9 (C, E, G, G, B, D)

C major triad + Bb major triad = C 7 sus 9 (C, E, G, Bb, D, F)

C minor triad + B diminished triad = C minor/major 7 9 add 11 (C, Eb, G, B, D, F)

C minor triad + F augmented triad = C minor 11 13 b9 (C, Eb, G, F, A, C#)

C minor triad + F# major triad = C minor b5 13 b9 (C, Eb, G, F#, A, C#)

To take this practice to another level, explore playing different inversions for each triad that you are playing and follow steps 1 through 6 each time.

You may also like:

1. Hear Jazz Chord Progressions
2. Hear Triads

Are you unable to hear and sing a tritone or a minor sixth without mentally calculating the distance of the two notes?

Try this effective ear training method and learn to permanently hear, recognize, and recall, any interval.

Best Practices of Hearing Intervals

At first you may find it easy to learn to hear intervals by reference of a song. However, what you’ll find is that in many situations, depending on the context, the feeling of an interval can change, making it next to impossible to hear a reference song out of the context that you are currently hearing.

This is because, more often than not, intervals are not isolated incidents occurring in the music. The context of the notes that surround that interval (before and after) can change the feel of the interval completely. The reference song you learned to associate with that interval may not align with the feel of the song that you are currently hearing.

For example, a minor sixth (C to Ab) can feel one way in this context (melody played is: C, Ab, G, B, D, C) and another way in this context (melody played is: C, Ab, Eb, G, Ab).

Here is an ear training method that teaches you how to hear intervals just as quickly, and also recognize those intervals in any musical context.

When practicing to hear intervals, always practice hearing the interval within a musical context.

Create Your Own Interval Songs

Creating your own interval songs will personalize the feelings of intervals. The prior method used reference songs that established feelings that were not personal to yourself and experience.

By being the one that is recognizing the feelings of each interval, you will be able to recognize these intervals more often when listening to your music.

Interval Songs Beginner Method 1

Step #1: Play an interval. Listen to that interval and describe what you are feeling.

Step #2: Sing a melody that this interval makes you feel.

Step #3: Play that melody.

Step #4: Each time you come across the interval that you are focusing on, emphasize that sound in your melody and say the name of that interval out loud.

Interval Songs Advanced Method 2

Step #1: Play an interval. For example: C, E

Step #2: Recognize this interval and say it out loud. For example: C, E is a Major Third

Step #3: Perceive this interval in a minor context. And play a melody that incorporates this interval in a minor context. For example: C, E, G#, A, C, D, E, C, A

Step #4: Reinforce the sound of the interval again by simply playing it again. For example: C, E

Step #5: Recognize the interval again and say it out loud. For example: C, E is a Major Third.

Step #6: Repeat steps 1 to 5, this time perceiving the interval in a different context. Try major and dominant contexts. Also explore different modes.

You may also like:

1. Interval Inversions
2. Hear Melodies

Here are a few solid ear training practices and habits that will get you on your way to hearing every note sounded in a chord!

Listen to Chords 15 minutes a Day

The first step toward opening up your ear to hear each note being sounded in a chord, is to listen to chords on a daily basis for at least 15 minutes.

Anything less than that may still help, but your ear is just getting warmed up! Once your ear is warmed up, the learning can really begin.

Practice Listening to Chords the Best Way

There are many ways to get the job done. However, there will always be one way that will yield a disproportionate amount of success. Here is that way…

Start out by listening to a double-stop (2 notes played at the same time. A chord is 3 notes or more played at the same time).

Play the double-stop on a piano, guitar, or any other harmonic instrument.

Sing a melody that will go along with the double-stop that you are hearing. This enforces the sound, emotion, and the feeling of that double-stop.

The melody only needs to be a simple one. What’s important is that you hear a melody.

Once the sound, emotion, and feeling of the double-stop is established, listen to the double-stop again, and this time focus on hearing the lowest note.

Sing the lowest note.

Now, play the lowest note in the double-stop to reinforce the correct sound.

Shift your focus to the highest note and sing that note.

Now, play the highest note in the double-stop to reinforce the correct sound.

Here is a basic breakdown of what you just accomplished:

1. You established an emotional connection with the sound (this increases your chances of you remembering what you just heard).
2. You focused on each note being sounded and sounded it out (this is equivalent to sounding out a complicated word).

After a couple weeks you will find that you will become very proficient at hearing each note in a double-stop. When you reached this level of proficiency, begin listening to chords every day for 15 minutes using the same practice method.

Start out listening to 3 note chords, such as your basic triads. Explore every possible chord inversion with each triad. Don’t move on to other chords until this has been mastered.

When you are ready to move on, shift your focus on 4 note chords, but here is a little subtlety to you practice that will really teach your ear to understand what it’s hearing: your 4 note chord should still use a basic triad as its basic foundation.

For example: A C dominant 7 b13 chord that you would listen to would be a voiced as C augmented triad (C, E, G#) and Bb.

What this accomplishes is that you are teaching your ear to hear smaller chord blocks within larger chords!

Keep this basic cycle and practice going until you are listening to chords up to 10 notes or more!

Do It All Over Again!

When you’ve mastered this practice, do it all over again listening to a different timbre or instrument.

Repeating this entire process again, listening to chords in a different timbre, will open up your ears even more to hearing each note being sounded in a chord.

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1. Hear Double Stops