making your own relative pitch discs

[fortymile]

i want to record my own ear training discs to help me further my ability to name intervals as i hear them. how would you do this? i have some ideas but wanted to get some other opinions. whatever the specifics, the 'random' feature of my cd player will obviously be an important part of the final design. but how do you think you might design the actual track content?

[george_menhorn]

That's a great idea. I would first have a disk for each interval where you could practice spelling / singing the interval both up and down to get comfortable with each interval. Then you could create disks where you combine different intervals and have to name the interval like major vs. minor thirds for instance. Definitely will need more than one disk instead of cramming all intervals on one.

[fortymile]

that was my thought

1. disc with root/+X tracks. where x is one of the chromatic intervals. trains me in going up from root.

2. disc with root/-X tracks. for downness.

3. combo disc of 1 and 2.

4. a disc that is just the chromatic tones.

that seems like a clear progression to me, no?

what the.....how is it that my first post up at top there was edited by KOALA? and why?

[Koala]

Hey fortymile,I am a site mod so I can do things like that, I edited your post to make your thread title clear and searchable following rule 10 of the posting guidelines.

10. Please do your best in terms of using correct grammar and spelling.
Pls dnt post msgs like u wld on ya fone, k?.

peace,

[Bizarro]

Steve Vai's website has some great ideas for making your own ear training discs. He actually made tapes since CDs weren't around for him...

[fortymile]

ahhhh...

sorry. i had even read that in the rules very recently. i only shortened it because i thought it would be better if most of it could fit on the first display page, but i wasnt thinking. that would indeed make it unsearchable!

i thought i'd caught the koala trojan.

[Los Boleros]

i want to record my own ear training discs to help me further my ability to name intervals as i hear them. how would you do this? i have some ideas but wanted to get some other opinions. whatever the specifics, the 'random' feature of my cd player will obviously be an important part of the final design. but how do you think you might design the actual track content?

I am not sure if this is what you are asking but here goes:

Plug your guitar straight into the comp. Open the Sound recorder in your accesories. This will allow you to record up to one minute. I would then maybe play one octave of E major. I would then play an E chord for a few seconds to give me a chance to practice my scale and my intervals. Close it and save it as E major. Then Do the same for E minor. Then F major. Then F minor. etc etc.... till you do em all. You should be able to save them all onto one CD and hit random. Then practice away. Am I on track with this?

[fortymile]

nooooooooooooooooo.

but thanks for answering.

windows sound recorder? i gots me some cubase in my pro-pimp home studio!

no, what i meant was, i want to make some discs that i can play in the car. instruments will never come into this at all after the recordings are done. this is not for physical practice but for mental inverval identification.

i've started singing the chromatic scale while driving. i actually think ear training is bad to do in the car unless it's late at night with no one on the roads. i find i get lost in a weird trance with almost no awareness of traffic around me.

but i'm gonna do this, and practice when out driving at night. i think it will help, given the progress i've made in only two days as i go about practicing my chromatic intervals mentally. (major progress already. some stubborn intervals have started popping out for me. i can recognize--going UP from root--everything accurately up to augmented5, as far as i've tried so far). the only thing, is this:

going from the root up or from the root down is one thing. but i have major doubts about being able to recognize intervals in isolation from the root. some i get every time, like minor thirds (which sounds like someone scolding you with the 'nyah nyah' sound). but others--i find it hard to imagine how i'm going to start recognizing like major 6th jumps if they're just appearing anywhere in any scale. i'm accustomed to 'landing in the right area' when playing by ear with my instrument and making minute adjustments on the spot. but my goal here is to hear an interval and say 'thats a major 6th.'

i suspect this may be harder than i have imagined, in isolation without the root.

hey bizarro, do you happen to have a direct link to the info on vai's page?

[Los Boleros]

nooooooooooooooooo.
no, what i meant was, i want to make some discs that i can play in the car. instruments will never come into this at all after the recordings are done. this is not for physical practice but for mental inverval identification.

Oh ok gotcha. There is still something I don't understand Fortymile, You say discs as in more than one. You want this to practice both vocal and mental. The way I see it is to make short little clips each about maybe ten seconds. You could go through all the cromatic keys in major, minor and diminished and still get it all on one disc. Something I like to do as a warm up is sing the scale up to the V and then back down. This gives me a strong sense of the tonic, Third, fifth relation. As a more advanced exercise you could have each clip be a chord without the third. Then you could practice major or minor scales.

[fortymile]

i like your chord minus-the-third idea. i might do that some time down the line.

the reason i have to have different discs is because i am going to use my cd player's "random" feature to play random tones. each disc has to therefore have a very clear agenda so i dont get overwhelmed and start testing myself on two separate things at once.

for example on the first disc, there will be 13 tracks.

track one will have the root tone followed by the minor second right above it.
track two will have root followed by the major second right above it..

etc. then i hit "random." they'lll play at random and i can test my interval identification.

the second disc would be the same thing, except that after each root tone, the interval to be tested will be from the octave below the root.

i'm not interested in testing myself on scales like diminished or major or anything. just intervals. thats why i just want the 13 intervals on each disc. the only variable will be whether the intervals will be above or below the root, or dissociated from it completely. this last disc will be the hardest to learn but would also be the most important for functional relative pitch.

[Los Boleros]

If each clip is say 5-10 seconds, I think you coud get many many tracks on one disc. Each disc holds about 80 minutes of CD format or Waves.
I think I would take the same aproach to learning intervals as I explained above. To learn the minor third, strum a minor chord and sing 1,2,3,2,1. Then do the same for a Major third, 1,2,3,2,1. For practicing the five as I said above I would sing 1,2,3,4,5,4,3,2,1. (Personally I would add the diminished chords as well and sing the 1,2,3,4,5,6,5. see I added a not on the diminished so I could play the 6 and relolve on the diminished 5.
So twelve cromatic keys times major times minor times diminished = 36 tracks
Hit random and away you go!

Although most of the diminished chords will be a repeat of the same chord, I would still record each cromatic version.

[fortymile]

you miss my point.

i dont want many tracks on one disc. if i do it your way, the "random" function on the cd player will reach in and choose from the whole bag and there'd be no coherence to the lesson. i'd have root+higher intervals mixed with root+lower intervals. and thats too much too fast. thats why i say make single discs for each specific concept. only later, once you know your stuff better, could you dump it all onto one cd and test your complete knowlege.

[fortymile]

also the point is to learn specific intervals in isolation, not within scales.

with my method i'll be training myself to listen to chord progressions and hearing the interval jumps in the roots, scales be damned.

[Los Boleros]

also the point is to learn specific intervals in isolation, not within scales.

with my method i'll be training myself to listen to chord progressions and hearing the interval jumps in the roots, scales be damned.

It's seems like I understand what you want to acheive but you allready have an Idea how you want to do it. But you havent explained what that method is. Just what will you record yourself doing and how do you intend to use it? With an example please.

[fortymile]

i did explain.

each disc has 13 tracks.

the track contents are such as this:

(disc one)
1.---->unison
2.---->tonic tone, folowed by minor second tone
3.---->tonic, followed by major second tone

etc., all the way up to octave.

drive my car at night. hit "random" on my cd player.

listen to the root+tone combinations occur, and try to name the intervals i hear.

that's it.