Pimp my practice session! Feedback welcome

[magnusmaximum714]

Hey guys,

Given how much I love music and how short I am on time, I want to maximize the hour I spend on it (theory;ear training) each day, completely immersed. Let me know your thoughts on this and if there are any areas of study I should swap out.

This is done in Teoria:

Monday-Friday:
6 mins of note dictation (listening to intervals within a scale and how notes function in that scale)

10 mins of clef reading (seeing notes on a staff, hitting the right key on the keyboard -- big area of growth)

10 mins of harmonic progressions (my weak point; I'm pretty good with hearing intervals, bad with hearing chord changes)

4 mins Scale ear training (major vs minor vs harmonic minor vs melodic minor etc played all the way through)

10 mins rhythm exercises (making note of beat durations based on time signature)

20 mins of keyboarding/making beats

Saturday-Sunday:
Make beats all day! Learn the ins/outs of compression EQ etc


Once I get a good handle on the ear training/theory, I imagine that more of dedicated beat making time will make its way in to my weekday routine. Let me know what you guys think.

Hopefully, we can have a good discussion that will help many people with limited time figure out how to make the most of it.

 

[bandcoach]

Monday-Friday:
6 mins of note dictation (listening to intervals within a scale and how notes function in that scale)

10 mins of clef reading (seeing notes on a staff, hitting the right key on the keyboard -- big area of growth)

10 mins of harmonic progressions (my weak point; I'm pretty good with hearing intervals, bad with hearing chord changes)

4 mins Scale ear training (major vs minor vs harmonic minor vs melodic minor etc played all the way through)

10 mins rhythm exercises (making note of beat durations based on time signature)

20 mins of keyboarding/making beats

so is that the specific order? if so I would modify it to be more productive than it already is and add one exercise

• rhythm exercises
• Scale ear training
• interval dictation
• melodic dictation - extended form of interval dictation, limit melodies to using those intervals you can recognise reliably to begin with
• clef reading
• chord id:
  • major vs minor
  • m7
  • dom7
  • maj7
  • dim
  • m7b5
  • dim7
  • aug
  • aug7
  • alt7 (alt 7 can be #5 or b5)
  • min7alt
  • add each new chord type only after achieving 95% accuracy on the previous set over 20 or more tests) you might also consider doing these in 1st and 2nd inversion for the triads and also 3rd inversion for the various 7ths
• harmonic progressions: by which I mean one chord moving to another: this is a combination of recognising chord types and interval movement

 

[magnusmaximum714]

so is that the specific order? if so I would modify it to be more productive than it already is and add one exercise

• rhythm exercises
• Scale ear training
• interval dictation
• melodic dictation - extended form of interval dictation, limit melodies to using those intervals you can recognise reliably to begin with
• clef reading
• chord id:
  • major vs minor
  • m7
  • dom7
  • maj7
  • dim
  • m7b5
  • dim7
  • aug
  • aug7
  • alt7 (alt 7 can be #5 or b5)
  • min7alt
  • add each new chord type only after achieving 95% accuracy on the previous set over 20 or more tests) you might also consider doing these in 1st and 2nd inversion for the triads and also 3rd inversion for the various 7ths
• harmonic progressions: by which I mean one chord moving to another: this is a combination of recognising chord types and interval movement

Hi Bandcoach,

For the chord id, are you recommending that I id them on a staff sheet visually (e.g. what chord is formed by notes on DFA of a staff sheet) or by listening to the chords and then determining which type of chord it is?

How can I practice hearing harmonic progressions and determining what the chord is/how it functions? (On teoria? Sometimes it feels like I'm drowning in the deep end:. I just hear a chord in root position sounding off and scramble to determine if the next chord moves up/down etc.)

How does my time look on these? I'm also trying to develop a bit of skill on keyboard/beatmaking. A lot to cram in one hour each day, but I try to make it work

Thanks for all your great contributions here, across the board

 

[KonKossKang]

Tempted to say that intervals are the single most difficult aspect of this.
Telling which note is playing one at a time? Pretty easy. Ear training makes hand training look easy.
Ear training would help so much but the way it's traditionally done, don't help.

Wish there was a program that threw a bunch of random intervals at you with no fancy name like dm7 or chm3 whatever those are called.
Note attack only does one at a time, and pianobooster is a game where you play whatever the song is until you get a high enough score.
Them fancy names they give, throw me off. All I know's the note names. I wish they just said all the notes in the chord instead of that dm7 etc.

 

[bandcoach]

Hi Bandcoach,

For the chord id, are you recommending that I id them on a staff sheet visually (e.g. what chord is formed by notes on DFA of a staff sheet) or by listening to the chords and then determining which type of chord it is?

both

aural id of tonal qualities of a chord are important to doing what you ask about next. visual id or writing down the notes given a root note is also important for your long term development and understanding

How can I practice hearing harmonic progressions and determining what the chord is/how it functions? (On teoria? Sometimes it feels like I'm drowning in the deep end:. I just hear a chord in root position sounding off and scramble to determine if the next chord moves up/down etc.)

start simple using only I, IV and V and only 1 key: once you can do 20 with 95% accuracy then add more keys. repeat until you are confident in all keys.

key sequence should be something like C-F-G-Bb-D-Eb-A-Ab-E-Db-B-F#/Gb

do not be afraid to replay the audio

then add triads; repeat the strategy from above

then add 7ths; repeat the strategy from above

then add secondary dominants; repeat the strategy from above

then redo for minor only

then redo for both major and minor

this gives you more than 1440 exercises at a total accuracy of 95% or better (the best transcribers (those that convert pop songs to sheet music) are only given the option of getting to 95% - the last 5% is not worth chasing in a money driven business)

sadly teoria does not give you the option of doing harmonic progressions in inversions - maybe get a copy of macgamut (available for both pc and mac) to do this extension work.....

How does my time look on these? I'm also trying to develop a bit of skill on keyboard/beatmaking. A lot to cram in one hour each day, but I try to make it work

time is not the issue but repeatability and accuracy: that is why I say 20 exercises and 95% accuracy

Tempted to say that intervals are the single most difficult aspect of this.
Telling which note is playing one at a time? Pretty easy. Ear training makes hand training look easy.
Ear training would help so much but the way it's traditionally done, don't help.

your experience here is minimal so I am not sure that you truly understand how this works or why you pursue it in certain ways

interval training is not only about stacked notes but also melodic motion; notes played sequentially rather than synchronously

you are also speaking about this from your own well documented perspective and desire to be able to name specific notes rather than the relative concept of naming an interval as a functional unit. the former is an extension of the latter.

being able to name the individual notes without any concept of their functional use within a scale or harmonic context: the notes B and F sequentially are a diminished 5th whereas the notes F and B sequentially are an augmented 4th (same interval different function: the dim 5 generally collapses inwards to C and E; the augmented 4th expands outwards to E and C: if it collapsed inwards to Gb/F# and Bb/A# then it is no longer an augmented 4th of F and B but a diminished 5th of E#/F and B/Cb)

Wish there was a program that threw a bunch of random intervals at you with no fancy name like dm7 or chm3 whatever those are called.

sure you coudl do that but what value does such an approach bring beyond being able to name specific notes? without functional awareness, the notes are as good as meaningless, see my points above

Note attack only does one at a time, and pianobooster is a game where you play whatever the song is until you get a high enough score.
Them fancy names they give, throw me off. All I know's the note names. I wish they just said all the notes in the chord instead of that dm7 etc.

all this means is that you need to learn more and stop giving yourself arbitrary boundaries on your learning: knowing the interval types and what notes are in those intervals, are far more useful than knowing the notes alone

knowing the notes in the chord and the name of the chord and the type of chord it is is far more empowering than being able to say the notes alone - the notes F-A-C-D and D-F-A-C are the same chord but are interpreted differently depending on what comes before them and after them: F6 or Dm7 can be asserted when you have harmonic context

 

[KonKossKang]

I approach scales and sheet music like that because I'm alittle asdf if you get the terminology, I do things literal.
Never learned relative pitch either just did absolute pitch so that's prolly why intervals so tough.
I went that route because I thought doing absolute pitch would be the 100% to doing melodies I heard in my head.
Relative pitch training seems like it was made for that purpose, which I did not research beforehand D:

 

[magnusmaximum714]

both

aural id of tonal qualities of a chord are important to doing what you ask about next. visual id or writing down the notes given a root note is also important for your long term development and understanding



start simple using only I, IV and V and only 1 key: once you can do 20 with 95% accuracy then add more keys. repeat until you are confident in all keys.

key sequence should be something like C-F-G-Bb-D-Eb-A-Ab-E-Db-B-F#/Gb

do not be afraid to replay the audio

then add triads; repeat the strategy from above

then add 7ths; repeat the strategy from above

then add secondary dominants; repeat the strategy from above

then redo for minor only

then redo for both major and minor

this gives you more than 1440 exercises at a total accuracy of 95% or better (the best transcribers (those that convert pop songs to sheet music) are only given the option of getting to 95% - the last 55 is not worth chasing in a money driven business)

sadly teoria does not give you the option of doing harmonic progressions in inversions - maybe get a copy of macgamut (available for both pc and mac) to do this extension work.....



time is not the issue but repeatability and accuracy: that is why I say 20 exercises and 95% accuracy

Thanks Bandcoach. Off to the lab to focus on harmonic progressions in major keys first

 

[SwagProductionz]

no producer practices like that.... maybe ryan leslie did but it's either something you have or something you don't.. just sit down and make beats..

 

[bandcoach]

your opinion on what a real producer does is all well and good but this guy made a decision to develop as a musician as well which is entirely different to being a producer:some shared skills but widely diverging skills as well