Question:
Ear training, transcribing, memorizing, etc.
Hello,
One of my medium range goals is to be able to play tunes by ear. In the Jamey Aebersold Jazz Handbook, JA mentions that if he could "do it all over", he'd start by picking out simple tunes (Twinkle, twinle, three blind mice, etc.) on his horn, and after getting it right once, doing it on a different tonic until he could do the song in all twelve keys.
Has anyone here tried anything like that? How were the results? Is it possible to fit that into a typical late bloomer schedule (which doesn't involve 5 straight hours of practice a day) and get decent progress? Anyone have a giant list of tunes, ordered by simplicity, that could be used for practice? Alternaitively, any other ideas for frapidly forming the ear-brain-finger-sax connection in the aged beginner?
I'm interested because I'm making decent progress with reading now, and I get some ear training just by listening and memorizing. Focusing on ear training won't have side benefits on my reading.

Answer:
Just do it.
When I was starting out, playing by ear was practically the only way to learn improvisation. During lunch in HS a friend and I would go into a room and play songs to and with each other. We knew a lot of songs by heart and then learned them on our horns. You don't need an ordered list of songs, any books, or anything else. Just pick a song and do it. After a while it will come easier and easier. If a full song is too much for you now, take the first phrase and do it in all keys.
By the way, if I were you I wouldn't think of the key. I would just play the tune, or phrase, with one of 12 different starting notes and the play the tune by ear, relating the next pitch to the one that came before it.
Don't worry. There's a reason "Rome wasn't built in a day" is such an enduring phrase.

Answer:
I agree with Gary. That's how I did it - interpreted melodies I knew on the saxophone - and in various keys. But a word of caution, if you can't come up with any melodies (ANCHORS AWEIGH, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, etc.), you're in for a frustrating experience. Some folks just can't carry a tune. DAVE

Answer:
This is actually a tried and true methodology, so the answer is yes, a lot of folks have done this with good results. Take a simple tune like Summertime and play/learn it first in one key, then in several different keys. The real important part is to learn it by ear. You might start with the written music initially, but the sooner you move away from that and play by ear, the better you will internalize the music. I don't know why this is so, but it seems to be true for a lot of musicians; I know it's the case with me.
If you learn something by ear, you retain it and can play it at will. If you just read the music, you won't be able to play it without the written music in front of you.

Answer:
Motivated by all of the posts, I spent my lunchtime practice outside picking out
Happy Birthday by ear, and mapping it to 3 other keys. This kind of exercise really gets me to listen to each note. I'll get it in all 12 keys and move on to the next one. Does anyone recommend writing it down too, or just playing by ear.
Dave, my singing voice is awful on a good day, but I can hum and whistle tunes, so
carrying a tune on an instrument isn't a problem. How many people really can't
carry a tune? I bet the number is very small. My mother in law can't sing a tune at all, but I bet if I played a tune she knew (but couldn't sing!) wrong she'd know.
JL, I am also one of those people for whom the difference in learning when picking out something by ear is gigantic. I've been mostly reading, and coming along quite well, but I noticed that tunes I read over a hundred times were still not memorized. I picked out a
childs tune by ear and it stuck with me for weeks without more practice.
One of the reasons I suspect Aebersold said to start with children's tunes is that most of us know them so well (I'm learning them again as a parent) that we don't have to do the additional work of memorizing the song in our heads, and we can just focus on the
sax-finger-brain interface. There's a saying that people who build their own telescopes have, that it is easier to grind a six inch mirror and then a twelve inch mirror, than to
just grind a twelve inch mirror. The transposition to learning music is obvious.
Gary, I took your advice and tried to free my mind of scales and mental counting so
I just picked out the tune by ear. I did realize some scale connections later, but I'm sure no harm was done.
Thanks everyone!

Answer:
Originally Posted by altoist Does anyone recommend writing it down too, or just playing by ear. People learn differently, I'm sure you're aware that some are visual, some aural, some touchy-feely etc. But your goal is not to read or write the tunes but to play them. Unless there's a great problem learning them and you need to write them to help your memorization just cut to the chase, i.e. play them by ear. Dude - you're thinking too much, LOL!

Answer:
Just a couple of things to add. If you are having trouble getting enough time you can carry around a soprano recorder -- especailly since you are working on simple tunes -- for when you can't get to a sax. When you can't do that, try singing -- not just the tune, but the notes. That is, use the Do, Re, Me thing to be aware of what note on the scale you are singing. These techniques are useful in and of themselves, but more importantly gives you lots more practice time. Then when you get back to yor sax, make sure that what you have been practicing on recorder and voice transfers and in a few different keys.
About reading. . . The ideal is to hear what you see and then play what you hear. If you do that, reading and playing by ear are not as different as they seem. Try this -- look at a tune or phrase you have never seen before. Imagine what it sounds like -- early on you will have to sing it out loud, but try and get past that. Close the book. Pick a note at random as tonic and play the phrase. The pick another tonic and do it again. Get that down and everything (reading, playing by ear, improvisation, memorizing) improves.

Answer:
As I read these posts, it dawned on me that no one discussed the do-re-me scale until kbraun's post. I was going to mention that . . . and add that melodies are kind of mathematical in that the first, second, third, fourth, etc. tones have a definite relationship with each other. I hear those tonal spaces in melodies - the realtionship among all the notes in a melody, either major or minor.
After years of ear playing an improvising, the process has become automatic to me and I give it little thought. But those mathematical raltionships are nonetheless there. This is what helps me play tunes in different keys.
For instance, for years I may have played a certain tune in a certain key, and then I substitute in another band that plays the same tune in a different key. No problem - I just consider the tonal relationships (the spaces between tones, too), and play away, rarely getting stumped by a simple key change. It helps to know the scales, though. DAVE

Answer:
Gary,
You've got that right, I think way too much. Just wired that way. However, I did a bit more research on ear training and some instructors do suggest a particular sequence of simple tunes of increasing complexity. You were fortunate that you did this in high school, when you had plenty of time and you could employ the call-response drill with another player, as that method is highly recommended. Anyways, the reason I'm thinking, asking,
and researching, is that I'd like to be efficient with my time. I know it will take years, but
if I can get there in 1 or 2 rather than 3 or 4 that's a big win.
kbraun,
As I said before, I really don't sing well at all. Better since I started playing the sax, but
my voice still cracks quite a bit. More importantly, if you tell me to sing a middle C when
holding down the key on a piano, I can't do it. I'll try your hint about reading, it's along the same lines as JLs. I use my lunch time at work to practice, so hopefully that's enough.
No time now to add a new instrument like recorder though, if I add anything else I hope
to add keyboard. Oh, and a tenor sax, of course.
Dave Dolson,
Just learning to read gave me an intellectual understanding that songs are better thought of as intervals and not notes. It's very encouraging that you can switch keys easily and get all twelve keys. That's one of teh many reasons why I'd like to shift my focus from reading to playing by ear. How long did it take you to get to that point? Do you play anything besides sax?

Answer:
Altoist: I tried to play guitar when I was a youngster (you know, the singing cowboys Roy Rogers and Gene Autry were in vogue then), but gave it up. I then noodled on my uncle's clapped out Albert System clarinet (with little success).
I was sixteen when I heard a soprano saxophone played in concert (a Dixieland Jazz Concert in L.A., Joe Darensbourg and George Probert were featured that evening) and although I didn't know what it was, I wanted to play it - and I did.
I took lessons for two years and had a heck of a time reading music. But my ear was good and melodies seemed to come to me and out the saxophone naturally. Much later I discovered chords. DAVE

Answer:
This is a great post. I'm 60, and played in HS almost purely by reading music. Never developed the ear-horn connection.
At age 58, I came back to the horn in a serious way... daily practicing, JA summer camp, and so on. I have good technical skills and a really good (alto) sound after a year of "coming back".... now I'm just beginning to develop my ear. JA's (and others) suggestions really work, but you have to focus on it. Here's a suggestion.... try to make the ear training fun, not just another chore in your practice routine. Find an artist you love, pick out a (relatively) slow tune like a slow blues, and transcribe the solo directly to your horn... no music notation allowed. This will do several things:
1. Quickly develop your ear. It's amazing how much easier the transcribing gets with practice, as you begin to hear the intervals, etc.
2. Added bonus... you learn the musical conception of your favorite artist, which of itself is incredibly helpful.
3. Aids in developing your ability to invent meaningful, melodic lines.
This really works, and has been used by jazzers for many years. I do believe, however (with no evidence whatsover) that developing the ear-horn connection is much easier when you're very young than when you're 60. Howver, you certainly can improve dramatically at any age.
Al

Answer:
alsdiego,
I'm glad you're finding the thread helpful. Methods for ear training and forging the ear horn connection is an interesting topic for me too.
After thinking some more (sorry gary! ;-) I've realized that gary and JA are right. When you do these exercises, you should NOT be thinking about keys, or engaging your left brain to mentally transpose, and the
sequence of starting notes should be relatively random. The idea is to learn to play the horn like your voice, or whistling, or humming.
I find it fun, even working with simple children's tunes. And I like JLs
suggestion that even when you do learn a tune by reading (which I still do) put away the music as soon as possible and learn it by ear. This has the side benefit of making the reading easier. I have a hard time reading ahead, because I've only been doing this for 11 months, but when I memorize, I can read ahead. My instructor also suggested writing down the tunes I learn by ear, so since he's into that, I'll give it a shot.
I'll try transcribing soon too. I'm lucky that my favorite sax players are
Desmond and Hodges, and they have lots of slow tunes between them.
Any other suggestions are welcome!

Answer:
I've been working to improve my connection between thoughts/ears and fingers, so I've been working on the stuff discussed above.
Something I do to use time when I can't be playing an instrument, like on the way to work, is to sing phrases to myself (internally if need be, but actually I prefer to whistle) and identify the intervals between the notes - major third, minor sixth etc. As I do this I imagine myself fingering the sax to play those intervals, and I make sure I think my way through different keys.
This approach has helped me improve my playing by ear and improvisation far quicker than I would have with sax alone, given my reduced playing time.

Answer:
I would think knowing the scale would help a lot into transposing a tune into different keys. When you play a tune by ear, the first thing you need to know is the key that you are playing in. Do-re-me can be C-D-E in Key of C, D-E-F# in the Key of D, E,F#, G# in the key of E and so on. By knowing the scale, it takes away a lot of guessing work when you transpose.
For those who like to try improvise a little, you may also want to learn the Blue scale as soon as possible.
Cheers

Answer:
OK, after trying some of these suggestions for a few weeks, the one modification I'd make is that to play something, anything, in all twelve keys, it's better to do it in a systematic fashion rather than a random one.
I understand JA's suggestion, and that randomness will prevent one from
just learning to mentally transpose rather than using ear, but I think the
advantage of really getting all twelve keys is more important. If one has a
few systematic methods of enumerating the keys I think the problem is
lessened.

Answer:
I've been playing for a long, long time, and most always by ear. I read, but am not a great sight-reader. Over time I have developed a pretty good ear, but training would have given it to me a lot quicker. Yesterday at work I couldn't get the Berstein song from West Side Story 'Somewhere' out of my head, so I started writing it down. I went to the net and pulled down a pdf of blank manuscript paper and printed off a handful. Then, using the mental 'do-re-mi', I proceeded to transcribe this piece. As you know, the second ending gets complicated with modulations, but I eventually figured it out. I got home and pulled out the soprano, and found only two notes wrong - you guessed it, in the modulation in the second ending. I do this all the time, either listening to music while driving or just replaying it in my head - not writing it, but determining the intervals, based on the numeric scale (I,II,III, etc.). This way, whatever key I later find the song to be in, I already know what notes to play for either the horn part or melody. Most of the time I'll also get the key, but I don't have perfect pitch - just good relative pitch. The key to all this is being able to hear the root, or tonic. If you can't hear the root, you can't determine if the starting note is a do, a so, or a la-ti-da. You also have to be able to hear the chromatic scale. Half-tones are actually harder to hear than the other intervals - that's where I made my mistake in 'Somewhere'. After I verified the lead line, I started filling in the chords. The study of chords was taught to me by my mentor on saxophone when I was little. This is one of the most important things, yet the least studied by wind players. You must understand the chord structure before you can solo over it. I don't have a keyboard or anything, so I'll get the keyboard player to help me verify the chords at the gig tonight. So, I spent hours on this thing when I could have downloaded it for $4.95, but it made me feel good to put that paper I wrote without an instrument in front of me and have it sound right.

Answer:
Here's a suggestion to those undertaking the "all 12 keys" route - vary your routine a bit by playing the tunes in "Cycle-of-4ths" or "Cycle of 5ths" instead of chromatic approaches.
In other words: instead of playing a song in C and then in C# and then in D...
play it in C, then F, then Bb, then Eb... or go the other way C-G-D-A-E...
This has a couple of advatages, the biggest being that many songs are constructed as series of Cycle of 4 or Cycle of 5 relationships, so being fluent in this "language" will help you a bunch when improvising on these tunes.
Imagine that you're working on a blues tune and you've figured it out in C, well you've also hit on the IV and V chords (F & G), so if you're next key IS G or G, you've got two of the chords down alread ( G-C-D or F-Bb-C) Get it?
This approach has helped me a bunch - but I got back to chromatic approach to check myself and make sure I'm not falling into finger patterns. Cheers!