So, ear training...
I don’t know how many people I’ve met who think they have ear training in the bag and they simply do not.
Harsh much?
Yes.
Do I feel bad about it?
I used to.
I will not lie about this. Not very long ago I would feel bad about letting another singer or vocalist know that they were not quite as on point as they thought they were.
Probably due to the backlash I received from others who were not ready to hear me tell them that they needed to work in that area. However, after time the ones who did not want to work hard on ear training just stopped singing. At least, they stopped singing around me. Who knows? They could be off somewhere training day and night to prove me wrong. And I hope they are. I think that would be great!
More recently I met a very inspiring person. Who surprised me with something I was not sure was entirely possible. But! A “thing” happened.
I had someone come to me for their very first voice lesson of their entire life!
This person loved music but had never attempted to sing before.
With that, this person also was unable to find a single note throughout our first lesson. And for the very first time in my life I said a sentence I had promised myself I would never say.
Allow me to preface this with the fact that I said some more encouraging things first. But, this sentence came out of my mouth.
”perhaps singing is not for you.”
YIKES!
Not my style.
So, before that sentence came out I did give him an ultimatum.
I told this person that they had one month of lessons to get an 8 note scale or... (let us not repeat that sentence, at least you already know what it is.)
This exquisite person came back one week later and was able to immediately hit a 5 NOTE SCALE using the technique I gave them to practice for ONE WEEK!
I’ll give you a snippet of the homework I gave this person.
First, you will need a piano or keyboard. Even a keyboard app would work. And theN you need to only play the white keys. As you play each white key, you also sing and say the note.
This process works when you know you are hitting the notes already.
If you arent sure if you are hitting the notes then what you need is a tuner. You need to sing till that tuner tells you you are singing the exact note you are trying to play.
This is NOT easy!
This is TIME CONSUMING!
Give yourself some latitude here. You will. It always get it right. In fact you’ll probably get it wrong more often than you get it right in the beginning and that is 100% ok.
Give it a try.
Tell me your results!
