How to develop an ear for music in an adult. How to develop an ear for music? How to develop your musical ear on your own

An ear for music is not exclusively an innate ability. It can be formed already in adulthood, the only difference is that children learn easier and faster. With enough effort and patience, you can learn to hear music, the main thing is to stop imposing on yourself that you will not succeed just because you have no talent from birth.

Hearing, like any other ability, develops when you actively use it. This means the more you practice, the stronger you will be. improve your hearing. To develop an ear for music, we need to develop a sense of rhythm, cultivate melody and open our inner ear.
We train rhythm and sense of tempo, start with light rhythms and slowly, then speed up:
  1. We read poems syllable by syllable to music.
  2. Let's clap to our favorite and well-known melody.
  3. We create a rhythmic pattern and march at the same time. The count is 1-4, on the first and third strikes we stamp harder, then we change and place emphasis on the second and fourth. Practice to different music.
  4. Listen to melodies with complex rhythms.


To form melody in yourself, you need to understand the structure of the melody, the movement of music. Distinguish when the melody goes down and when it goes up and by how much. To develop a melodic ear, you need to take up solfeggio. If you do not have the opportunity to study with professional teacher, please use specialized websites or programs (for example, a simulator for the development of musical ear). Inner hearing is your perception and reconstruction of music in your head, thoughts, imagination. How do you imagine music, how do you feel and remember it? To do this, it is necessary to develop memory, imagination and musical taste. Solfege will also help you. You need to learn to identify intervals, rhythms, notes, chords by ear.


If you do not have coordination between your voice and hearing, roughly speaking, you sing out of tune, then this is already testifies that you definitely have an ear for music. You hear that you are singing off the notes. But you will really learn to keep up with the music. What is needed for this? First of all, stop thinking about the elephants and bears that walked over your ears. You have a rumor. Secondly, train coordination. First of all, you need to learn musical literacy and learn to sing in notes within one octave:
  1. We sing the scale: do, re, mi, fa, salt, la, si, do and vice versa. Repeat at least 20 times until you fix the sound of each note in your memory.
  2. Chromatic scale - movement in semitones or consisting of semitones. Halftones are the closest sounds. Press all the keys in a row. To sing them clearly requires enormous concentration and attentiveness.
  3. Study classical music, it has the most expressive and rich melody.
ready to train every day. You have to translate your skills into abilities and bring them to automaticity.
Good luck and inspiration to you!

Musical learning, especially for adults, can be difficult if a person's ear for music. That is why most music teachers do not recommend ignoring solfeggio classes, the main task of which is to develop an ear for music in all directions.

What does the concept of “musical ear” actually mean? First, you need to decide what kind of hearing you need to develop. If you are learning to play, you need harmonic hearing, that is, the ability to hear harmony, mode - major or minor, and the color of sound. If you are a vocal student, your goal is to develop an ear for melody that will help you easily remember a melody consisting of individual intervals.

True, these are local tasks; in life, musicians have to be generalists - to sing, to play several instruments, and to teach this to others (playing an instrument through singing and, conversely, singing through playing an instrument). Therefore, most methodologists who talk about how to develop an ear for music agree that both melodic and harmonic hearing should develop simultaneously.

It also happens that a person hears and distinguishes, even notices mistakes in other singers, but he himself cannot sing cleanly and correctly. This happens because hearing (in in this case melodic) is there, but there is no coordination between it and the voice. In this case, regular vocal exercises, helping to establish a connection between voice and hearing.

What determines the purity of singing?

It happens that a person seems to sing purely and according to the notes, but when he starts singing into the microphone, out of nowhere, mistakes and incorrect notes appear. What's the matter? It turns out that simply singing according to the notes is not everything. To sing cleanly, you need to consider some other parameters. Here they are:

  1. Vocal position(or vocal yawn or singing yawn) is the position of the palate when singing. If it is not raised enough, it feels like the person is singing uncleanly or, more precisely, “lowering.” In order to eliminate this defect, it is useful to yawn for a few minutes before practicing vocals. If you find it difficult to do this, lift your tongue vertically and push the roof of your mouth until you yawn.
  2. Sound direction. Each person has his own unique voice timbre. Read about the types of voices in the article “”. But the sound (or color of your voice) can be changed depending on the content of the song. For example, no one will sing a lullaby with a dark and strict sound. For such a song to sound better, it needs to be sung in a light, gentle sound.
  3. Moving the melody down. There is another peculiarity in music: when the melody moves downward, it must be sung as if its direction is completely opposite. For example, let's take famous song"Little Christmas tree." Sing the line from this song “...it's cold in winter...”. The melody moves down. The intonation falls; falsehood is possible at this point. Now try to sing the same line, while performing a smooth upward movement with your hand. Has the color of the sound changed? It became lighter and the intonation was cleaner.
  4. Emotional Attunement– another important factor. Therefore, it is necessary to periodically sing for the audience. At least for your family. Stage fright will gradually go away.

What hinders the development of hearing and clear singing?

There are some things that can negatively affect hearing development. You can’t play an out-of-tune instrument and practice with two people in the same room at the same time. Music such as hard rock and rap is unlikely to help you develop your hearing, since it does not contain an expressive melody, and the harmony is most often primitive.

Methods and exercises for hearing development

There are many effective exercises for hearing development. Here are just a few of them:

  1. Singing scales. We play the instrument do - re - mi - fa - sol - la - si - do and sing. Then without tools. Then from top to bottom. Again without a tool. Let's check the last sound. If we hit it, very good; if not, we train further.
  2. Singing intervals. The simplest option is intervals based on the same C major scale (see previous exercise). We play and sing: do-re, do-mi, do-fa, etc. Then without tools. Then do the same from top to bottom.
  3. "Echo". If you don't know how to play, you can develop your hearing as in kindergarten. Play your favorite song on your phone. Let's listen to one line. Press pause and repeat. And so the whole song. By the way, a telephone can be an excellent assistant: you can record intervals and scales on it (or ask them to play it for you if you don’t know how to do it yourself), and then listen to it throughout the day.
  4. Studying musical notation . An ear for music is a thought, an intellectual process, so acquiring even the most basic knowledge about music in itself automatically contributes to the development of hearing. To help you -!
  5. Study of classical music. If you are thinking about how to develop your ear for music, then do not forget what is most conducive to ear development classical music thanks to the expressive melody, rich harmony and orchestral sound. So, start studying this art more actively!

THAT'S NOT ALL!

Do you really want to sing, but don’t sleep at night because you don’t know how to develop an ear for music? Now you know how to get what you've been thinking about these nights! In addition, get a good video lesson on vocals from Elizaveta Bokova - she talks about the “three pillars” of vocals, the basics!

Anyone who plays music needs a trained person.

What you hear is what you play and if you have trouble recognizing different types chords, rhythm or melodies, this greatly limits your options.

One day after class with my students, I decided to have a cup of coffee. On the way to the coffee shop, I heard the cry of a bird flying past. Nothing strange, you say. But there is one little thing: I recognized in this sound an interval of a major third. And now, I already have an idea for the next article!

I've been teaching guitar for a long time and I can say that most modern guitarists possess very good and too . A great way to see if you can play by ear is to have a friend play an easy phrase twice and then try to play it yourself.

If you can play the phrase without mistakes the first time, you are on the right track. If you had to search for the right notes for a long time, it’s time to start ear training. Like playing technique, the ability to recognize and understand musical sounds requires constant practice and effort. Many of my students and comrades have no idea how to train their ears, so I have developed several ways to do this.

How to train your ear

It's a good idea to go to your nearest music school and find out if they offer courses in solfeggio and hearing development. I myself had no idea about the importance of hearing until I started taking ear training classes at a music college. Among other things, they teach you how to recognize. You will also learn how to write down melodies on paper and recognize rhythms.

What if you can already select melodies and you don’t need to be an expert in rhythms and musical notation? Great! Now try explaining your musical idea to the band's keyboard player! Remember: professionalism is not a matter of minutes! Your colleagues will certainly appreciate your attention to detail. Ultimately, most music courses are based on the same thing. Try to play and sing major scale, trying to hit the notes.

To start, choose the key that is easiest for you to sing in. Then you can play and sing the notes of the scale with gaps. For example, in the key of G major, you play and sing the note G, skip the note A and sing the note B. Practice until you feel it comes easy to you. Then try singing that note without the guitar. Achieve maximum accuracy.

Sing the degrees of the scale as follows. The first step is tonic, then the second step, etc. In addition, you can also practice singing, as well as other modes and

Online game "Perfect pitch"

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For technical reasons, we no longer create a table of records, so you DO NOT need to enter data at the end of the game...

For technical reasons we are more
We do not issue DIPLOMAS and we apologize :-(

The game includes the first 33 questions from this list. The entire list of 55 questions (from 34 to 55 chips with a stave) is presented in full version of this game included in the program.

1. BEFORE
2. RE
3. MI
4. SI
5. LA
6. RE
7. MI
8. FA
9. LA
10. SI
11. SALT
12. MI
13. TO 1st octave
14. RE 1st octave
15. MI 2nd octave
16. FA small octave
17. 1st octave G
18. A 1st octave
19. SI small octave
20. TO small octave
21. RE small octave
22. MI large octave
23. FA 1st octave
24. SALT of small octave
25. A large octave
26. SI large octave
27. TO 2nd octave
28. RE 1st octave
29. MI 1st octave
30. FA 2nd octave
31. GR of the major octave
32. A small octave
33. SI 2nd octave
34. TO 1st octave + staff
35. GR small octave + stave
36. A major octave + staff
37. FA major octave + staff
38. RE major octave + staff
39. MI 1st octave + staff
40. TO 1st octave + staff
41. 1st octave G + stave
42. SI 1st octave + staff
43. RE 2nd octave + staff
44. MI 2nd octave + staff
45. FA 2nd octave + staff
46. ​​G of the 2nd octave + staff
47. SI 2nd octave + staff
48. TO 3rd octave + staff
49. TO 1st octave + staff
50. A small octave + staff
51. FA small octave + staff
52. RE small octave + staff
53. GR major octave + stave
54. MI large octave + staff
55. TO major octave + stave

Alexey Ustinov, 2011-12-30

Game updated 2013-11-30

Teacher's comment

Absolute ear for music - the ability to determine the pitch of a tone, regardless of other tones, i.e. without comparing sounds with each other and, as a result, assigning a note name to this sound. The nature of this phenomenon has not been sufficiently studied in musicological circles and, apparently, is therefore represented by different points of view. But it is even less familiar to practicing teachers. At the same time, the skill of “absolute musical ear” constantly remains the focus of both interest and controversy among almost all musicians. It is generally accepted that all string players (violinists, cellists) have such hearing, but this is not so! On the contrary, it seems that the pianist does not need it at all - however, those who master this skill say that it helps a lot, for example, when reading scores... Another often discussed question is whether it can be developed, or is it something... Is it innate?...

What to do with a child who easily picks out any melody and does not want to look at the sheet music at all? How to develop hearing for a student who knows well music symbols but can play false notes, memorizes them and the teacher cannot help him in any way?

One day, my second grade student asked me to play him Gennady Sasko’s play “Blues,” which was quite complex in rhythm, with a passage at the end. I played it three times... and at the next lesson he played the Blues without notes and at the same tempo as the piece was played. The case of this boy was for me an example of my incompetence in working with a gifted student with absolute pitch... I have not encountered many children with absolute pitch in my teaching practice. And most often such children did not graduate from music school. From the very beginning, they could remember and play the pieces by hand, “by ear,” but reading a complex text caused resistance in them and, as a result, they lost interest in learning.

In other words, the skill of “absolute pitch” is not something separate in the learning process, clearly positive or negative. Both its presence and absence require additional attention from the teacher and a special approach to the student. Still, this skill is extremely desirable!

To help my students, and to avoid repeating the mistakes of my youth, I am now using S.M. Maltsev’s method. - the author of a comprehensive methodology for teaching piano playing, as well as solfegging, synchronized with piano playing. This method helps me identify children with good developed hearing and constantly work with them by sight reading notes.

For most students and those who want to master musical wisdom, it is easy to learn and play their favorite melodies on the piano or guitar, they still need to develop their hearing. And the game "Perfect Pitch" is an excellent tool for this. It is suitable for all ages.

Small children, who cannot even read, will guess the right answer from the pictures. (You just need to help them - first play the game NOTES - PICTURES so that the child gets acquainted with the notes hidden in in simple words: HOUSE, TURNIP. There, he will become acquainted with the sound of notes.).

Older children and adults, while playing, will discover that they HAVE absolute pitch and that this skill is developing - verified!

Of course, someone might say that there are no halftones in the game (more precisely, a full chromatic scale). Yes, the game only includes white piano keys, i.e. in fact, we are in a major (C) or minor (LA) mode... Someone may note that the degrees of the mode and intervals play a role here... Absolutely right! But, start with simple tasks, achieve confident recognition of these notes, and you will take a big step in improving your musical ear. Believe me, you will get great pleasure from discovering that you can identify the name of a note by ear!

Krivopalova L.N.
Piano teacher, Palace of Children and Youth Creativity, Tomsk
01.05.2011

The Virartek team expresses gratitude to Lyubov Nikolaevna Krivopalova, who received Active participation in the creation of this game and in its testing. THANK YOU! Good luck to you and your students!