Hearing pitch from record, training ear

I

Interested Persona

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Hello!
I have period on my hobby's life (music of course) when I paused to spend money on macbook, logic 8 and midi controller (technical side in less words) and started to really learn music theory couse there is no need for fancy toys without knowledge how to make an artistic, expressive input to them right? :)
So i read Complete Idiots Guide to Music Theory. And i didnt throw it into bookshelf- its still open near my keyboard :) That book helped a lot, now i know what keys to trigger over my simple 3 note melodies i made before and they sound better. Not that they will catch anyones attention like hits but at least they sound like music. Well kinda music..
Anyways- so far so good. Now i want to train my ears, train pitch and intervals. There is a CD with the theory book but i learned notes by order in exercises faster than by pitch :D So my first question is- is there any good ear training exercises that really helped YOU in the internet for free?
To kindly ask my other questions i will give a easy listenable song on youtube. The melody is simple, the number of instruments in it is easy countable with one hand with a cellphone in it :)
The song is F--k You by Dr. Dre
I played around my piano and i think found a notes for its main melody. Correct me if theyr wrong:
F# E F# E G F# G E F#
Did i find them or they not even close? ::rolleyes:

How long does it take you to find a notes for such a simple melody? Can you name them by ear or do you play on piano untill it outputs the same pitch?

Thanks a lot for any answers

P.S - Sorry about very haotic writing style- english is not my mothers language, its not easy for me to make complex sentences :) :cheers:
 
DEAFPERCEPTION said:
nope, I haven't listened to that song in a while, but I'm pretty sure it's B, A, B, A, C, B, C, A, B.
Click to expand...

So, as much as i understand, its in different key (although intervals are the same) and i didn hear a root note right?
 
yeah i can find the melody, takes a little fiddle, but not difficult

A A A E E E CCC F F F F F F

^'this is why I'm hot'...may need transposed but hey, sounds just like it
lol

C C C G G G Eb Eb Eb G# G# G# G# G# G#

works too...
 
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I too want to get into training my ears to notice notes, can anyone suggest any other exercises or books I could read up on?
 
play around with the piano and just listen to the each key over and over the first key I learned was C, lol. I dont know all of them but I know most of them when I hear them.
 
lol so just hit C until I hear what it sounds like...Seems a bit basic, but can you move on to chords this way? Or should I just use a Chord Progression Chart
 
Just keep figuring out how to play tunes that you like, and couple that with practice building and playing scales, chords, and arpeggios. Improvise on the keys over your own beats, even if it's really simple and you'd be embarassed for anyone to hear it, haha. That's how you become familiar with the sound of intervals and chord progressions.

I usually can't tell you what a single note is just from hearing it, but from the first note I can work out the rest of the notes in a melody from being familiar with the sound of the intervals. There's no easy way around it, just play a lot of music and think about what you're doing.
 
We'll I've been playing keyboard ever since like 4 years old or earlier...for playing by ear, I think what the person above is very important. Along with that, listen to your favorite songs with a piano or keyboard in front of you. If you know your basic scales, then finding melodies is pretty simple since most melodies you hear follow the rules of the scale of the key the song is in.

Hope that last part didn't confuse you...but, some people I know learn a great deal from this site...

http://www.8notes.com/resources/notefinders/piano_chords.asp
http://www.8notes.com/articles/major_scales.asp
 
I think I heard someone here on FP suggest some kind of exercice to practice pitch recognition but he never uploaded the files lol.

I think the idea was to make a bunch of mp3's with either one single note or one chord (major or minor triad) per file, name each mp3 with the name of the note or chord and put it in an mp3 player and set the playback mode to "shuffle" so there's no particular order in which you can learn them. Then just listen to your notes and chords and guess what they are then check the file name to see if you got it right (so I suggest you leave some silence for like 3-5 seconds after so you have time to guess and check).

I think it's best to classify them, make a playlist for each scale (i.e. playlist: "C major/A minor", files: "A3.mp3, B3.mp3, C3.mp3..."), start practicing the scales one by one (at the beginning it might also be a good idea to set yourself a small range because lower octaves are somewhat harder) then when you get better mix everything together.

It might take a little long to do but I think it's worth it. If I ever have time to do it and organize it I'll be sure to post it in here. If I can find a multisampled piano it would be a good start lol.

Tonio
 
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