![]() So, how can we get control of these beautiful chords? Well, one of the first keys starts with unlocking your musical ear. These masters have such control over their harmony and they know just how to paint with these beautiful color tones and the results are magic I tell ya! How do the greats take a plain old vanilla D7 chord and make it sound so deep and rich? How did Bill Evans make his two hands sound like a 40 piece orchestra when he touched the keys? Understanding how tensions work and function and ultimately hearing them is what can take your playing and sound to the next level. Like great painters, who know just how much royal blue to add to their paintings, great pianist knows how to stylize their harmony by adding beautiful tensions (colors) to their chords. I can’t write enough about this subject of jazz ear training because it’s so important for mastering jazz piano.Īs pianists we have the ability to create so much color, style and sophistication just be manipulating even just one note of a standard chord voicing. Chord extensions, tensions, alterations, color tones, whatever you want to call them, I am always interested! ![]() Don’t worry about the chord’s name – just listen closely to its character and even give it a fake name if you like! This is the best way to understand how to use chords in music.Today I want to tell you how I drastically improved my musical ear by using jazz ear training. Write down the names of the notes you included and how the chord made you feel. Sit at your instrument (it needs to be a piano or guitar for this) and begin combining notes into groups of three. The best way to discover chords is to start experimenting.Check out the chords online to see if you were on point! ![]() See if you can identify whether the chords are more “bright” or “gloomy.” Write down the pattern of the first four chords as you think you hear them, just by writing major or minor. Listen to the first line of the music on repeat a few times. Put on your headphones and throw on your favorite song.By the end, you’ll be able to sing a major scale without any point of reference! An excellent song to help you with this is “Do, a Deer” from “The Sound of Music” – it is all about learning the major scale. Repeat this exercise starting on all twelve notes. Sing or play the scale to familiarize yourself with the sound. Write down all the sequential notes of the major scale by using the pattern of tones and semitones described above. Choose a note that feels comfortable or familiar.Do this with every pair of notes in the lines you’ve chosen, and you will start to understand how melodies depend on intervals. Use the interval song as a reference to figure out which interval you are singing, then write it down. Choose a few lines, and practice singing only two syllables or notes at a time. Take the melody of your favorite song.Major 7th: Don’t Know Why (Norah Jones).Minor 6th: Lchaim, To Life! (Fiddler on the Roof).Perfect 5th: Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.Then the music becomes a reference point for singing, playing, and identifying the intervals. You can recognize and remember every interval by connecting it to a song you know! All you have to do is sing or play the first two notes of the song to hear the interval.You can practice hearing intervals and find them in songs with the ear training exercises below. It is often put to words, and it is the song’s most recognizable and memorable element.Ī melody is a series of notes with different intervallic relationships that you play one after the other. This is what the lead singer or lead instrument plays. So how does this have anything to do with your music? Tritone/Augmented 4th/Diminished 5th = A → D#/Eb Perfect Unison (the same note twice) = A → A An octave’s space contains all possible interval relationships, and each has a unique name. The biggest interval, which separates a note in a lower pitch register from the same note in a higher pitch register, is called an octave. This is the space that separates each of the notes from one another. The smallest interval in Western music is called a semitone.
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