Ear training
Training of musical perception.
What it means
Ear training (German Gehörbildung) is the systematic training of musical listening. Its aim is that the ear recognizes what the score shows, and vice versa: that what is heard can be named and written down. It comprises recognizing intervals, chords, and keys, grasping rhythms, following voice-leading, and sight-singing.
Musical use
The core is relative hearing: grasping distances, not naming absolute pitches. Whoever hears intervals and functions securely recognizes at once, in ensemble playing, whether their own part fits, corrects the intonation in the sound instead of by a display, and finds the way back more quickly after a mistake. Absolute pitch is neither necessary nor sufficient for this.
Proven ways are singing, comparing, and recognizing from familiar melodies. Solmization with movable Do is especially effective here, because it gives each degree a syllable of its own and makes the function within the key audible; the Kodály hand signs supplement it with a spatial representation. Harmonic hearing belongs to ear training as well: recognizing whether a sonority is major or minor, whether a turn leads to the tonic or stays open on the dominant.
Ear training is to be distinguished from music theory: the latter explains connections, the former makes them audible. The two belong together, and separated each remains half.
Among the usual forms of exercise are interval and chord identification, melody and rhythm dictation, sight-singing, and the analysis of listening examples. Ear training is a compulsory subject at conservatories and the basis for conducting, composing, and ensemble playing.
Performance practice
Practise briefly every day instead of rarely and long; ten minutes regularly achieve more than an hour at the weekend. Sing everything you want to learn to hear — what you can sing, you hear. Record yourself and listen to it with the score; you notice what escapes you while playing. And connect ear training with your repertoire: analyse the harmonies of a piece you are practising anyway, and sing the bass part along.