Ear Training Techniques

[minona]

In my foundation music course (sort of G.C.S.E. and A'level in one) the aural training was basically just writing stuff down and recognising intervals. I found it really tedious and stressful. It's basically a case of, "just do this and eventually you'll get the hang of it". This approach strongly favours those students who are already reasonably trained, and a few of us were struggling.

I've been reading about early teaching practices, about how composers in Haydn's time were actually taught. First, they were rigorously taught all the intervals in relation to the tonic using specially written sight-singing drills. This teaches all the intervals according to key. We were taught intervals in a totally abstract way, and not taught to how to use them (in relation to key).

Since I've been learning that way on my own, I've improved so much. It seems strange that this is no longer the standard way.

[minona]

Ah! So I'm not the only one:

https://www.eartraininghq.com/learning-intervals-a-waste-of-time/

[indianajo]

Sounds like the course puts the test, writing chords you hear down, before the training, the listening and playing part.  I had even more useless playing by ear training. I was taught to spot various intervals on the score on paper and write down the names.  This was fairly useless for hearing chords and reproducing them with your hands. I'm trying to make progress on this skill 5 decades later, by watchng pianists very carefully as they play on HDTV.  Then I try to play songs I hear on the CD player, with limited success.  I still have to write down my guesses on a score, to reproduce them later. Oh, well, I've possibly got 40 more years to figure it out, I'm only 63.